Rewriting The Chumash War with Joe Payne

A “small revolt” doesn’t topple an institution—people do. We dive into the 1824 Chumash uprising and show why it belongs with the era’s great revolutions, not the margins of a mission field trip. With historian-journalist Joe Payne, we map how three missions became a battleground for emancipation, how labor withdrawal and horse control shattered the mission economy, and why a four-pound cannon and a privateer raid still echo through California’s historical memory.

We zoom out to the age of independence to read Alta California against Mexican constitutional turmoil, counter-revolution, and the casta system that structured everyday power. You’ll hear how Franciscans trained militias they couldn’t control, why disease and livestock were imperial weapons, and how Chumash technology—canoes, acorn processing, shell currency—supported dense settlements and regional politics that Spanish officials struggled to categorize but quietly feared. The story doesn’t stop at the gates: inland flight, alliances, and repeated uprisings helped doom the mission system itself.

We also confront how the past is staged. Rebuilt missions and tidy exhibits often freeze the Chumash at contact and sideline their leadership, while modern policy offers “sanctuaries” offshore and roadblocks on land. Joe details present-day sovereignty fights, internal debates over identity, and the promise of Chumash-run cultural centers that tell a living story in their own voice. Along the way, we question European categories like nation and state, challenge simplistic gender readings, and make room for complexity without losing the plot: indigenous history is ongoing, and this revolution still speaks to power, place, and who gets to define both.

If this conversation expands your map of California, share it with a friend, subscribe for more deep dives, and leave a review telling us the biggest myth you were taught about the mission era.

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

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Setting The Stage And Guest Intro

C. Derick Varn 0:48

Hello. Hello, welcome to Barblog. And today I'm here with Joe Payne. Formerly a political pain of Payne. Formerly. You still do it? I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. I still have my channel. I actually did two interviews on my channel in the last year or so that I cited in my thesis. So it lives on.

Joe Payne 1:19

All right, so Lauren, it lives on. All right. So not formally a political pain, currently a political pain, but it is slowly amping back up. Last time we talked, it had been in hiatus for a while. That's fair. And uh last time we talked about uh we talked about the Chumash Wars, uh, which are not generally recorded as wars, but we talked about it in terms of the journalism of the time and the memory around um uh indigenous conflicts in California. And today we're gonna talk about the Chumash Wars in the context of the Indian wars in general, and um, why should we still care about this? Uh, I mean, that's always the biggest question in the room, right? Because I do think we should, obviously, but I have to convince other people, so you have to convince other people. Why should we still care about these about these forgotten wars from you know a hundred years ago?

C. Derick Varn 2:22

In the case of the Chumash War of 1824, a revolutionary war for emancipation by the indigenous Chumash people who were held at missions Santa Barbara, Santienez, and La Porísima de Concepcion, that's the three missions in the county that I live in presently, that's Santa Barbara County, California. Um, looking at them as such and defining them as revolutionary wars,

Reframing The Chumash War As Revolution

C. Derick Varn 2:47

I believe is important because we are contextualizing uh mass indigenous, militant, organized resistance at a time and place where that was very much a part of the political character of Latin America, but also the world at large in the age of revolutions and the turn of the 18th to 19th centuries. Um, this uh revolution takes place in 1824. Like I said, it involves hundreds and hundreds of Chumash people, more than a thousand, um, either resisting militantly or engaged in radical labor action, removing their bonded labor from the California missions. This is also a way that we can re-examine the California missions. If you're not educated in California in the California public school system, it's not something that uh you might be aware of, but as Californians, and that's tens of millions of us who go through our public school system, we are educated about the California mission system and the Spanish mission system. Um and it's we're only taught about it in the fourth grade. It is very much a uh how would you say a whitewash, you know, and in some cases figuratively, in other cases literally. Uh, we can get in more into those details. Um but you know, I grew up in this county, I field tripped to these mission sites when I was a kid. And this is something that was never mentioned, it was never talked about. Um, the a friend of mine who uh grew up, you know, going to the same schools in the same areas as me, who is Chumash, you know, later told me after I wrote about this for the newspaper all those years ago, it feels like now. Um, he said, you know, we knew about this while you guys sat around and built sugar cube models and all of this uh of the mission buildings. We learned we knew about this, we knew our history. Um, and really I'm just pushing to uh define what the Chumash did in the historiography, and we talked about this last time. The Franciscans wrote a lot of their own mission history, uh, etc. You know, European uh um dominated history. This conflict is reduced down to a small revolt, a rebellion. I mean, it came at a pivotal time and involved a massive amount of resistance and led to a larger movement or helped contribute to a larger movement of self-emancipation from the California missions and escape from these coastal missions into the interior of California, towards the San Joaquin Valley and elsewhere. And it contributed to the ultimate demise of the mission system. And again, this is at a time in California history where there are revolutions and counter-revolutions happening again and again. Um, whether it's the Solis Revolt or the Bear Flag Revolt or these other uh, I mean, um, you know, the this war happens in the context of the first Mexican War of Independence, when uh, you know, it'd been going on for over a decade by the time that this war happens. And it happens just after you have this oscillation of war, of revolution, counter-revolution in Latin American and Mexican history, where you have, you know, in counter-revolutionary empire, the Mexican short-lived iturbide empire, uh, the interbide monarchy in Mexico, and that was uh taken down, you know, uh uh he was deposed and replaced with a new secular state, a republic. And so, in the very year that the Chumash are rebelling or engaged in radical militancy or revolution for their own emancipation and their own liberal rights, the missions are getting a circular letter. I've seen this in in the archives, um, they're getting a circular letter from Mexico saying, hey, all you priests, you gotta uh swear fealty to the new constitution, to the new nation. And not all of them were uh willing to do that. Uh, and some

Missions, Memory, And Fourth-Grade Myths

C. Derick Varn 7:17

of them outright blamed all this talk of freedom and constitution for what the Chumash were actually doing.

Joe Payne 7:25

Well, this is uh this is something we didn't get into last time. Uh we talked about the mission system, but we did not get into the independencia uh and uh the criollo revolutions. Um and for those who don't know, New Spain was huge. It went from the top of Utah and California, Colorado. Utah is actually interesting, it's kind of split between Mexico and and and New France, or uh New Spain, later Mexico. Um and what is established after the independencia is the is the I think it is actually formally called the Empire of Mexico. Um the Mexican Empire, yeah. Yeah. Um it does not become the United States of Mexico today's formal name until after the the next revolution and the beginning of the 20th century. Um although I I've I've gone through the formal names in Mexico, it's there's like five. But um New Spain this in the South just triggers the Bolivarian revolutions, and one of the things that's often, frankly, and I think socialists are bad about doing this, is whitewashing the Bolivarian revolution's relationship to indigenous peoples and even to lower caste of members, um, and painting it as a solely liberatory revolution, and that was not what Simon Bolivar was really all about. You can really see this if you read Mark Marx's uh encyclopedia entry on uh Simon Boulevard, it's scathing. Um but I bring this up not because Simon Boulevard has anything to do with California, but because we tend to think about the attacks on indigenous people in the in the in the English colonies um in a Jared Horn sort of way. We don't often look at this um in the Latin American settler con colonies in the same way, and California is very emblematic of that because it's really both happened there, you know. Uh um you have the two much wars of 1824, and then you have the the kind of um decimating of the indigenous peoples of the rest of the Americas and the swoop after Jackson and definitely after the Civil War. Um and I think a lot of people don't connect all this, like they don't see you know, it is easy to understand that the United States is a settler colonial project. It's a little bit harder to understand that the bourgeois revolutions in Latin America kind of were too. Um and I don't say that to condemn them. It's not, you know, I think we have to have a real understanding of the way these were interrelated because they're also inspired by uh in both cases, often what indigenous people were doing.

C. Derick Varn 10:38

Yeah. Um my cat is going crazy. Um, I don't know if you had a chance to uh read my thesis, but I definitely did um attempt to situate what the Chumash did in 1824 in the age of revolutions um as as they were living through it. Um and there are a lot of things that happened across uh you're referring referring to the Chumash War as plural. I kind of consider this one conflict um that spanned across these three missions. It happened in 1824. Um, and you know, uh uh these three missions are quite close to each other. Like it's like a constellation of three. I explained this last time. You have the Santa Barbara Channel when the Spanish um settle that area that it wasn't the first area they really got to when they did the conquest of California. It was kind of Huneberos Serras. Uh, you know, there was a gleam in his eye just before he died that they hadn't quite got to the Santa Barbara Channel yet. But there were thousands and thousands of Chumash there. The Chumash had um a you know advanced society as far as indigenous peoples go. Um, you know, they had a maritime culture, they had stratified um, you know, uh a priest class, a you know, political class, um, and exchange economy, currency across hundreds you know of miles of coastline. And the Spanish recognized they couldn't just take it all at once or or that they uh just building a mission there, it would not be safe. They had to start with Presidio Santa Barbara, which is a fort and barracks. It was, you know, uh um a military outpost in the very beginning to establish in that region. Then Mission Santa Barbara is built after that, and then some years, uh a few years later, Mission La Porísima is built on the other side of the mountains that's closer to the coast. Um, this is the the western transverse range. Um, this major mountain range, the only one in in uh California that moves east to west, um, out to Point Conception, all the way out to like San Bernardino area. And um San Inez, Mission San Inez is built last of the three. It's like a further incursion inland into Tumash territory. Um, so that mission was the last built of the three, and that's where the revolution really begins. It pops off at this later

Revolutions Around 1824 And Mission Politics

C. Derick Varn 13:17

mission. So you have men and women that were baptized there who um had been there for more than a decade, but maybe there were they were, you know, our age at the time of the conflict, and they were in their 20s or 30s um when they were first baptized at the mission. Um the mission La Purissima, the one that they that they hold for a month um and fought to defend and fortify it, kind of hardened it almost like the the purissima or like the presidio in Santa Barbara. Um they the first La Purissima had been knocked down by a massive earthquake in 1810. And so most of the Chumas who were fighting to defend that mission had built it themselves. They they had a living memory of putting the whole damn thing together. So, and then you know, once the there's a battle there after a month, and it's there, it's put down there by the the local military in Santa Barbara could not handle the conflict, they couldn't um control uh the Chumash at this point. Um, there's a later statement by Jose de la Guerra y Noriega, who was the comandante at the Presidio, where later he's he you know explains if this uh conflict had gone on, gone any farther, then um you know we're in real danger because there's only like 2,000 of us. Uh you mentioned the casta system, you know, he said there's only about 2,000 or 3,000 of us, gente de rasone, that's the white, um, the white Spaniards. He said there's only about uh, but also their mixed-race military that was coming from Mexico, uh, and was dispersed across you know the presidios and the missions. He said there's only about two or three thousand of us across all of Alta California, and there's something like 22,000 indigenous people across the missions. So they recognized the span, the Spanish colonists, colonizers, and uh, you know, Mexican military. Uh, this is in the Mexican period, they recognize that this uh uprising, if we don't get control of it, it could spread to all the missions, we could be in real trouble. Um, and I don't think it's a coincidence. Uh, you also have the Istanislaus uh uh from uh I believe that's Mission San Jose, it begins, but more in the in the northern Bay Area missions, you have a like almost a repeat. It's not at the same scale as what the Chumash did, but it's a similar indigenous uprising, revolutionary action. And what where is safety? You escape towards the interior of the state, which was never settled by um California or but you know by the Spanish or the Mexicanos. And it it wasn't until, like you mentioned, the U USA, the good old US of A, uh rolls in, and guys like John C. Fremont, who we name cities and theaters after here, comes in and just starts slaughtering indigenous people wholesale.

