George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Edward Said: "History is written by those who win and those who dominate."
Chief Pontiac (d. 1769): "They came with a Bible and their religion, stole our land,
crushed out spirit...and now tell us we should be thanful to their 'Lord' for being saved."
LOGLINE: In 1780s California, a mixed-blood scout, torn between his native heritage and Spanish conquerors, is thrust into a battle of survival and identity as he navigates oppressive mission life and brutal colonizers.
ALTA CALIFORNIA is an historically correct script viewed through the eyes of a fictional character, Paco Palido. Paco has three tasks before him: 1) Revenge the murder of his mother by a Spanish soldier; 2) Discover who and what he is and who are his people in a rapidly evolving world; and, 3) Aid his new-found people prepare for the coming of the white man from the East.
The script divides into three sections.
Section One: Who Am I?
Here we are introduced to Paco Palido (fictional), a mixed blood whose tribe and mother are slaughtered. Before her death, Paco’s mother gives her son a clamshell necklace: an object that recurs in the story.
Paco is taken to a residential school where, despite repeated punishments, Paco refuses to give up the “heathen” necklace, or to accept baptism into a faith that assigns his dead mother to its Hell.
He is rescued from the school by Captain Felipe de Neve who employs Paco as a native scout.
In that role, Paco witnesses the repeated confrontations between Neve and Padre Junipero Serra over the treatment of “neophytes” (baptized Indians), misused funding, and clashes over protection and safety.
Paco also witnesses how some Spanish soldiers, against Neve’s express command, abuse native women. Two Spanish soldiers invite Paco to accompany them on a “deer hunt.” He refuses and is jailed overnight.
Neve, suspicious of what this “hunt” involved, sends Paco to talk with the leader of the local tribe. The Headman informs Paco what happens, but insists the two soldiers face native, not Spanish, retribution. “Our way is poison.”
The Headman also informs Paco that it is in Santa Barbara, among the “heathen” Chumash, where Paco will find his people.
Section Two: I Find My Home, My People
Paco is captured by the Chumash! The necklace his mother gave him saves Paco. The Chumash recognize him as one of their own.
In a powerful and haunting scene, Paco, aided by a young and beautiful Chumash girl, Ifapi, meets the ghost of his murdered mother.
He leaves the Chumash having found his purpose, knowing he has to help his people prepare for a place in this rapidly evolving world.
Section Three: How Can I Help My People?
With the Spanish preparing to leave Alta California, all focus is upon preparing the neophytes for the coming invasion of white men from the east.
Two opposing solutions are offered. Serra believes the neophytes must remain in the missions where God will protect them. Neve disagrees, believing the neophytes must return to their tribal ways away from the mission. Only one solution will succeed.
Paco, who carries Neve and the King Carlos’s decision to various missions, soon learns how determined, uncompromising and Machiavellian the “Good Padre” really is. His solution will win by fair means or foul.
Serra and Neve die in the same year. Paco returns to his new-found tribe, the Chumash, and his new-found love, Ifapi.
Comments:
Alta California focuses on both Paco's struggle to find his place in a rapidly changing world, and his wish to seek revenge on his mother’s killer.
A Nicholl Fellowship critique said of the script, "There is meaning here. There were themes having to do with racism and faith and the nature of both. The script also seemed to be saying something about humanity, and this was well integrated into the piece and arose out of it organically."
Alta California is a multiple national and international film festival award winner including Los Angeles Film and Script, Richmond International, Lonely Seal, WeScreenplay Diverse Voices, Accolade Global (Native American/Aboriginal Peoples), Wiki Screenplay, and many more in the USA and overseas in Canada, South America and Europe. It was a second rounder in Launch Pad Feature Competition. It is also a top-rated historical screenplay with MovieBytes, and in the top 2% on Coverfly.
The truth about the California Missions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2akBgn535c
CURRENT REEVALUATION OF PADRE JUNIPERO SERRA AND THE MISSION ERA:
"Serra's legacy in California has been reevaluated in recent decades in light of the many native peoples who were forced to live and work at the missions where they endured physical abuse. Thousands died." (Adam Beam, Associated Press, Chico E-R, November 15, 2022).
