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Student’s protest sparks viral debate on American Indian history

Published

10 years ago

September 15, 2015

From the Sacramento Bee

By Stephen Magagnini

Sacramento State student Chiitaanibah Johnson has always been passionate about her American Indian heritage and what she sees as attempts to erase that history. A Maidu and Navajo born in an Indian hospital in Arizona, the 19-year-old has now sparked a national debate about how the history should be remembered and taught.

Johnson became an online sensation after speaking out about her confrontation earlier this month with Sacramento State history professor Maury Wiseman on whether the word “genocide” is appropriate to describe what happened to American Indians. Johnson told that story to the national outlet Indian Country Today Media Network, including claims that Wiseman accused her of “hijacking” the class and disenrolled her. That piece has since collected more than 159,000 likes on Facebook.

In an exclusive interview with The Sacramento Bee on Saturday, Johnson defended what she said was her correcting the record on her people’s history. Wiseman has declined to comment to The Bee while the matter is under investigation.

“America is for the truth, and what he said isn’t the truth,” Johnson said. “How many students have gone through his class and not questioned that? Indian kids all over the country get shut down for questioning things like this.”

She added that she is no longer attending Wiseman’s class. “There was a courteous and respectful way to handle this disagreement,” she said.

The author of the Indian Country Today story, Vince Schilling of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, said the controversy “has triggered a debate over what Indian people have been talking about for generations. Native people have been treated as less than citizens and disregarded as a race, and we’ve been told time and time again that our opinions don’t matter.

“But I can tell you this: The nation is beginning to listen because we’re not going to take it anymore. Thanks to social media and the ability to come together, native people are able to discuss and bring attention to problems and be recognized instead of suffering in silence.”

California Indian groups are prepared to mobilize behind Johnson, said Sacramento American Indian activist Susan Reece.

“California Indian history is not taught the way it should be taught, and it’s not by accident,” Reece said.

The controversy began in American History 17A on Sept. 2 when, Johnson said, Wiseman “said he didn’t like to use the word ‘genocide’ because he thought it was too strong for what had happened to American Indians; genocide implied it was on purpose, and most native people were wiped out by European diseases.”

Johnson, an English major who runs an open-mic night at the public library near her home in Antelope, said she wanted to speak out then, but was too emotional and instead spent the next two days researching the massacres of native people at Wounded Knee, S.D., in 1890, Sand Creek, Colo., in 1864 and other locations including Northern California.

Johnson said she brought her research to class, which she characterized as devoted to the “brave, courageous Portuguese explorers” who discovered and populated the new world without discussing slavery or giving equal time to what’s considered the Americas’ first democracy, the Iroquois Confederacy.

Johnson said she raised her hand and questioned the emphasis on the Portuguese accomplishments rather than their treatment of slaves and indigenous people, and then asked Wiseman to explain what he’d said about the word “genocide” and how it doesn’t apply to Indians.

“A lot of people are saying I did disrupt and take away from the lesson, and I understand that criticism. But I felt what he was teaching wasn’t entirely truthful or balanced,” she said. “I didn’t understand his historical proof.”

She said Wiseman suggested she talk to him after class, “and I said, ‘Well, no, I don’t think that’s acceptable because this is a very heavy statement you’ve made to your students publicly, and you need to justify it publicly.’

“He said, ‘I’m really starting to resent you because you are hijacking my class,’” Johnson said.

Johnson said the professor told her he was expelling her from the course, an account disputed by the university’s history department, which said professors can’t expel students unilaterally.

Johnson met with Robert S. Nelsen, the president of California State University, Sacramento, for more than an hour Thursday along with one of her mentors, Cindy La Marr, executive director of Capitol Area Indian Resources Inc.

Nelsen said in a statement that he would also be meeting with Wiseman but otherwise couldn’t comment on “an ongoing personnel matter,” other than to reiterate his message that “we at the university believe in academic freedom, and we also believe in civility and rigorous academic research. Our standards must be high, and we must follow the processes that we have put in place to ensure that the rights of students and faculty are protected.”