Joe Payne 16:20

Yeah, um it's it is interesting the Mexican the Mexican relations to the various indigenous groups because some of them um there's a generalization actually that I I'm always very careful to make, but that the Catholics uh Catholic countries tend to try to um incorporate uh indigenous groups by marriage, and um Protestants try to incorporate them through reservations and genocide. And it is not to say that the I mean the Inquisition in the 18th century in New Spain uh was I don't think many Americans know this, but like the Spanish Inquisition where it was in the Americas for way longer than it raged in Europe. Um it was primarily aimed at force converting um in uh uh indigenous groups and also stamping out uh indigenous indigenous syncretic practices that they thought went too far.

C. Derick Varn 17:38

Um yeah, I mean that isn't that where the caste does come from essentially, this racial caste system that the Spanish developed was it was a way to expel uh Jews and Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula and uh to you know um uh in in the uh Latin American context in Spain, but in Latin America as well, you know, there were all these you had all these legal means of trying to buy your way legally argue or buy your way out of your lower caste up into a higher one.

Joe Payne 18:13

And yeah, you could literally get a whit of whiteness, basically.

C. Derick Varn 18:16

I mean limpiece de sangre, you could clean your blood, is how they talked about it. Right. It's it's um so you know, it is very complicated, it's very dark. Um, but absolutely the the Spanish, their their imperial holdings were so widespread and so vast. You know, you think about all of the Caribbean. That's my cat again. You think of all the Caribbean and the Central and South America, you know. Um Robert Jackson is a fantastic uh scholar on the missions, and he he has one book that um I'm blanking on the name because well, the name's like super long, but it is a comparative of just Spanish missions, and he's like down at the tip of South America, um, you know, uh up through Peru into central um you know, Central Uh, you know, America, Mexico, and then up into Alta California.

Castas, Military Power, And Control

C. Derick Varn 19:17

He's comparing, doing comparative research on missions uh in you know, like across uh continents, you know, and so they were so vast and the the the Spanish had no way of maintaining population. Um they're their military conquerors, their conquistadors, they they just could not bring enough women around um with them. They just were not bringing enough women around. So it was a it was a general practice to you know not just take um you know that that's what the cast the casta system tries to figure out is how to um delineate, you know, the there are all these paintings you can look at, the casta paintings where they have every combination, you know. Okay, if it's uh if it's a um you know a gente de razon and well white guy and an India, uh white male and an uh an indigenous woman, that is a mestizo. If it's a boy, it's a mestizo, if it's a girl. If you have a mestizo and a, you know, a uh black uh esclavo uh woman, a mestizo man, and uh that is now called a lobo, or a you know, they had all these terms and and you know, some of them we would recognize to hear them Crayolo, as you mentioned, and others as well.

Joe Payne 20:40

Yeah, Crayolo and Piniciala is which Pinunciales is the only one I don't think you could buy because you had to be born um Yeah. In Portugal or Spain. But weirdly, I mean, this is what messes with the American racist mindset because we we have a simple uh well, actually, our racism is not simple at all, but it is binary. Whereas um you could be a peninsula, uh Peninsulares Moro, you know, uh a black a black Spaniard, and you are above a whole lot of other people. Um yeah, because at least you were from Spain, right? You you yeah, you were from Spain. Um, and the leaders of the of a lot of the independencia were um Ro Criolo, but they often were taking cues from indigenous people. So it's it it it's it's just important to know. I mean, there were mestiz uh obviously there are mestizos involved because the the vast you know the vast swaps of the population uh in in Latin America are mestizo, partly um for reasons that I do not entirely understand, smallpox did not kill as much of the population in Central America as it did in the north. Um, it still killed, I mean it's still genocidal level deaths, but it was not. I think um uh the genetic evidence is like on the east coast of the United States that like before the English even got there, a third of the indigenous were dead, and they've never even met a European, but they died of European diseases.

C. Derick Varn 22:20

Well, yeah, but yeah, and that's also the case in a lot of Central and South America, you know, like uh most of the Incan Empire was had already fallen before um the Spanish governor made it to them. Um and it's you know, it is one of those things where because Central and South America they've been at it so long, like since the 1500s, that it takes around a century or more. Um Jackson goes into uh this as well in his comparative studies, where you know you have an eventual plateauing of the uh mortality where among indigenous people, where you know, and we talked about this last time, like it's the estimates these days are in the 80s to 90 percent um mortality just from the diseases. Um in the case of California, California is just a later colonization of the Spanish. And so the first um expedition through California's Cabrillo in the 1500s, and he's just he's it's a boat expedition, he hops around the coast, um, he went out on the Channel Islands and slipped and broke his arm. And um, and then by the time uh uh you know he doesn't make it out of California alive, you know, um going gangrenous, but um but then the Spanish don't return really in earnest to California for two centuries. It's not until the 1700s that the Porto de la Expedition comes through on foot. And um, you know, I I I look at both of those. Um, I cite both of those in my um thesis about this, but just to kind of flesh out just a little bit what you're talking about, the castas and the different kind types of people and how they factored into this. So you mentioned peninsulares, right? For you, in order to be a Franciscan padre in charge of a mission, you had to be a peninsulare, you had to be born in Spain. Not only that, you had to come to the New World and you had to go through one of the Franciscan colleges, the Colegios de Propaganda de Fide, the colleges for propagating the faith, right? And you you had to go in as an ovitiate and come out a full-fledged um fray, a a full full-fledged Franciscan. And um, it's interesting because there's a really good book by David Rex Galindo. Um uh I think he's from Spain. He taught in Chile, I believe he's in Texas now. Um I actually got to meet him at a conference. And uh he wrote a book that's just about the Franciscans and their colleges, to sin no more. That's what it's called. And you realize a lot of the way that the Franciscans treat the indigenous people, this is how they treat each other, like as they're when they're novitiates, the constant surveillance, they're always watching you. Um, even the building of mission buildings, the quadrangle, is built in such a way. I mean, and this ties into Foucault. Um, but you know, they're they're built in such a way that you can see there are sight lines throughout the the complex, um, and they can keep an eye on you. But not only would the Franciscans be peninsulares, but so would somebody like Jose de la Guerra, the guy I mentioned who was the commandant of the um the Presidio. I mean, his name is Guerra because he comes from war, because he comes from a long line of

Chumash Society, Technology, And Statehood

C. Derick Varn 25:47

warriors. He's part of a uh military class and caste from uh and family from Spain. And so he is very much, you know, the light-skinned, probably green-eyed uh um you know, Spaniard who's in charge of the of the uh Presidio, the military garrison in the Santa Barbara Channel, and of that whole like district or quadrant or what have you of the Alta California um, you know, uh uh they they had they had a word for it, I'm blanking. Um uh but so then uh his military and under him, you would have soldiers and they they would be um you know they could be peninsularis, but uh or not so much the soldiers, but maybe the uh the officers. Um but then you start to have more mixed race mestizos, um, and can continually, and again, as as you know Mexican settler colonialism as a reflection of Spanish settler colonialism, you have soldiers who are who are enlisting in the military in Mexico, they're buying whiteness essentially. When you when you join the military, you come up in rungs of the casta system. So essentially the the military force would be like a rainbow coalition of um people, uh you know, men from all these different castes. And uh there's a section of my thesis where I talk about there's some back and forth letters that I I read um in the archive at Mission Santa Barbara. Mission Santa Barbara's where they maintained the Franciscans still maintain this archive of these documents there. And De la Guerra is the command is arguing with a soldier named Pardo. His last name is Pardo. And he's he's basically blaming him for why haven't you have things in control? Why why are the horses all running around? How many bullets do you have? You know, he's asking all these questions, and Pardo is replying kind of uh annoyedly, like, I know I know horses, I know what I'm doing, but the the Indians have all the horses, okay? The the Chumash, or you know, the Chumash people had, you know, again, they they were the laborers, so who knew how to rope the horses and herd them away from the missions better? That was a big part of their um revolution. It was not just militantly resisting, but removing their labor and removing the productive capacity that they could from the missions. Um and uh Pardo, uh, this this soldier, Pardo was a surname that was given specifically to uh you know uh people in the casta system who were black, who had dark um skin and and and had ancestry uh from you know enslaved Africans that are brought over to Latin America as well. So um you have these dynamics where everybody in charge is some kind of peninsulare, gente de raison, you know, we're the people with reason. We you know, we are the European, the white Europeans. You have a multiracial coalition of um military who have bought into this system, and um, you know, Junipero Serra, he himself documented these soldiers literally lassoing indigenous women in the field and assaulting them. Um, but then they could they would also take uh you know uh Indihina as as wives, or perhaps you know, there's a um Hispanicized uh you know girl uh uh born at the mission and you know is the product of assault. And so she's lighter skinned. She's a mestiza now, she's lighter skinned than the um than her mother, you know, who was assaulted by a soldier, and so therefore she would the these children would become the targets of you know the um of for marriage, you know, and and um they they were favored by the Franciscans. It gets really um, you know, it's like what you'd expect of a settler colonial supremacist society, um, the the lighter skinned Hispanicized uh you know bonds people of the mission born into the system, not not uh in you know, fully indigenous people baptized into the missions from the countryside, from from their villages, but the people born into the system, the Franciscans tend to bring them in closer, uh uh make them sacristans or pages, come in and join the choir, you know, that uh you're gonna get an inside job, you know, and and they tend to learn Spanish easier and and quicker because they have them from birth. And um then, you know, they become, you know, they they might be taken away and married off very young to these soldiers who are living at the presidio. And in this case of this area, the Presidio Santa Barbara becomes like the hub for the uh um a um a small town, a pueblo. That's what they call it as a pueblo. So, you know, um that kind of fleshes out some of that what you're talking about, how the cast has fallen to, and then this conflict, it it's it's all there. You have to learn about all this stuff. You know, I'm I'm feel much more qualified to speak on this whole thing as than I did just a year ago when last time we spoke, having finally got my thesis done. I mean, it's like it's crazy, it's the biggest thing I've ever done. Um, but um, you know, it really you'll learn a lot about the the mission system, Latin American history, um, and you know, they what the Franciscans were all about and and what and and this uneasy alliance between the missionaries and the military.

