Day 28: Excavation at the Santa Barbara Mission by Wendy Rose

Excavation at the Santa Barbara Mission by Wendy Rose (1993)

For some reason, this poem is particularly difficult for me to write about, and I’m not sure why. It’s hard to articulate the profound effect it had on me.

I first came across it in a photocopied packet for the Native American Literature class I took as an undergrad—a class that changed my entire way of thinking. I guess on an intellectual level I had already understood the plight of Native Americans when I signed up for that class, but studying even a small portion of their literature moved that understanding from the intellectual to the spiritual. I felt each text on that syllabus in a way that differed from anything else.

Wendy Rose, the poet, grew up with a dual identity: Native (Hopi and Mwok) and White (English, Scottish, Irish, German, etc.). She was raised off of a reservation and felt disconnected from both her Native and European cultural roots. This conflict is evident in the poem, and offers us a unique utility. What she discovers is made accessible to us because she is outside of it, as many readers are. But it is also made personal because she is a part of it, as many readers are not. It's an effective mix of objectivity and subjectivity.

I think about this poem all the time. It resonates in all magnitudes—this idea of excitedly trying to uncover something, having the feeling that by doing so you will establish some parts of yourself, and instead arriving at a horrible realization. It encompasses the intensely private sense of identity as well as the immensity of cultural assimilation and genocide. On a personal level, the narrator is unable to feel the pride that she had expected once she uncovers a horrific truth. And once uncovered, it doesn’t go away. It overtakes everything. This happened to her in real life, but god. What a metaphor.

My words are so completely inadequate. Best just to read hers.

Short Stuff:

• Wendy Rose is a poet, visual artist, and anthropologist.

• Though she considers herself a poet above an anthropologist, her PhD in the field is evident throughout her work.

Topics

biculturalism; identity; religion; human rights; assimilation

Excavation at the Santa Barbara Mission

When archaeologists excavated Santa Barbara Mission in California, they discovered human bones in the adobe walls.

My pointed trowel is the artist's brush that will stroke and pry, uncover and expose the old mission wall. How excited I am for like a dream I wanted to count myself among the ancient dead as a faithful neophyte resting there and in love with the padres and the Spanish hymns.

A feature juts out. Marrow like lace, piece of a skull, upturned cup, fingerbones scattered like corn and ribs interlaced like cholla. So many bones mixed with the blood from my own knuckles that dig and tug in the yellow dust. How fragile they have become to float and fall with my touch, brittle white tips shivering into mist. How helpless I am for the deeper I go the more I find crouching in white dust, listening to the whistle of longbones breaking apart like memories. My hands empty themselves of old dreams, drain the future into the moisture of my boot prints. Beneath the flags of three invaders, I am a hungry scientist sustaining myself with bones of men and women asleep in the wall who survived in their own way Spanish swords, Franciscans and their rosary whips, who died among the reeds to wait, communion wafers upon the ground, too holy for the priests to find.

They built the mission with dead Indians. They built the mission with dead Indians. They built the mission with dead Indians. They built the mission with dead Indians.

--Wendy Rose