The Dead Behind My Catholic School

I went to Junipero Serra School at the Carmel Mission in the 1980s. The school photographs from the spring of 1986 and 1987 show a little strawberry-blonde girl in a blue cardigan, gray-blue dress and white collar, smiling with her classmates. I remember another side of those years, too.

A beautiful place that frightened me

Carmel Mission was ancient, imposing and extravagantly religious. To me as a child, its buildings felt cold, sterile, creepy and scary. There were heavy walls and an atmosphere of reverence and obedience. The adults treated it as ordinary. I could not understand why it felt so unsettling.

But what haunted me most wasn't inside the classrooms or church. It was the burial ground behind the mission.

The people buried behind the mission

I knew Indigenous people were buried there. I could see the simple markers, crosses and stones. I wondered about those people, their lives, and what had happened to them. Why was this history treated as a detail that children weren't supposed to question?

I asked the nuns about the graves. Sometimes I was ignored. Sometimes I was told, ‘No questions are allowed to be asked right now.’ I remember how impossible that answer felt. We were being taught about faith, goodness and compassion, but I could not get the adults to talk about the people buried just outside.

My secret visits

Sometimes I would ask to go to the bathroom and slip away from class. Instead of going there, I went back to the cemetery.

I prayed for the people buried there. I apologized to them. I told them how sorry I was. And I cried.

I was a little girl, and I didn't have the historical vocabulary to explain what troubled me. I only knew that something terrible and important was being downplayed, and that the silence around it felt wrong.

The child in the photographs

This is my second-grade class in spring 1986. Looking at that neat formation of students in matching uniforms, I think about the things a class photo cannot show: the questions I asked, the questions that went unanswered, and the sadness I carried back from the cemetery.

And here is my third-grade class in spring 1987. These photographs anchor the memory in a real school, a real place, and a real childhood.

Remembering what was not discussed

Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo is part of California's mission history, including the lives and deaths of Indigenous people connected to the mission system. The burial ground is not simply a picturesque backdrop to a historic church. It is a place of human loss and remembrance.

I do not want to speak for the Indigenous people buried there or pretend I fully understood their history when I was eight years old. I want to tell the truth about what I remember: I asked about them. The adults shut the questions down. I went back alone, and I prayed.

As a child, I couldn't reconcile all that grandeur with all that silence. As an adult, I still think the children asking uncomfortable questions deserve honest answers.

What historians document about the deaths

Historical accounts of the Esselen and Rumsen communities describe a devastating decline under the mission system. The Monterey County Historical Society identifies introduced diseases including measles, smallpox and syphilis, compounded by heavy forced or coerced labor, inadequate nutrition, unhealthy living conditions and the disruption of Indigenous lifeways. An 1806 measles epidemic at Mission Carmel is documented in a National Park Service ethnohistory. These are historical patterns, not an individual cause-of-death determination for every person buried in the cemetery.

Sources: Monterey County Historical Society, https://mchsmuseum.com/local-history/native-american-groups-and-cultures/a-brief-overview-of-the-esselen-indians-of-monterey-county/ ; National Park Service Ohlone/Costanoan Ethnohistory, https://www.nps.gov/goga/learn/historyculture/upload/Ohlone-All-Chapters.pdf

The protests at the very cemetery where I prayed

On Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015, more than 100 Indigenous demonstrators and supporters gathered at Carmel Mission to oppose Junípero Serra's proposed canonization. News coverage reported a peaceful demonstration. On September 23, 2015, the day Pope Francis canonized Serra, Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation chairwoman Louise Miranda Ramirez led a prayer ceremony in the cemetery with Indigenous descendants and supporters, while worshippers celebrated the canonization in the mission courtyard. The cemetery's wooden crosses and abalone shells include symbolic markers, and should not be mistaken for a complete map of individual burial sites.