Joe Payne 31:46

I think the Chumash wars and the Chumash War uh in the context of the wars of national liberation are interesting because um you know in in certain uh in certain corners of radical Marxism, there's an idea, particularly around the followers of Jasakai, that indigenous peoples were already kind of a singular nation that already pre-existed in the Americas.

C. Derick Varn 32:19

Yeah.

Joe Payne 32:20

Um now I reject the singular yeah, I was like, I reject the singular nation idea. Um but uh and I also don't know that we can talk about all the various forms of indigenous polities as states, although I do think you can make a good argument that a lot of them Mesoamerican and some of the coastal indigenous uh societies had states proper. Yeah.

C. Derick Varn 32:49

Um but those are interesting debates. It's interesting to consider.

Joe Payne 32:55

Right. I mean, it is actually an interesting debate because like um when you look at the level of complication of uh so in the European context, actually I'm gonna make it easier for the for my listeners who don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. In the European context, you move from governance of peoples to territorialization and states when you start thinking instead of the king of the Franks, you move to the king of France, and so um uh you have like the Latin peoples and the Greek peoples, but then you have polises and then you have the Roman Empire, but then later, you know, and you're like, well, where are nation states and that? They kind of aren't there. You have empires and you have people and you have people groupings

Horses, Labor Strikes, And Uprising Strategy

Joe Payne 33:47

that have internal governances tied to the people grouping, but not necessarily to a specific settled territory. Um there are definitely settled territories in the Americas. I don't think anyone would dispute that, but for some reason we don't tend to talk about, and for some reason, probably racism. Uh we don't tend to talk about the settled uh areas in the Americas Estates, with the exception of the Mexica, the Aztec, the Maya, and and the excuse me, uh and the Maya and the Inca. Um and then maybe like the Taylor Tijuacanos and the Omex kind of. Yeah. And and I don't think that's fair. Actually, there's a lot more evidence for states in in the Americas.

C. Derick Varn 34:37

So it's like a number one racism, yes, of course. But B number two, like what do people have to see? Like buildings, aqueducts, you know what I mean? Like it ain't a state until you have uh brick and mortar, you know, and the the Chumash at contact, the Spanish recognized them as formidable, as very advanced. Um, they had tons of technology, there they they had boats, they had you know these healthy uh-sized canoes, they line them with asphalt that bubbles out of the channel. If you've ever been to the Santa Barbara area, you know, you know there are there are oil derricks in this beautiful bougie place. There are oil derricks um in the channel. Um, but there's also an area along the coast, uh, you know, just their Santa Barbara Montecito where like Oprah and the Royals and Bob Dylan and all them live. Uh, but there's also right before their carpenteria, and it's called carpenteria because as the Portoola expedition came along, they saw Chumash building canoes. And so, oh, there's carpenters here. And um it's interesting because uh I include in the uh the last chapter of my thesis. Um uh uh I can't remember the the name of it, but it's basically as the they're uh in in in Mexico, they're forming policy of how to deal with Alta California moving forward. Um, and they're very much like the they don't it's just within uh you know some years of this revolution that's happened by the Trumash, and they're kind of talking around it, and they're they're explaining how they might approach it and how they might do it. Um, and they said, and we should be very careful with how we approach these people who show a level of organization and you know they uh uh you know facility and know-how um and and population density. They're basically saying, you know, in so many words, approaching them as if we would a state, much like the people uh we see in the Santa Barbara area. Like they recognized that the Chumage had technology, a stratified society. Um that was a literal catfight in my hallway. Um they they uh had um they had currency, they had exchange. You know, the the Chumaj, if you want to call it a nation, I think, which I think is um I think is appropriate. They had politics across hundreds and hundreds of miles, not just the coastal areas, but inland over the mouth, over the transverse range into the San Inez Valley, what we consider the Los Padres uh National Forest these days. Um, and you know, hundreds of miles inlands at village sites, you will find um uh mussel and clamshells and whalebone tools and other things where they are having a content and and again this shell beaded shell currency. So they had exchange. Um, the ethnography that's been done on the Chumash shows that you have regional dialects of Chumashin language. You know, it's not just the um the San Inez is the only federally recognized group of Chumash people, and they have a nation in here uh in San Diego Valley, not far from the old mission, and they they just have their one um form of the language, which they are resurrecting and reviving from like wax cylinder recordings uh from like an ethnographer of the early 20th century, John P. Harrington. Um, but there are all these other studies that have been done. There was a it an inland uh regional dialect, there was a coastal regional dialect, there was a northern regional dialect, there was a southern like closer to Ventura area um regional dialect. So um, you know, but but they and and even then it's interesting because when you get deeper into it, you know, what during the rebellion, the uh more than a thousand chumas fleed inland to the southern San Joaquin Valley to Buena Vista Lake, and they meet they're uh hiding out there with yokut people, which the Spanish we call the Tulareños, because that's the Tulares. But even then, you know, calling the people from the southern San Joaquin Valley the Yokut, it wouldn't be appropriate because if you approach them at that time and said, You're Yokut, right? They would say, Well, not a what are you talking about? Like our neighbors right over here, and because we're not exactly them, we're kind of our own thing. So, you know, trying to amass a whole one indigenous group, they they even the chumash and the yokut, though they had rivalry, they also had like cultural connections. There's there's signs of of um exchange and marriage between them. So uh, you know, they um it's it's really fascinating. But yeah, it's the the chumash were definitely advan advanced, they were recognized as such by the Spanish, including by like a uh a theoretician back in the old world who was going over all the different accounts of um the indigenous peoples of the Americas, and he placed the Chumash at this like highest tier of these are the civilized ones, you know, these are the the most civilized of the uncivilized people.

Joe Payne 40:02

Yeah, you get the Chumash and uh the Ojibwe usually get mentioned. Um I the reason why I bring this up is um I I do think

Privateers, Priests, And Training Militias

Joe Payne 40:17

we have to be careful when we distinguish between nation and state. Like I but I would argue that you have most of the elements of a state and a lot of the West Coast settled indigenous peoples. And you definitely have um for the larger for the larger tribal groupings, like settled languages, um et cetera, et cetera, to consider them nations. Um

C. Derick Varn 40:48

You know the what do you put what do you point to as the hallmarks of that? Just so people understand.

Joe Payne 40:55

A coherent language group. Usually with multiple dialects that are comprehensible to each other but are not quite the same. So it's not just a language, it's a language group that like has enough sway to have various dialects. Um there is a check. There's a recognizable political and economic system. Um although to be fair, I mean I can I I can argue that like hunter-gatherers have recognizable political and economic systems, but whatever. We'll just agree.

C. Derick Varn 41:32

But the chumas had reached a level of sedentism, not just through you know, they lived out of the ocean quite a lot, but through the um oak corn, you know, their main caloric intake was okay corn so they had developed ways of treating it, much like the Aztecs or Central Americans were grinding up corn. The chumas were grinding up oak acorns and treating it and making basically tortillas out of it. So they they had this this uh and their villages were maintained and they stayed put uh for yeah.

Joe Payne 42:07

I I think by almost any definition, you would you would say they were definitely a nation, they were probably transitioning to something like statehood. But I say this with very very carefully because those the reason why I point that out is like that's the way 19th century people thought. Um unfortunately that is still prevalent in a lot of leftism. Um the reason I was gonna ask you though, um is with the chumash, I could see there being a debate about their national liberation being in uh being. I could definitely see people trying to claim that it was inspired by European national liberations and the independencia, and maybe not the other way around. And I wanted to know your opinion on that.

C. Derick Varn 42:58

Uh well, I get, I mean, you could say you could say that. Um there are they showed a lot of signs of syncretic uh engagement with European ideas, um, but that's also what was being done to them. Um they had they had no choice in that. Um and we see the this repeat of across Latin American history and comparative mission history, where once indigenous people figure out horses, you know, once they have enough time with horses and they they have facility with them, they're able to earn back a good significant amount of their independence. Um and you know, it because resistance was always there, it was always a part of uh um as as long as they the settler colonial Spanish Empire was doing its deed, it was dealing with resistance. And that's why you know indigenous people were not allowed to ride horses in Alta, California, they were not allowed to set fires. Um, so you know, their their part of their indigenous um ecological management was controlled fires, wildfires that they would use to favor their the foodstuffs they wanted. The the valley I live in, the Chumash barely lived in the valley proper where all the Europeans set up shop. They lived more on the hills around the valley because this was a big floodplain and they would burn it out every year um to help with their food, with their foodstuffs. Um, but those you know, those indigenous modes of um uh you know ecological management technology, those become banned by the colonizers. Uh, you know, the true mass, you know, there's stories of them burying their plank canoes. Um, and probably like one or two were allowed to exist in the mission period because every now and again the Franciscans would say, ah, well, we need something. You know, can can you uh fetter down the coast? It's faster when you, you know, when uh Jaime and and Camille go down there. Could you guys do it for us instead of you know um get going on horseback or whatever? Um you know, so the but but the thing is that the Chumash had I mean that they had basic like they were advanced, they had a a you know, these towns, you could call that like in in an indigenous context, like you know, or like I mentioned before, what do we have to see? Buildings, you know, brick and mortar. But like some of the chumash Thule um yurts, you know, they they they use wood for the framing, and then they they make these domed um homes, you know, cover them with reeds and and to Thule um reed. They some of them like that. The Spanish describe are like two stories, you know. They have a they have a platform inside of them, and there might be 30, 40 people living in this one domed structure, and this is one of several, and you know, like the Santa Barbara area is so so plentiful and bountiful. You had multiple of these villages running along the coast where you might have up to a thousand

