De Anza School college students, school and local people members are pushing for a reputation change on the California group faculty, The Mercury Information reported.
The school is called after Juan Bautista de Anza, an 18th-century Spanish army officer who led two expeditions to California. These in favor of a reputation change circulated a petition, arguing that Spanish colonization wreaked havoc on Indigenous communities within the area.
“The missions quickly grew to become bases from which the Spanish monks and army officers may train management over the encircling land, disrupting the setting and indigenous methods of life, thus forcing indigenous peoples to hunt meals and shelter within the missions,” the petition learn. “As soon as there, Native folks had been forbidden to go away the missions and their conventional cultures had been severely restricted.”
Sherwin Mendoza, a part-time school member at De Anza, advised The Mercury Information that he and others advocating for a reputation change had been impressed by Cabrillo School, which additionally bears the title of a Spanish explorer and is within the midst of a reputation change course of. (Cabrillo’s Board of Trustees, nevertheless, voted to delay the title change in August.)
“I really feel like I’ve an obligation to attempt to do my half in correcting these previous wrongs that had been dedicated towards indigenous folks by settlers,” Mendoza mentioned.
Marisa Spatafore, a school spokesperson, wrote in an electronic mail to The Mercury Information that “the group is greater than welcome to have interaction in dialog on this difficulty and another matter.” She famous that the faculty modified its mascot final 12 months from the Dons, a Spanish the Aristocracy title, to a mountain lion.
