We Are Here Because of Them

Tens of thousands of Native individuals perished in California’s twenty-one Franciscan missions that operated from the 1760s into the 1840s, but most public interpretive programs gloss over their lives and the cemeteries where they are interred. This has historically been the case at Mission Santa Clara, on the campus of Santa Clara University. In this article, we reflect on the process of co-creating an interactive memorial designed to honor the Native people buried in two colonial-era cemeteries related to the mission and link their lives to the descendant community today. Importantly, the co-creation process helped strengthen relationships in numerous directions, furthering the work of both commemoration and reconciliation.