Disease, Ecology, And Imperial Tools

C. Derick Varn 46:17

people living in one and its general outskirts, you know, and so that's hardly like a you know, that's past Dunbar's number. They lived out on um the uh the Channel Islands, Santa Cruz Island is the largest one. And the archaeology shows that like they once their their towns got past Dunbar's number or around there, they would they had a method of forming a new town nearby that you know they'd pull enough people from each each of the other towns or areas and go start up a new uh uh new town here. So they had like civic development, you know what I mean. I I work for a municipality, so it's kind of funny to think of like the Chubash having a planning and development department or or whatever. But you know, again, they had like a priest class, they had um different, you know, craft labor, craftsmanship, craft labor. Um, you know, they and they had a high rate of sedentism, and it it was only about 4,000 years ago. Like they've been there's evidence of them out there on the islands from 16,000 years ago. Um, there was a pygmy mammoth, or sorry, a a small mammoth that was out there. That's an outdated term, but you know, a a shrunken mammoth that was a woolly mammoth that was, you know, had the island effect out on the island that goes extinct right around this time. So I wonder who has that. But um they've been out there a long time, but then around 4,000 years ago, and again, the uh the genetics, the um the genetics showed the chumash were part of like the original peopling of America, so they are from that. Um you know, they they come from the Oak Valley people, but they are of the original, you know, uh peopling of of the continent. And uh they around 4,000 years ago, their population numbers increase and they get a much higher density, and it's because of they're not just doing subsistence anymore. They are um they have perfected their technology for oak acorn um treatments. They have this whole suite of tools and technologies that they use to um fish and live out of the bounty of the channel. Um, and with with their canoes, they are just expert at navigating the channel. I mean, there's there's um I visited uh a few more of the missions now in other museums, and there's evidence of Chumash engagement in all the way as far down as San Diego. You know, there's like um a little carved whale statue uh that um is from stone that comes from the Channel Islands. So, you know, they they you know they they and and you know I don't want to speak for anybody. I I have um interviewed uh Chumash people on my channel on political pain. Check out an interview I did with Marian Para, who's a Chumash elder, descended from people's all three of these missions and more, you know, the kind of whole Chumash area missions. And, you know, um, you know, she talks about how the Chumash identity has been colonized in the modern context, and and that's a whole other ball of wax. Um you know, but just this idea that um, you know, the the the uh the I don't know, the rose-colored glasses, especially, you know, left leftists are not immune uh to it, you know, where they were peaceful and and you know, like like they didn't act like people, you know what I mean? Like they weren't human beings, didn't uh uh do the things that human beings do. Um but you know, they they had they had skirmish and warfare with their neighbors, they also had allyship and uh exchange with their neighbors, but you know, those all those uh arrowheads, they're not just for deer, you know. So they showed all kinds of um political um, you know, they they showed political conflict, they showed political uh collaboration, um, you know, exchanging, you know, political marriages and and things like that were all part of their history before the Europeans ever showed up. Um they immediately when Cabrillo shows up, they they were able to communicate to Cabrillo, this is in the 1500s, um, or perhaps I'm misremembering, it could be in the 1700s with Portola's expedition, but they were able to communicate to the people, uh, the Spaniards, like, oh, it's you guys. You're the weird guys with the hair on your face. We've heard about you guys. You guys are out there, like out there and uh, you know, way out there, and they're talking about like Colorado, like up the Colorado River. Um, you know, that they're aware of things going on, and they're aware of Spaniards and and Spanish uh uh um you know uh explorations into the Americas. They're aware of things far off. So they they you know had a showed a lot of facility, showed a lot of understanding and know-how, and um, they were not ignorant, they were not, you know, the we know all the terrible things that this that the Spanish uh said about them and and put on them, but they're you know that that surprised even the explorers. Like, oh, they seem to be aware of what's going on along the Colorado River. They um, you know, they have these huge houses, they're sharing more food with us than we can even keep, you know. Uh they're exchanging things, they they they are trading with us. They are you know, they they um cabrill is like anchored in the channel and they keep approaching in their canoes with stuff to trade, and they're interested in what they what the Spanish have. Um, so before you know that that's that's what's interesting to me is once this war pops off, he can't tell me they weren't influenced by European warfare. And uh, and a really interesting thing is um in the preceding years of the revolution 1824, you have this ransacking of Alta California by Hippolyte Bouchard, uh, who was like a Portuguese um privateer. They call him a pirate, you know. And uh the you know, this was during a conflict, um, you know, uh between Mexico and and

Museums, Reconstructions, And Erasure

C. Derick Varn 52:47

um, you know, this is in the just the tumult of the radical period of Alta California. And Bouchard, he attacks the Presidio in Monterey, he attacks uh the the one of the missions up there and and more. He comes to the Santa Barbara area, and there was a rancho um near like modern-day Point Conception, um, and uh or the Ortega Rancho, and he he attacked that. And um in prepared in preparing for this, they they had received word in Santa Barbara area that this was happening, that this guy was going to come back around because they'd go up and down the coast. Um, a couple of the Padres got a wild hare and said, Let's organize our Indians, let's organize the the Chumash. And so you have Frey Ripol, who's a like just a really important character in the in the revolution. You have Frey Martinez at San Luis Obispo, Ripol was at Santa Barbara, and I believe the one at La Porísima, they organized their indigenous uh mission wards militarily, they drilled them, they they you know, they gloat uh they gloated about how many lancers we have and how many, you know, this, and they trained them with firearms. Uh, you know, imagine that it was under careful supervision. Uh, but nobody, I'm pretty sure the military guys were probably pretty upset to hand over their rifles to the indigenous people uh to have them, you know, drill. So in my in my thesis, I say essentially the Franciscans gave uh these Chumash men a taste of forming a junta, right? And in the Latin American context, if you're not afforded any rights, that is how you seize them for yourself as you form a junta and and you take up arms. And you know, so it's an amalgamation of all those things, I I believe. Um uh I don't know if you oh I would agree.

Joe Payne 54:56

I I listening to all this, I think about this in in a lot of different ways. One, of course, the indigenous people resisted before they had contact with European ideas, absolutely. Uh two, I think of this as more of a feedback loop when these people when different peoples encounter each other, that even if they're even if they view each other essentially oppositionally, they're changing each other by the interaction. Yeah, uh, and I know that kind of makes both sides uncomfortable because it's like, oh well, you know, the the racist white people uh you have don't want to deal with that. And I'm not saying also, I'm not saying all white people are inherently racist in this way. I'm just saying like no one wants to deal with like your the fact that you probably didn't come up with all the ideas, it's not from your culture. Um but the other thing is I do think sometimes the indigenous are a little wary because uh you don't want to because there's been so many attempts to use that feedback loop to just rip away their own identity innovation empire history before uh contact with the Europeans. And um I don't think it it belittles anything. I always think of uh, and I mentioned this on my show all the time, but I remember reading the decolonial debates in Africa, not the ones in the Americas, not the ones here, but like going back and reading African art uh authors in the context of Nigeria, trying to figure out how should they relate to European ideas, how should they relate to nationalism, how should they relate to English as a language, and um Chenua Chibe uh would always say you just have to own it that you can't turn Times Arrow back, you can't actually go uh back and completely undo the encounter with the Europeans. Instead, you that the both sides have been changed by the interaction, and the decolonial thing is to just wrest that power back, rest control your future, but acknowledge that the interaction has changed the past. Um if anyone's ever read Things Fall Apart, that's actually illustrated in literary form in that book, as well as the attempt for the European to remove all the African uh context in this exchange. Uh Afume Taiwo, not the one who wrote Elite Capture. There's another one. Um uh that's a fume O Taiwo who wrote a wrote Elite Capture. Um uh wrote a lot about this too, about not making decolon uh decolonality. Uh, that's a word that's hard to say. Um anti-modernity because of the association of modernity with Europeans. And um I think in the um context of the Americas, I can't speak for indigenous peoples, I'm obviously not one. Um uh but there is a real sense in which there is an interaction from this, of which there is an indigenous modernity that you can see emerging that acknowledges that that both sides were changed by the interaction. Um and but that it is still fundamentally their you know their future being seized in something like the the Tumash War.

C. Derick Varn 58:24

Um yeah, and I I try to like flesh out a little bit of what you're talking about when in my thesis, just talking about how we interpret um these places and these peoples. And you know, like if you go visit the mission sites, um they have the chumash presented, or if you visit um the Santa Barbara

Ongoing Indigenous Sovereignty And Policy

C. Derick Varn 58:47

Natural History Museum is a really, really fantastic place to visit. Um, if you go look at look at what they have there and how it explains the chumash, the chumash are very much frozen in time in their um contact state. You know, um you you see, you know, uh uh people they hardly w wore any clothes, they wore like grass skirts for the most part, um, and cloths. And you know, the the the the climate out here is so nice, you know. Like, I mean, it was in the 60s today, and I'm like, oh boy, it's sweater vest weather. I hope I'm not overdressed for your podcast. Like, I just got out of work, so I'm still wearing my work clothes.

Joe Payne 59:29

Um, um, I dig just not the thing as overdressed for a podcast, friend. All right, go ahead.

C. Derick Varn 59:34

But so uh, you know, you the the two marks are very much presented as frozen in time at contact, and then everything else is showing us this is the Spanish, this is what a soldier would wear. This is a saddle, you know, here is so and so's saddle, you know. Um and here are the Franciscans, here's a bunch of their stuff, here's what they thought, here's a big, you know, uh book of psalms or whatever. And these people are presented in this way. Um the Chumash, fascinating like story is of how they finally, the Chumash Nation, was able to annex a small piece of land. They already had a tiny reservation, and then they annexed a small piece of land across the highway from them. They actually bought it. I mentioned this last time from Fess Parker, the guy, the uh movie star who played Davy Crockett for uh Walt Disney back in the day.

Joe Payne 1:00:29

Oh, I remember that movie. That's Taylor.

C. Derick Varn 1:00:31

Yeah, Davy Crockett. Yeah, he's uh yeah, yeah.

Joe Payne 1:00:36

I was propagandized by that movie in the 1980s in school.