"Junipero Serra was a brutal colonist. So why did Pope Francis just make him a saint?" VOX magazine, September 24, 2015.
(https://www.vox.com/2015/9/24/9391995/junipero-serra-saint-pope-francis)
"That spiritual fathers should punish their sons, the Indians, with blows that appear to be as old as the conquest of the Americas... .Two or three whippings applied to them may serve, for them and for the rest, spiritual benefit for them all!" Junipero Serra
PAST ATTITUDES TO THE "MISSION ERA":
With the white men racing from the East, drawn by gold, and the Spaniards preparing to leave California, there was a question of what to do with the "neophytes" (baptized mission indians). Captain Felipe De Neve and King Carlos, the secular authorities, had one solution: return the natives to their tribal ways. Padre Serra had another: leave them in the mission where God would protect them! How Serra won that battle is both masterful, intriguing, Machiavellian, and conveniently forgotten. Serra's victory was, however, devastating for the "neophytes" (see Edwin A. Beilharz, Felipe de Neve: First Governor of California, California Historical Society, 1971, and A Cross of Thorns, Elias Castello, Craven Street Books, 2015).
In 1851, California’s first Governor, Peter Burnett, told the Legislature to expect war “until the Indian race becomes extinct.”
CURRENT ATTITUDES TO THE “MISSION ERA”:
1. FOLLOWING THE CANONIZATION OF PADRE SERRA
In 2015, Pope Francis made Junipero Serra a saint. This resolution was met with protests:
Statue of Serra decapitated. Two years later, in Santa Barbara, decapitated statue and covered in red paint.
Mission San Gabriel destroyed by fire.
Hastings Law School renamed 2022. Now UC Law San Francisco. Serranus Clinton Hastings authorized killing of Yuki Indians.
650 offensive terms for Native American women removed.
Newson apologized for “history of repression and violence.”
The Junipero Serra statue previously located in Sacramento's Capitol Park was toppled by protestors in July 2020 and has since been replaced by the California Native American Monument in November 2023, which honors local Indigenous populations. The original statue was erected in 1967 but became a symbol of colonial oppression for Native American tribes.
2. POLITICAL RESOLUTIONS IN CALIFORNIA.
Recounting California's dark history with respect to its indigenous peoples, Governot Gavin Newsom issued an apology in front of a group of Native American tribal elders on behalf of the State of California for a history of repression and violence.
Governor Newsom, in an emotional presentation, recited a published chronicle from the 19th century that listed a tally of Indian deaths, including an account of a white settler who chose to kill children with a revolver instead of a high-caliber shotgun because “it tore them up so bad.”
“It’s called genocide,” Governor Newsom said. “That’s what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books.”
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2019/06/18/governor-newsom-issues-apology-to-native-americans-for-states-historical-wrongdoings-establishes-truth-and-healing-council/. June 18, 2019
A new bill, authored by Assemblyman James Ramos of California and signed into law by Governor Newsom, states that, beginning January 1, 2025, all schools in California are required to teach the historical truth about the “Mission Era” and the gold rush and its effect upon California’s native peoples.
See: Telling the truth about the California Missions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuqBjKG67MU
October 25, 2024. President Joe Biden visits Arizona's Gila River Indian Community and apologizes for Native American children forced into federal boarding schools: "For Indigenous peoples, they served as places of trauma and terror for more than 100 years. Tens of thousands of Indigenous children, as young as four years old were taken from their families and communities and forced into boarding schools run by the U.S. government and religious institutions," he said.
"Nearly 1000 documented Native child deaths, though the real number is likely to be much, much higher. Lost generations, culture and language. Lost trust. It's horribly, horribly wrong. It's a sin on our soul," he continued.
"I formally apologize as president of United States of America for what we did," he said, emphatically. "I formally apologize!"
(https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-apologize-government-forcing-indian-children-boarding-schools/story?id=115146385)
"Before Columbus, your god did not exist in America!"
"They go inside a building to talk to their god. We go out into the natural world - and our Creator speaks to us'" (Lakota Man)