San Francisco Arts Commission votes to remove statue over depiction of Native Americans

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San Francisco’s Arts Commission voted unanimously Monday to begin the process of removing a historic Civic Center statue following a community outcry over its depiction of Native Americans.

While a few people spoke in favor of preserving the statue as part of The City’s history, dozens lined up to call for its removal, with many describing it as racist and glorifying genocide.

“How would you feel if someone came into your home, killed your family and then put up a statue commemorating the people who killed and enslaved your family?” artist Hailey Clarke said.

Entitled “Early Days,” the statue is part of the larger “Pioneer Monument” located on the block of Fulton Street between the Main Library and the Asian Arts Museum. It shows a Native American man on the ground with a Spanish vaquero, or cowboy, and a missionary standing over him.

In a statement on the Facebook Group “Take Down the Pioneer Statue in San Francisco Now,” Rumsen Ohlone tribe member Dee Dee Manzanares Ybarra said she was upset by the statue’s portrayal.

“It implies that natives were subhuman and that their survival was due to their colonization by outsiders when in reality the natives had survived for thousands of years,” she said.

“Changes need to be made by educating people of the true history” of Native American enslavement and loss of land and culture, she said.

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