C. Derick Varn 1:00:40

So was I, man. So even in the 90s, that that was still around and sing along songs and um. You know, uh part of the disnification of settler colonialism uh that has gone on in a lot of our brains. Um, but he, you know, Fest Parker bought a bunch of land in Santa's Valley that's long been Santa Barbara and Santa's Valley have long been a favorite haunt of the Hollywood elite. Um they come down and they buy land and they start wineries. They and there's a Fest Parker winery and all this stuff. But he had sold this piece of land right across the reservation from them right before he died. Umonial ancestors in the valley off because um, you know, they they were just convinced it was going to be another casino, and and they they have have nothing but dis it's disgusting the way that they talk about the chumash. Um, but all the chumash have built on this land, of course, is housing for themselves and also just opened this year a cultural center and museum. And it it's beautiful. I haven't visited yet, but I've I've seen quite a bit of it online. And it's beautiful, and it really decelebrates Chumash history, and it's entirely pre-contact, but it's not like it's not like they don't have um you know screens up here and there on the walls, or it's not like they don't have uh, you know, modern architecture, but they have a beautiful modern building, it's inspired by their architecture, and then they have a whole garden area that just showcases the natural history and some of their ecological um engagement that they would do. So it's because so much of the stuff around here presents them um in a certain way frozen in time, and then you know, but but it's very much done in this settler colonial uh hegemon hegemonic framework of at the missions or at these museums. There their museum is in this incredible, this Chumash museum that now exists in San Diego Valley. It's an incredible, like, talk about that synthesis and that that uh syncretic combination of modern and the timeless. I mean, they again the arrival of the Spanish 500 years ago, but the true settling of this area not even 300 years ago, it's a blip in time compared to the vast majority of time the Chumash lived here um in the in the way that they did. Um and it it really is um incredible. I mean, Mission La La Purissima, the Concepcion, for instance, for example, in contrast to this, is near Lompoque. Don't call it Lompoc, people. You only call it that if you stay at the federal penitentiary there. Um and uh it's Lompoc. And La Purissima is a state historic park that is not controlled by the diocese or the Franciscans like San Inez and Santa Barbara, and it was a pile of rubble more uh just a hundred years ago, but along came the Works Project Administration uh during FDR times, and they rebuilt the thing. So um, oh, if you went and saw that very politically uh problematic uh Christopher Nolan, Leo DiCaprio movie, One Battle After Another, there's a whole sequence in the third act that's shot at La Parisima State Historic Park. It's a very beautiful place to visit, but it is a modern reconstruction of the California mission. It was it was a pile of rubble. Uh again, this was a decrepit institution, and Americans rebuilt it. They got the original mission uh plan, floor plans, but the civilian conservation corps came in and built the main chapel, probably way nicer than the Spaniards. Uh uh well the the the Chumash built it themselves, you know, they were the ones who did all the work, but under the direction of the you know Spanish Franciscans, um, they rebuilt, and and this thing is literally whitewashed and to look a certain way and feel a certain way and present the missions in a certain way. So that itself is a facade, it's a it's a um, you know, a monument, not not the real thing. Um, and is there a mention that this that this place was a battle site? Narrative hardly a mention at all. You know, it might be somewhere on a timeline in the in the visitor center. Um, but they they are not really centering the Chumash um at the at these sites, at the mission sites.

Joe Payne 1:05:33

Oh, I mean, one wouldn't expect them to. Um I think I I think this brings me to like an important theme that we we should be picking up is that

Identity, Genealogy, And Settler Stories

Joe Payne 1:05:47

indigenous history in the Americas is not over. Like like in Latin America, in Anglo America, it's not it's not over. And um these wars of national liberation, uh some of them went better than others. Uh um lightly. Uh yeah. Um and the really nasty ones were but they were actually after the Tumash War, which is, you know. It took me a long time to figure out. Uh and I bring this up on my show a lot, but it this is like been a historical paradox. If you read stuff after the US Civil War on Indigenous peoples, you could it seemed like you could be good on Indigenous peoples or good on anti-Jim Crow and on black people, but you couldn't be good on both. Um and it took me a long time to really parse what the reasons for that were. Some of that has to do with the associations of the Cherokee uh having their treaties recognized by the Confederacy, um, although only kind of because the trailers here still happened. Um uh some of that has to do with um uh with uh the fact that it was actually kind of true that the Confederacy uh uh the former Confederate states actually uh while they had a lot of um freebooters and people who were interested in trying to revive and expand slavery in Latin America, there's also a major core of politicians who were so racist that they didn't want uh any more imperialism because that would mean they'd have to deal with people of color again. Um uh if you actually look at the Mexican-American War, some of the people who took good stances on the Mexican-American War had very bad reasons for doing so. Um, but uh, I think the main thing that I figured out was that the Union Army uh was used almost immediately after the end of the Civil War and the Indian Wars as a way to basically maintain the army and get the troops doing something and deal with surplus population. I really do believe that. Um in particular. And uh I don't think people, I mean, I know people know, but I remember when I took American history. Now I'm from Georgia, not California. American history in Georgia was like two-thirds about the Civil War. Um uh, but I would I will say they did not teach us that we were the good guys. I will say that. Like it was, but you know I literally had to learn every battle by both the southern and northern names.

C. Derick Varn 1:09:26

Oh, interesting, yeah. Like romanticized, you know, perhaps fetishized, most definitely.

Joe Payne 1:09:39

Yeah, I was about to say, like, like I wasn't taught that it was good to call it the war between the states or the war of northern aggression, although I did see that on plaques. Um but I was taught that like yeah, the South fought for fought for states' rights, but the states' rights had to fault for with slavery. Um I uh I bring this up though because when you look at the all that, we spent all that issue on the Civil War. I think what I learned about the the Indian Wars was little bighorn and uh Chief Joseph, I will fight no more forever speech, which I was made to memorize. Yeah, and that was pretty much it.

C. Derick Varn 1:10:31

Yeah, like yeah, being just a little later than you, you know, like you probably have 10 years on California, yeah. Also woke, totally woke. Like we had our we did have a look at indigenous history, um, but again, like it was like fourth or fifth, third or fourth grade. Um, fourth grade is when you learn about California history and then includes the mission period. Um, and specifically in our area, and a lot of people in California also read there's a book called The Island of the Blue Dolphins, and this was a novel from the 1970s.

Joe Payne 1:11:10

It's kind of part of the, you know, I read that in middle school, I think.

C. Derick Varn 1:11:14

Hey, well, cool.

Joe Payne 1:11:15

Then it made it to the other side of the uh the um, you know, the the the the we read that in a book about the gullah, which are the African slaves that like formed an independent island off as off of the coast of Georgia. Oh wow. Okay. Um and they have their own version of English. It's kind of his kind of his own language. Good go ahead. That's interesting.

C. Derick Varn 1:11:35

Well, the the island of the blue dolphins is about Juana Maria, who was the last, she was the lone woman of San Nicolas Islands, St. Nicholas Island in the Channel Islands. And um, you know, she was not removed from the Channel Islands along with her Tumage brethren. She just basically hid out there. They made like a a TV uh movie or miniseries about it um that we would all watch. We read the book, and her grave is at Mission Santa Barbara. She was not brought to the mainland until after the mission period technically ended. Um, you know, and this is in the Mexican period in between the secularization in 1834 and US state in 1850. And she was dead within a calendar year from disease, of course, as soon as she was hit the mainland. But I remember um, you know, that was like kind of an experience for me as a young kid around here, field tripping to this mission. And then, oh yeah, she's right over there, and her grave is because it came so late. Uh, you know, that there are all kinds of chumash people uh buried on the grounds there who are not marked, or you know, there's there's they're mass graves for them. Um,

Gender, Categories, And Historical Caution

C. Derick Varn 1:12:47

but because she came so late and she was already a known entity at her time, that's the lone woman of the the island. Um her her grave is somewhat marked and because of this book too. Um, but so you know, a lot of people learn about the Chumash and they learn about missionization through that way. But you're right about the history not being uh being ongoing. Um speaking connecting with Chumash people in the way that I have through the scholarship, I'm interested in doing more of that because I honestly would love to expand my thesis into a book. Um, because you know, I was trained as a journalist, still consider myself uh one. I don't know if you get to call yourself a historian until you get uh the PhD or whatever. And I think that's when they finally give you the elbow patches as well. But um, you know, uh I was trained as a journalist to look for the story. You know, where's the story? And there are a lot, there's a lot of really good mission history and examinations of missions and missionization and California missions, and you know, you you uh you can make a study of any one mission, but this to me is uh quite the story because it could help teach people about the missions, what they were like, why you know how were they actually well? Actually, indigenous people were uh bonded serfs to the mission. You know, we talked about the last time about whether were they slaves? Uh yeah, pretty much technically no, kind of yeah, kind of. Um it was very much a feudal institution, but they were doing all the labor, they were managing, you know, um rows and rows of agriculture, you know, they they dug aqueducts through the land to irrigate that um at that you know row crops. Um they weren't just growing corn and wheat, they were growing wine. So wine comes to Santa uh California wine country first from the Franciscans. They also were um cultivating hemp. And so the cannabis um cultivation that is now uh taking over uh our areas uh since recreational legalization that was started at this time too. But very much more importantly, cattle, goats, um, sheep, and pigs uh and you know, European farm animals, farm animals were brought out here. Um, you know, a a uh a leather cow skin, uh or uh buckskin or or a cow skin was called a California banknote. Um and you know that was a very important part of the material economy. It was the Trumash people um at these missions that I write about, or in large, you know, more broadly across California, they were the ones doing all the labor. They were roping the cattle, they were um, you know, breaking the horses, they were slaughtering the cattle, they were tanning their hides, they were rendering the fat for tallow. You know, a bunch of these documents I look at are Franciscans arguing about you know, you're not sharing enough beef tallow with us. We need more beef tallow. You know, the Presidios writing to Porissima saying, we need more shoes. Everybody, all our soldiers have holes in their shoes. Get to making the shoes, you know, and um, you know, that there are you know, they were using looms to weave cloth from the goats. Um, and at Santa Barbara, you have a port of exchange where they you know they were um selling uh these goods to you know uh Spanish, Russians, um, you know, Americans. I mean, and and even at this time, Americans start showing up and touring the missions and trading and and uh giving us some of the accounts as well. Um, you know, so and talking to too much people today, they you know, they they recognize all this stuff, they know their history, um, but you know, not it's it's it's interesting because like I mentioned, they've been they've had their own experiences with call uh their identity being colonized. There's a really interesting um I cited in my thesis. I'm trying to remember the name of the guy who wrote it or the title, but it's neo-indigenity, you know, the neo-indigenous, basically people who had some kind of mestizo background, um, just claiming Chumash. And so there's a bunch of uh, you know, I mentioned Island of the Blue Dolphins, but there's also like some other stuff where um, you know, people who claimed Chumash in the 70s or 80s don't have any provable Chumash lineage, um, you know, put out books with supposed Chumash mythology, not linked to any Chumash mythology you could find from any oral histories or any accounts. Um, but you know, largely white academics who brought these people around kind of forced it upon the Chumash in in the area that, oh no, these people are legit. You gotta you gotta listen to that. And they're like, we don't recognize them. They stay, and they still deal with this, you know what I mean? So it's um, you know, they're they're uh the chumash people are very protective of their history. It's really interesting. There's also another Chumash museum in Thousand Oaks. Um they um I believe it's in Thousand Oaks proper where they had a park and then a museum was built uh for this. Uh it's like a Chumash Tongva or Tatavium. Uh I cannot remember, but it's in like the area that was basically bordered the Chumash and the Tongva people. And um they, you know, the the city or the county or whoever basically granted this part and this mission uh this museum over to this local, you know, non-federally recognized, but local group of Chumash and Indigenous people. So they maintain it, they curate it. Um the Chumash

Why This Story Matters Today

C. Derick Varn 1:18:47

Nation here in San Diego, the San Diego Valley Band of Chumash Indians, they have their museum that they are you know presenting their history as their own history. And you know, and and you know, depending on who you talk to, they have different approaches to it. But uh, Marianne Potter, who I talked to, you know, she talked about hey, I think it's important to look at the DNA, uh, the scientific evidence. Some people want to say that that's all the Western construct, but when you look at the DNA, uh, it proves that we are we've been, we've done been here, man. We've been here a long time. And um, you know, even land acknowledgements are are interesting because you know, they um you don't, you know, that very often you don't hear indigenous people talking about the land belonging to them, they talk about themselves belonging to the land, you know. Right.