La Marr, a nationally known Indian educator from California’s Pitt River and Paiute nations, said several academic works based on newspaper articles and letters document attempts to exterminate California Indians, including “Murder State: California’s Native American Genocide, 1846-1873” by Sacramento State professor Brendan C. Lindsay, which reported that California’s native population dropped from an estimated 150,000 in 1848 to 15,377 in the 1900 census.

For Johnson, her people’s history is very much still alive.

“My Maidu people in Northern California were treated very badly,” she said. “Johnson is not the name my tribe had for centuries – that was the name that was given to us by the U.S. government agents who rode into our village to take the census and said our true names are too hard to pronounce.”

One of the California Legislature’s first acts was to authorize bounties on California Indians, “25 cents for a scalp and $5 for a head,” the 19-year-old said.

“I had nightmares about my people being burned alive or drowned after hearing or reading stories like that,” she said. “When I read about Ishi, the last of his tribe, in elementary school, I cried – he lived to see everybody that he ever loved systematically and deliberately murdered.”

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Rest in Peace: A.M.E. Pastor and L.A Civil Rights Icon Cecil “Chip” Murray Passes

The Rev. Dr. Cecil L. “Chip” Murray, former pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Church (FAME) in Los Angeles, died of natural causes April 6 at his Windsor Hills Home. He was 94. “Today, we lost a giant. Reverend Dr. Cecil Murray dedicated his life to service, community, and putting God first in all things. I had the absolute honor of working with him, worshiping with him, and seeking his counsel,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of the dynamic religious leader whose ministry inspired and attracted millionaires as well as former gang bangers and people dealing with substance use disorder (SUD).

Published

4 days ago

February 3, 2026

Oakland Post

The Rev. Dr. Cecil L. “Chip” Murray, former pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Church (FAME) in Los Angeles, died of natural causes April 6 at his Windsor Hills Home. He was 94.

“Today, we lost a giant. Reverend Dr. Cecil Murray dedicated his life to service, community, and putting God first in all things. I had the absolute honor of working with him, worshiping with him, and seeking his counsel,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of the dynamic religious leader whose ministry inspired and attracted millionaires as well as former gang bangers and people dealing with substance use disorder (SUD).

Murray oversaw the growth of FAME’s congregation from 250 members to 18,000.

“My heart is with the First AME congregation and community today as we reflect on a legacy that changed this city forever,” Bass continued.

Murray served as Senior Minister at FAME, the oldest Black congregation in the city, for 27 years. During that time, various dignitaries visited and he built strong relationships with political and civic leaders in the city and across the state, as well as a number of Hollywood figures. Several national political leaders also visited with Murray and his congregation at FAME, including Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Murray, a Florida native and U.S. Air Force vet, attended Florida A&M University, where he majored in history, worked on the school newspaper and pledged Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. He later attended Claremont School of Theology in Los Angeles County, where he earned his doctorate in Divinity.

Murray is survived by his son Drew. His wife Bernadine, who was a committed member of the A.M.E. church and the daughter of his childhood pastor, died in 2013.

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Court Throws Out Law That Allowed Californians to Build Duplexes, Triplexes and RDUs on Their Properties

Charter cities in California won a lawsuit last week against the state that declared Senate Bill (SB) 9, a pro-housing bill, unconstitutional. Passed in 2021, SB 9 is also known as the California Housing Opportunity and More Efficiency Act (HOME). That law permits up to four residential units — counting individual units of duplexes, triplexes and residential dwelling units (RDUs) – to be built on properties in neighborhoods that were previously zoned for only single-family homes.

Published

4 days ago

February 3, 2026

Oakland Post

Charter cities in California won a lawsuit last week against the state that declared Senate Bill (SB) 9, a pro-housing bill, unconstitutional.

Passed in 2021, SB 9 is also known as the California Housing Opportunity and More Efficiency Act (HOME). That law permits up to four residential units — counting individual units of duplexes, triplexes and residential dwelling units (RDUs) – to be built on properties in neighborhoods that were previously zoned for only single-family homes.

A Los Angeles Superior Court Judge ruled in favor of the cities, pointing out that SB 9 discredited charter cities that were granted jurisdiction to create new governance systems and enact policy reforms. The court ruling affects 121 charter cities that have local constitutions.