Sources: KSBW, https://www.ksbw.com/article/native-americans-protest-possible-sainthood-for-founder-of-carmel-mission-2/1332934 ; KAZU, https://www.kazu.org/news/2015-09-24/at-carmel-mission-serras-sainthood-celebrated-and-rebuked

The responses that exposed the divide

Local reporting documented sharp differences in perspective. Ramirez said her ancestors had suffered enslavement and cultural erasure and that Serra's canonization was painful. Father Peter Crivello, vicar general of the Diocese of Monterey, argued that abuses associated with the mission system could not simply be attributed to Serra personally. Worshippers publicly celebrated his sainthood while Indigenous descendants mourned and protested nearby. Those documented responses illustrate the contrast I found so difficult to understand as a child: one community's sacred celebration existed alongside another community's grief.

In September 2015, after someone vandalized a Serra statue at Carmel Mission, Ramirez expressly rejected the vandalism, noting that her own ancestors' resting places had also been damaged. She emphasized her community's wish to pray for its ancestors and work cooperatively with the mission. Protesting canonization, praying at graves, and vandalizing a statue were not the same actions or necessarily carried out by the same people.

Sources: KAZU, https://www.kazu.org/news/2015-09-24/at-carmel-mission-serras-sainthood-celebrated-and-rebuked ; ICT, https://ictnews.org/archive/esselen-nations-respond-to-troubling-vandalism-at-mission-carmel/

These protests happened decades after I attended school. I am not claiming to have witnessed them. What moves me is knowing that Indigenous descendants later gathered in the same burial ground to pray, mourn and ask that their ancestors' history be acknowledged.

This illustrated memoir is based on my recollections of attending Junipero Serra School. The comic is an artistic interpretation; the school photographs are authentic family photographs. Historical burial estimates and individual grave identifications require independent archival verification.

December 2019: I Went Back

In December 2019, only months before the pandemic, my husband and I returned to Carmel Mission. When I returned to Carmel Mission in December 2019, more than thirty years later, I acknowledged the people buried there once again. I was happy to send them my prayers, just as I had done as a little girl. They had never been forgotten by me.

My husband could not stay. He was suddenly overcome by a wave of nausea and an intensely putrid feeling. He ran out of the graveyard, through the gates, and had to stop outside near the parking lot. He could not bring himself to go any farther into the cemetery.

For me, his reaction was profoundly validating. For years, I had tried to describe the feeling I remembered from that place. Now someone who had come with me was experiencing something powerful in his own body. I did not interpret it as an evil spirit haunting the cemetery. I felt, spiritually, as though the monstrous suffering that had occurred there had left an imprint—as if the place held a kind of energy portal. That is how I understood what we experienced; I cannot say what caused his physical reaction.

I had come back to greet the dead, just as I had tried to comfort them when I was a child. The visit did not erase the questions I had asked the nuns. It reminded me why I had never stopped asking them.

Historical sources and further reading

Monterey County Historical Society — “A Brief Overview of the Esselen Indians of Monterey County.” Documents mission-era population decline, living conditions, labor and introduced diseases. https://mchsmuseum.com/local-history/native-american-groups-and-cultures/a-brief-overview-of-the-esselen-indians-of-monterey-county/

KSBW — “Native Americans protest possible sainthood for founder of Carmel Mission” (April 6, 2015). Reports the Easter demonstration and statements from participants. https://www.ksbw.com/article/native-americans-protest-possible-sainthood-for-founder-of-carmel-mission-2/1332934

KAZU — “At Carmel Mission Serra's Sainthood Celebrated and Rebuked” (September 24, 2015). Reports Indigenous prayer ceremonies alongside Catholic celebration and quotes Louise Miranda Ramirez and Father Peter Crivello. https://www.kazu.org/news/2015-09-24/at-carmel-mission-serras-sainthood-celebrated-and-rebuked

Walk for the Ancestors — “Reportback from Carmel” (October 3, 2015). A participant's account of the ceremony and its significance to Indigenous descendants. https://walkfortheancestors.org/2015/10/reportback-from-carmel/

ICT — “Esselen Nations Respond to ‘Troubling’ Vandalism at Mission Carmel” (September 30, 2015). Documents Ramirez's opposition to vandalism and her commitment to respectful prayer. https://ictnews.org/archive/esselen-nations-respond-to-troubling-vandalism-at-mission-carmel/

Editorial note: The childhood scenes reflect my memories, not independently documented verbatim dialogue. Reports of later protests are attributed to their sources; they took place decades after my school years.