Joe Payne 1:19:40

Um well land acknowledgements are I mean, I I uh on one hand, I do think it was vaguely progressive for a brief second for people to start acknowledging the way things are. For the other, on the other hand, um I don't want to generalize about experience, bro. Well, it does nothing for indigenous people, actually. It's mostly about it's mostly for the audience uh performing and receiving them. Um and you know, I don't want to get into the fine points of Lambac. I I've talked about how Lambac has uh very defensible versions and versions that you hear from anarchists on the internet and uh hashtag not all anarchist, but that are that are like blood and soil and really dumb. Um, like everybody should go back to where they're indigenously from. And I'm always like, Well, you're gonna split me in four quarters and put me on two different continents, fucker? Um, but um whatever. Um like I'm half from from the British Isles and I'm half from North Africa slash um Southern European Ottoman Empire. I don't know where I'm going to. Um yeah, yeah.

C. Derick Varn 1:21:05

Well that's uh that's a whole other kind of thing.

Joe Payne 1:21:09

Yeah, right. It takes something though that makes sense, which is recognizing Shri rights, incorporating uh sovereignty. I mean, I don't think most people know. I mean, a lot of people listen to my show know because I I make a big deal out of it, but it takes a fucking act of Congress to get plumbing on a res.

C. Derick Varn 1:21:26

Like and that's the wild thing. Our our the Trumas nation struggled for years. The county of Santa Barbara would not sit down with them, wouldn't talk to them about moving forward with annexation in a way that would provide for they were like willing to give them everything they wanted. Taxation, uh you know, we'll handle all our own this and that. And they would they were completely stonewalled. And it took them going around uh Doug Lamalfa, Republican Central Valley uh representative to get it introduced to Congress. Um, it might have happened during Trump point one, I cannot remember. Um finally went through.

Joe Payne 1:22:08

But you know, it it it's a little so actually have a almost worse track record with indigenous peoples and the stuff than Republicans do, which is surprising. But when you actually look at the stats, it's it's kind of there.

C. Derick Varn 1:22:23

Um, and and that's the thing is like Santa Barbara is a democratic stronghold. Uh but the Biden Harris administration granted a the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary. So they gave a bunch of land back, but where is this land? It's all under the fucking ocean. Um, so which can't live there, but you can fish on it, I guess. Yeah, so so the the it's protected sanctuary. The Chumash have stewardship over it, but it ain't land, you know, it ain't land, and guess where it ends? Right before the channel. It it it starts up near uh Cambria and San Luis Obispo County, goes all the way down, Hugs Point Conception stops right in the channel where all those oil derricks are. Imagine that, imagine that. Thanks, thanks, thanks, Joe. Sleepy Joe, yeah, for real though.

Where To Find Joe’s Work

C. Derick Varn 1:23:17

And you know, and even then when you talk to different chumash people, people who are affiliated with the nation, they're like, Yeah, they didn't talk to us about that. You know, they're talking to the the these other, you know, the these different groups of chumash people. So it's it's it gets controversial even within inter-chumash, like who today is doc documentedly chumash, and what they're saying about what and who, and uh you know, their own internal conflicts, or uh, or they they wouldn't are they would argue they're not internal, right? That the that these are different groups of chumash people with their own. These are different bands and groups, yeah, but but still like yeah, and and I yeah, like the more you peer into it, it's like a it's like a kaleidoscope or a crystal, it's just like fractally keeps going and keeps going and keeps going. I I like I've I found this story like for call uh California history is so complex and complicated, just the history of revolutions and counter-revolutions in California is so complicated. The history of indigenous peoples in California, the history of post-contact, the history of just an area, just the chumash, you know, that's not all one chumash. So I recognize this as a important story. I recognize it when I was a journalist. Why don't more people know about this? I wanted more people to know about it. Um, you know, how can this be, you know, uh, like to just to be frank, as a as a journalist and an educator, you know, it's like uh like how how can we teach people with it? Like, what can this story if most people what they know about the missions is what they learned in fourth grade and then Island of the Blue Dolphins, how can we show people what the missions were actually like, what the Chumash lived through, and then what they were prepared to do to get out from under it, and what they did to get out from under, too. That's that gets really impressive.

Joe Payne 1:25:23

Yeah, you know, I I I've been going down a similar rabbit hole with the Dene and the Dine, which is D-I-N-E and D-E-N-E, which are the two uh two of the groups of people we call the Navajo, which is what this uh which is another indigenous group's name for them translated into Spanish. Um that's always the case, isn't it?

C. Derick Varn 1:25:48

Yeah, um uh but the whole reason we know that the chumas are resurrecting their language because the person who spoke it into those wax cylinders explained what it meant in Spanish, right? So it's it's really like um, you know, and I I don't claim to be an expert on the chumash. There are there might be, you know, uh there are some experts on the chumash, but I know about this occurrence, I've learned a lot about the chumash.

Joe Payne 1:26:18

Um, you know, but uh it's uh there's just I I have liked that you've been hesitant to generalize to indigenity in general. Uh I'm I am friends with uh um uh Moranai Benali uh over uh with the DNA, and we talk a lot about like LGBT uh plus, or as I like to say queer because it's just easier to say, um, issues. Um and he gets really frustrated with like generalizations from one group, like two spirits, and generalizing it. The indigenous of the Americas have, and like, no, that's like one culture, and maybe even only a few tribes in that culture who had that specific uh concept context of framing, yeah.

C. Derick Varn 1:27:12

Frame the Chumash had trans women, like the the Franciscans, and yeah, like oh yeah, I mean upsetting to the Franciscans when they when they observed it. Um but yeah, like um you you wonder, yeah, how much are we just putting our modern pasting our modern uh concepts on onto them? But you know, the the toumash had their their way of looking at it, but it was completely a part of their society, integrated into theirs. I was on a different podcast not too long ago talking about this with somebody who you know was definitely of the more Catholic worldview, and they um you know they said, Well, was there like a whole colony of trans people or a whole village? Did they have a separate village of trans people? No, bro, like it was they they had trans women living as women, as you know, in the in the social roles, the gendered labor, like that's how it that's how it operated.

Joe Payne 1:28:12

This is something I get frustrated with in anthropology, both in the indigenous people and when I talk about hunter-gatherer bands around the world, is people will take like whatever the cool hunter-gatherer bands at the moment, and and and like uh and like talk about like gender relations and hunter-gatherer bands, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah, hold on. We got all kinds of gender relations and hunter-gatherer bands, yeah, including things that we would find incredibly oppressive and things that we can't even fathom. Like, chill out, like it's not we can't generalize to that degree. I mean, what the there are there are some generalizations we can make.

C. Derick Varn 1:28:50

Um by observation, the Chumash had gendered labor, they had uh gendered political leadership. Um, you know, most of the the chieftains were males, but even then you can find exceptions. So you can't tell me you know, because of the like uh a woman chieftain who was in the family lineage of chieftains. So it's like and I tend to believe if there are trans women in the you know who are you know in the village grinding up acorns, helping do child care and all the other gendered uh labor, I find it very hard to believe that there weren't trans men in the canoes in the channel spearing dolphins or or or tuna or or rockfish or whatever that they're they were catching out there as well.

Joe Payne 1:29:41

Well, I think I mean I want to be very my point is an Ian hacking kind of point is that we are way like we don't have a way to talk about this actually today, except in our own categories if we want to communicate it, but we should be very careful about projecting our categories into the past, both both in normative and in non-normative terms. So, like if we talk about transness in the past, we have to admit that like there's way many different ways that people can have uh categorized and lived according to sex and gender, like there's just uh there's tons.

C. Derick Varn 1:30:23

Um, and that's a point I tried to make with that guy on that other podcast. They said the Chumas didn't have the yet the gender unicorn, buddy. Like they were just living in the way they were living, and then the Franciscans arrived with gender ideology, right?

Joe Payne 1:30:39

I mean, this is this is something to try to get to get across to people, like that like different cultures have handled it differently, and I've also kind of implied that Christians had had a way to handle genderlessness too, they just usually put it in a monastery. Um and by it I mean the concept, but that you know that was where you would aspire to live without gender, would be as a as a monk or nun. Um well, yeah, you took a vow of celibacy, celibacy, and you minimize your sex characteristics in both cases, although more so with women than men. And if you look at like the Buddhist context, you definitely see that because they literally try to erase the ability for you to even tell. Uh, I mean, like monks and nuns that commingle in traditional Buddhist societies, for example, but like um, if you're just looking casually, it's very hard to know um what someone's gender is. Um again, you obliterate all the sex, you you obliterate all the obvious secondary sex characteristics that don't involve surgery.

C. Derick Varn 1:31:46

Franciscans intentionally shave the top of their heads, you know what I mean. So, like, and and to the Spanish, uh um, you know, I don't know, I don't know if I've mentioned this on this stream yet, but I have ancestors baptized at the California missions on my mother's side. Um, I have a great, great, great grandfather. My name's Joe, his name, Jose, of course. So if I did a back to the future, you know, uh Central Coast version, there'd be a guy, you know, who darker skinned than me, but big bushy, darker beard, you know, big thick eyebrows like mine. Um, you should have seen my uncle, you know, he looked like Super Mario basically, or Luigi. Um, and like the Spanish had beliefs about beard, you know, and like and and hair, and the Franciscans were buzzing the top of their heads and you know, cutting their beards off. And that was you didn't do that if you were a Spanish real manly man. That was soy boy stuff, you know. And and you also see it in it's interesting in the politics, like the way that um depending on if you're Franciscan friendly or not, in the historiography, how the Franciscans are depicted. So, like one thing about the uh Franciscans is uh like Father Repo at Santa Barbara, uh Hubert Howe Bancroft, the uh American scholar who comes in and writes about this in like the 1880s, 1890s, he calls he he he is denigrating this Franciscan for being womanly in the way that he treated um the indigenous people because in certain accounts he weeps, he cries over this conflict that oh, my children are gonna be killed by these mean soldiers, you know. So um all that stuff. There's legit gender politics going on in this. We we want to put our own, but but that's the other thing is hearing people like tirading against trans people today, they sound and and they have the preoccupations quite similar to like the like these these Franciscan missionaries and these these uh settlers, you know. Um, you know, the the the ways that you know family planning that the Chumash engaged in or other things are seen as you know evil satanic heathenry, you know.