Attorney Pam Lee represented five Southern California cities in the lawsuit against the state and Attorney General Rob Bonta.

“This is a monumental victory for all charter cities in California,” Lee said.

However, general law cities are excluded from the court ruling as state housing laws still apply in residential areas.

Attorney General Bonta and his team are working to review the decision and consider all options that will protect SB 9 as a state law. Bonta said the law has helped provide affordable housing for residents in California.

“Our statewide housing shortage and affordability crisis requires collaboration, innovation, and a good faith effort by local governments to increase the housing supply,” Bonta said.

“SB9 is an important tool in this effort, and we’re going to make sure homeowners have the opportunity to utilize it,” he said.

Charter cities remain adamant that the state should refrain from making land-use decisions on their behalf. In the lawsuit, city representatives argued that SB 9 eliminates local authority to create single-family zoning districts and approve housing developments.

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Funds for Down Payments and Credit Repair Given to Black First Time Homebuyers

The California Civil Rights Department (CRD) won a $10,000 fair housing settlement last November against a property management company, CIM Group LP, a global real estate company headquartered in Los Angeles, and property owner, RACR Sora, LLC, for implementing a blanket ban on renting to tenants with criminal histories at Sora Apartments in Inglewood. Three months earlier, the department, which enforces California’s civil rights laws, won another $20,000 civil rights settlement against a Lemon Grove property manager, who had targeted a Black tenant with a series of racist actions and threats of violence.

Published

4 days ago

February 3, 2026

Oakland Post

By McKenzie Jackson, California Black Media

Three months earlier, the department, which enforces California’s civil rights laws, won another $20,000 civil rights settlement against a Lemon Grove property manager, who had targeted a Black tenant with a series of racist actions and threats of violence.

CRD Director Kevin Kish said the department investigates cases of apparent racial bias in housing and sometimes more subtle acts of prejudice like nuisance-free or crime-free housing policies or holding tenants to different standards based on their race.

Kish said, “People will get evicted if they call the police. This can negatively impact victims of domestic violence. We also see these no-crime ordinances, or no-crime policies, used in racially discriminatory ways. If there is some kind of incident, and the police are called and it involves a Black family, then they get evicted, but other folks aren’t necessarily evicted.”

On April 11,1968, a week after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, President Lydon B. Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, color, religion, and nationality.

Kish noted that William Byron Rumford, the first Black California State Assemblymember, who represented Berkley and Oakland, spearheaded the passing of the Rumford Act in 1963. That law sought to end discriminatory housing practices in the Golden State, five years before the Fair Housing Act became law.
Real estate agent and housing advocate Ashley Garner is the director of the CLTRE Keeper Home Ownership program. That organization gave 25 Black, indigenous, and people of color $17,500 each in down payment and credit repair support to purchase a home in Oak Park, a traditionally Black neighborhood in Sacramento, last fall. CLTRE obtained a $500,000 grant from the city of Sacramento to award the funds to the residents after they completed an eight-week homeownership program.

In 2021, the California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA) noted that around four in 10 Black California families owned homes, which trails that of White, Asian-American and Latinos.
According to Forbes, the median price for a home in California is over $500,000, which is double the cost of a home in the rest of the country.

Black lawmakers recently introduced their Reparations Priority Bill Package that includes support for Black first-time homebuyers, homeowners’ mortgage assistance and property tax relief for neighborhoods restricted by historic redlining.

California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA) spokesperson Eric Johnson said CalHFA helps prospective low-income and moderate-income Californians purchase homes by offering down payment and closing cost aid. “There are lots of people who have steady jobs, good credit scores, constant income, but they haven’t been able to save up the money that traditional banks need or want to see for a down payment,” Johnson stated. “We help those folks out. We give a loan for the down payment to get them over that hurdle.”
CRD and the Department of Real Estate hosted “Fair Housing Protections for People with Criminal Histories” Zoom call on April 10.

On April 25, CRD will also hold Zoom seminars focused on advocating for fair housing for people with disabilities.