Dedication Event Documentary

It is estimated that there are over 80,000 native people
buried on the lands associated with the twenty one
California missions. Most of these people died during
the Spanish and Mexican construction of the missions
and tenure of the mission properties. The Mission
Indian Memorial Fund was established to honor the
contributions of these people and to pay respect to
them from our perspectives today.

On March 23, 1999 The Mission Indian Memorial Fund
together with the Sonoma Mission California State Park,
the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa, and the City of
Sonoma hosted an event to unveil the Sonoma Mission
Indian Memorial. This was a historic event in California, an unprecedented example of commemorating the native
people who built the mission. The names of those
memorialized were gathered from mission records and
carved into granite so that they could be acknowledged for their sacrifices by current and future generations of
native and non-native people.

 The Storyteller video crew documented the event and
conducted interviews to illustrate the Native perspectives
concerning the memorial. A DVD of this event is available through Storyteller.