Joe Payne 1:34:08

Well, yeah, I one of the things about the early modern period you kind of have to uh parse. Uh I I talked to Adnan Hussein, uh the professor, uh professor friend of mine. I think he's on one of the uh forgot the history show that he does. He also does um a show on the Muslim world. Um, and we talked about how a lot of what you see brought to the new world and inflicted on indigenous people here actually comes out of interreligious conflicts and attempts to establish empire in the Mediterranean. And there's similar gender dynamics and weird stuff there. Um uh feminizing and not feminizing people from from all sides and and this uh the other. Um I don't want to make it sound like this is just like the way things are because I don't actually think I don't actually think uh that's always true, but I I do I do think it's interesting that we have to like deal with this over and over and over again, particularly when trying to explain the ancient world. And I I also would include the the the European world in this because like we tend to read um pre-1492 Europe and post-1492 terms, like you're talking about nations and stuff like that. They just didn't exist outside of France and England and Europe for the most part.

C. Derick Varn 1:35:35

Like, it's like a brand new idea, the idea of a nation state. It's like hot off the presses, pretty much, right?

Joe Payne 1:35:42

Right. I mean, like and uh you know these these things are not easy for people to understand. Um, one of the things I like to point out to people is they're always like, Oh, the Spanish had way better technology, and I'm like, actually, no, they didn't compared to the Mashica, they had one advantage, they had steel. Uh, not even the guns, the guns that the Spanish had sucked.

C. Derick Varn 1:36:08

Um, they weren't great, but that yeah, that's part of the interesting thing is like the one of the most decisive things in the battle at La Purissima is just a four-pound cannon, you know. Oh, yeah, that'll be the Chumash had guns. They had that, they were able to get a hand a hand, their hands on a significant, uh, you know, not not as numerous as a battalion of a hundred, but they had the same right some of the same rifles. But once you show up with a four-pound cannon, you know, uh um, but so there's a really good book by Crosby, um, ecological imperialism. And that is like the the germs part of the of the you know uh Jared Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, right?

Joe Payne 1:36:57

Which is one of the which is a book when people tell me the people will tell me like Jared Diamond got this right on gun germs and steel, and I'm like, oh god, don't please don't please don't where you got even if you're right, don't let that be where you got this from.

C. Derick Varn 1:37:11

Yeah, um it's not it ain't great. It ain't great.

Joe Payne 1:37:15

Um but there are some good, there are some good there's like one good Jared Diamond book, but it's not that one.

C. Derick Varn 1:37:21

Um let's talk about the uh the longitude-latitude hemispheres for some reason. Guns, drums, and steel. Now I'm gonna talk about how the continents are arranged. Like, what are you doing, Jared? But um uh and why don't you listen to the people who are actually doing this kind of study and what they were saying even at the time you wrote that, anyway. Um biological imperialism, uh um, or is it ecological imperialism, ecological imperialism, ecological imperialism by Crosby, Alfred Crosby. Um, you know, it's that it's the germs. I mean, the germs did a lot of the work for the settler colon colonialists, like I would say it did most of it.

Joe Payne 1:38:05

That's I will say that's why Africa and Americas look very different as germs.

C. Derick Varn 1:38:12

They didn't have to settle nothing, man. It was already settled by indigenous peoples, and then they're all wiped out. These are people who have already been doing ecological management of their areas, they already had you know set up towns and and trade networks, and you know, all these um you know, uh fire and stick cultivation. And you roll in with, I mean, we we talked about this last time as well, but um the Spanish they really knew how to use animals, and the plants was almost like a a byproduct of the animals, but they knew how to use them to their advantage. The Spanish would be on an exploration and they would come to an island that they'd never been to before. You know, they would they would do their, you know, get out their astrolabes and mark the where they where they believed they were. They would take notes of the uh you know of the the different formations, rock formations, like so they could recognize when they came back, but then they drop off a couple of cute little pink pigs onto the uh onto the island, and they go, okay, now we have a real easy way of knowing if we've been here or not. And they shoot up the coast and go exploring for a few months, and when they come back, uh, you know, half a year or more later, and the island is it's been um, you know, the these pigs have proliferated. They now have a food source when they land back at the island, but then uh with their hooves and their grazing, goats, pigs, uh, sheep, cows, even, they have disturbed the land and and made it fertile for for agriculture. They've also brought in invasive species of plants. Here in um Santa Maria, where I live, the hills, it's beautiful around the wildflower time of year. They turn yellow. They're good, they turn green, and then they're scattered with all this beautiful yellow. People call it settlers uh flower, or it's it's a yellow mustard flower. Um, and and people say, oh, hey, you know, the Spanish settlers, they spread this flower around there. No, they didn't. Their cows did. Their cows walked across these hills and grazed them and had the uh the seeds of the old world plants in their manure or in their hooves. And you know, some of these seeds and ecological imperialism, it goes into just like how much, you know, um one square foot of these invasive species that they don't do so well in uh um tropical parts of South America and the Caribbean and Central America, but in our Mediterranean climate in California, basically Oh, yeah, they wreak havoc. Back, yeah, jackpot baby. Like like the they wreak havoc. And then, you know, the so these animals are carrying the pathogens. If you're out, if you're uh hungry tumours, now these animals are eating up all the acorns that you're used to scooping up off the ground. If you get your hands on a pig or a cow or a goat, before you slaughter it, it could sneeze all over you or get its blood on you. And it's not just the people who are communicating these diseases to you either.

Joe Payne 1:41:15

I mean, pigs are notoriously a uh a biological transfer species for humans. And by the way, whenever people get all racist and think that only happens in Asia, it happened here a lot. A lot, um, yeah.

C. Derick Varn 1:41:31

And and it's interesting, ecological imperialism isn't even goes into like uh some of the pre-1492 stuff that was going on, like off the coast of Africa, the islands off the coast of Africa. Some of it reads, yeah. The Azores, some of it reads like a comedy of errors, like, and we really love this island, and we were gonna come back, and we were it was gonna be great, it's gonna be beautiful. But what happened? They they left one pregnant bunny rabbit on it, and then fuck that island's fucked, bro. Like they're they couldn't plant anything without it getting chewed up. All the good soil is just eroding uh into the from one pregnant bunny rabbit, and you know, like all of their it just foiled all their plans for that one island. So this was a system that they had developed over centuries of time. Um and yeah, like the like the the the steel is important, but I I think the animals were hugely important.

Joe Payne 1:42:24

That's how I mean yeah, that's that's a good that's a that's a big point, actually. I just think of steel because everyone's like when people talk about the Mesoamericans, like, oh you know, the the Spanish. I'm like, one the Spanish only won because a lot of people hated the Machica too. The Machica themselves were colours were were colonizers.

C. Derick Varn 1:42:44

You had imperial politics going on there, right? Right, they were in the periphery of another empire, you know.

Joe Payne 1:42:50

So right, yeah, they weren't they were on SmackDabin, they were able to get people they were able to get indigenous people to fight against the Mexica. That was the bulk of their forces, so it wasn't just like 75 fucking Spaniards or whatever. And um the action really that yeah, I remember being taught that in school and being like, there's no way, really, yeah.

C. Derick Varn 1:43:11

Well, but yeah, but that that is even if it's scientifically based, there's a lot of mythologizing that goes on around about this stuff. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. When I drive down highway 101, and I you know, I was just doing it this weekend, and I look out my window and I see cattle still. There are still people who you know will graze cattle if it's not been turned into uh you know why wine uh grape cultivation or um you know uh you know the valley that I sit in when I look out at across the mountains, just over in the hills, just over the hills, there could be oil extraction. We have Cat Canyon, which has oil extraction. There could be tucked in in some of these canyons, we have cannabis cultivation, but of course the whole valley is surrounded by vegetable agriculture. Um Casmelea, we have a super fun site. There's a toxic waste dump right over uh uh the way. So, you know, there is industry here, and some of it is tied culturally, economically, back to the original, you know, the cattle production. It's it's tied to the original settlement of this area by by Spanish. And again, they include my ancestors. Um, you know, so I I feel like I do I know a bit about what I'm talking about at this point, especially um I've I've learned so much about it. Um this might be a little funny. We're getting into the personal, it's a little navel gazing, but I was able to find some of my ancestors in Cal Poly's archive. Um, one of them had gave an oral history. He was talking about Spanish tile, um, an Adobe, you know, Spanish tile being made, and the indigenous women would lay it across their thigh, and that would like give it that curve, you know, of the Spanish tile. Um, my um, you know, and and some of like the cultural ethnographic dynamics you talk about, you know, I have ancestors who were here when this was Mexico. They the Mexicanos start um uh uh what's the word I'm looking for? They they start resenting the control, the dictates that they're getting from Mexico, from in this new imperial core after independence. So what do they call? They start calling themselves Californios. We're not Mexicanos, we're Californios, right? So they adopt this regional identity, then America sweeps in. I have my great great-great-grandfather, my three times great-grandfather Jose. I have him um baptized at Mission San Luis Obispo in the 1860s. Um, I find him in the 1880s twice in the Slow County Sheriff's Office, drunk and disorderly. Um, $10 bail, man. He had to come up with a dollar in the 1880s. That's rough. Um, and then in 1901, I find him in a newspaper. He is um he foiled a robbery. He was a security guard at a local market, like a piggly wiggly or something. And he was able to hold the you know, the burglars at gunpoint until the authorities arrived. Um, and later they actually show him living in Santa Maria. And by this time, he's not going by Jose anymore. He's calling himself Joe. And so he's anglicizing his name. And by the time this gets down to my grandmother's generation, they were they were quick to say, because of the bigotry in California towards uh Mexicans and Mexican Americans, they were quick to call themselves we're Spanish, we're Spanish, right? And um, you know, I'm sure they were uh uh there's all kinds of attitudes you wouldn't know it looking at me because my dad is uh about as white as they come, but uh you know, that like you see how people's identities change, how they identify themselves, just in navigating these changes, the these political changes, these waves of settlement and resettlement. And it's it's all right out here in California, um on the Central Coast. And um, you know, I mean, well, I'm from Santa Maria, California. We got tri-tip, Santa Maria style tri-tip, which is um a certain cut of beef um cooked over an oak pit barbecue with the grate that you know you can bring it up or down. And that goes back to the the the you know what's going on at the missions on the rotos out here where they were roasting cattle above an oak fire, um, you know, on a on a stick or whatever. Um, so it's it's really fascinating um to look at all these dynamics and sit with them, but then it's also part of my lived experience, um, as it were.

Joe Payne 1:47:57

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean I'll end on this, but I I will I will I I do find it fascinating. Like um my last name uh comes from there's two different origins. One is Swedish, and there's one that's Welsh, and then my personal line isn't either. Um, it's actually a corruption of a place name that uh Varna, which is in Bulgaria, um this is a city of Bulgaria. Um you are Derek of Varna. Well, kinda, but the thing is that the the name got frankified. Oh wow. Uh because my parent my uh my my my my great great great great great great great great great grandparents were Sephardic Jews intermarried with Bulgarians who fled from the Ottoman Empire into France, immediately left France and took uh a boat to the Americas and have been in the Americas and part of the Jewish community in the United States since like the 17th century or so. Wow. Um, and my last name has been pronounced about 50 different ways, and part of it was dropped. So I think it was like Varn, I think it was originally Varnadu, then it became Varnado, then it became Varn. Like um, so it's it just got simpler and simpler and simpler. Um uh and my family is spread out uh you know uh amongst like quasi-ethnic communities in the southeast and the northeast, and by the northeast I mean Canada. Um and it's and you can like trace an entire history of colonialism and really ugly colonialism in your name. In my name, like yeah, yeah, and my and and my and I'm not even from a like a plantation family. My family was not slave owners. Uh, there are black varns, they were not, they were not owned. It's it's other reasons that are probably just as gross, but um that's it uh but it's an interesting problem, like to look at your your uh your family history that way, because because um colonialism really m like has really makes a lot of this a big mess. And another thing I like to point out if you think those 23andE things can tell you your ethnic heritage or whatever because you believe in some weird race science, uh good luck with that. That's um yeah, so here's the quick anecdote.

C. Derick Varn 1:50:43

While I was at Cal Poly, there's another uh student there in the program who is local and was involved in um some genealog genealogical study. And you know, uh based on I shared with him, you know, my local history and my my uh uh you know the ancestors I was telling you about. And he kind of tried to tell me, Oh, well, Joe, you know, that you know, you have this one of these guys married this woman whose like name is a street name in San Luis Obispo, and uh that was my great great great great great. So we're distant cousins, and so you know what that means, because I'm part too much, so are you. You're too much, and I just said, yeah, I just had to look at him and I kind of smiled and I said, Listen, buddy, no the fuck I'm not, man. Because that's how this shit works, that's how settler colonialism works, that's how colonial erasure works. I like I'm sorry, that's uh you know, and if I were to claim that, you know what I mean? Like that's that's that's ugly stuff, man. That's ugly stuff.

Joe Payne 1:51:57

Um, I I don't feel like if you if you if you haven't participated in uncultures, like I feel weird, like like I'm like I'm of Irish and Scottish descent, right? But I'm I would never call myself Irish or Scottish. I mean, like for obvious reasons, I'm not. Um crazy, Varn.

C. Derick Varn 1:52:16

My grandmother, my father's mother, was born and raised in Dundee. And if you'd ever met her or seen her, you know her jeans ain't did not leave Dundee or did not leave Scotland for a long, long time. My dad is a professional bagpie player. You know, I don't wear the kilt. I still haven't worn a goddamn kilt. I don't know how to play the bagpite. I don't call myself Scottish, but I had a grandmother who would say, You know, Joseph makes me some tea. That's how I attracted my, you know, my first generation uh Latino wife was like a I was a white boy who could roll his ours, you know. Uh, but that's because I had a Scottish grandmother who would, you know, wake up on foggy days like today and go, It's a great day, Joseph. It's a great day. Yeah.

Joe Payne 1:53:01

Yeah, it is funny. I do wear kilts, but I don't I don't I don't claim any clan or tartan. I guess like everyone's like, what could you wear? I'm like, like I whatever you want. I don't feel like I can wear whatever the fuck I want, but also like plaid, buddy. Pick a plaid, you can do what you want. Like, you know, they're like I have some Campbells in my history, but who cares? Like, it's like it's four generations back.

C. Derick Varn 1:53:23

Well ours is uh apparently clan bucanan, which um their tartan is very like loud and obnoxious, it has like light blue and yellow. Oh my god.

Joe Payne 1:53:35

Oh, I know that tartan.

C. Derick Varn 1:53:36

Yeah, and I'm like loud and obnoxious, just like me, buddy, just like me.

Joe Payne 1:53:41

Well, on that note, now that we're being the whitest white people, you know, um although although I the you know the running joker on me is like I I can look vague, I can look like a vaguely ethnic right person from anywhere in the world, uh, particularly when I have a beard. Um, which which I use to just argue against like certain kinds of genetic bullshit. They're like, you look this way, you must be this. And I'm like, dude, I get I must be from everywhere, including Egypt and Mexico. So like, yeah.

C. Derick Varn 1:54:15

I uh, you know, I have this this big bushy beard that I've always grown. Um, you know, my my mom's side, like my my uncle, my mom's brother had this black brown, thick uh beard and mustache and eyebrows. But you know, my dad grows a full beard, you know, his his mother was from Scotland. Um, my wife, you know, I did a master's thesis about the Chumash War of 1824. My wife could do a basically done a master's thesis on my hair. She's she's a cosmetologist, and she's like, your hair has blonde, brown, red. It's I've got like the technicolor dream beard. I like we are the world is in my uh is in my hair. So, you know, we're all we're all a product of many places and many peoples, I think.

Joe Payne 1:55:05

Yeah, yeah, just yeah, get over it. Uh I I I push back on this right now, I guess, because we've seen this resurgence of like I don't know, man. I mean, like we're old settlers. I'm like, no, you're not. You're like some white ethnic who came over here in World War One. Like, yeah.

C. Derick Varn 1:55:22

Um yeah, and yeah, and and guess what? Those of us who actually come from that shit, we're not like nobody's loud and proud. That's it's a that's that's goofy and embarrassing and and and stupid, um, frankly. Uh, because you know, yeah, and and it's yeah, it's always the yeah. Uh um, you know, I like I know a guy who who his his name was on the Mayflower, and he's not he is nothing like that, you know. He's like, Yeah, what I was so fucking indentured servant, you know. Like I come from indentured servants, like big fucking deal. You know, it's um nothing to be proud of. Doesn't hurt me to admit it either. It uh it doesn't hurt me to sit with uh the reality of the history. I think more uh you know, white dudes need to hear that, frankly. It's like it's not it's not any violence against you to talk frankly about the realities of uh realities of settler colonialism and what it did to indigenous people.

Joe Payne 1:56:18

Um, but you know again you want to understand where you live uh and how things are the way they are instead of some invented tradition bullshit, you do have to look at this stuff honestly and hardly, and you know, it's also a thing that like I don't feel guilt about it. I just think it's something we have to acknowledge and deal with, and deal with the people who have been who have survived because I like I've said in indigenous history is not over, so yeah, um and that's that's why I interviewed a chumash elder um to get their perspective for you know and cited them in my thesis is because yeah, it's a conversation that's ongoing, and you know, they um they they are active participants in just as they were back then.

C. Derick Varn 1:57:09

Um so listen to people. I mean, is it really that hard to just listen to somebody without um you know making a whole deal, you know, and and and don't fetishize people, no matter who they are. Whether it's you want to fetish your colonial ancestors, uh you know, or you want to fetishize the indigenous people as these, you know, uh noble, special, peaceful people. Like they we're all we're all people, man. Um, let's just treat one another with respect and uh be a little more clear-eyed about it, I would say.

Joe Payne 1:57:44

Yeah. Uh where can people find your work, Joe?

C. Derick Varn 1:57:47

Politicalpain.com. Um, I posted just recently sharing my thesis. There's a link to my thesis there. It's for free on the digital commons at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which is great. Um, it's got hundreds of downloads already. It was published in June. It's impress it's impressed me. This many people are showing an interest. Um, you know, I come from a journalism background. So the even um within the context of an academic paper, like a master's thesis, it's still I pride myself that it reads, um, you know, and and I take time to explain things uh and how things work. I don't just throw around the big fancy words uh as if you acting like you already know them. Um also in that recent blog post on political pain, I wrote in some of the interviews I've mentioned here um and other stuff like that. I'm also at political pain, that's P-A-Y-N-E on YouTube. Please give me a sub. I would appreciate it deeply. Um, I'm trying to get back in the game. I've been on hiatus mostly because I was in school. Um, and also on Instagram, also on Facebook, also on TikTok. I've been making TikToks regrettably. Um, but it is kind of fun sometimes. And I did that for a little while, but then again, yeah, you know, you you kind of have to engage with it for what it is. Um, Instagram just tends to um like pour gasoline on the like reactionary fire in my yeah.

Joe Payne 1:59:20

See, this is why I stopped you. I stopped doing Instagram shorts and YouTube shorts, is they throw you at the opposite political, and I know they do because that's like I would get all these responses and negative feedback, and I'm like, and I'm I was just looking at you guys would just hate watching this. No one hate watches my longer videos because they're long, but also the algorithm doesn't give them to them, they give them to people who like similar things. But my shorter videos, it was like it I realized, oh, the algorithm is giving it to people who won't like it, like to get them to rage bait engage, and I don't think TikTok does that as much, although we'll see what happens when its ownership changes.

C. Derick Varn 2:00:01

So it's uh it's showing some interesting signs. If you mention certain uh things in people, you know, you get less engagement. I mean, but it like uh you know, I don't know. It it's a hellscape. We live in a right-wing techno dystopia, um, is the way I view it, and this is the outcome of it, where it's it's now stupider than ever and uh terrifying at times. Um, but again, like you know, the medium is the message to quote McLuhan. So, like, you know, if if you're trying to get political engagement from literally five second clips that could fit in a story, and then you lace them together, you know, I I tend to just post things I think people should see in my stories. Um, and it's been a real like mental Like barrier for me to overcome to just post videos again. To um, you know, I I'm I'm hoping to interview a local organizer on political pain on the YouTube channel soon. Um, but I've just, you know, it's just been difficult, frankly, to like overcome that. I I like so much of my capacity was just narrowly focused on this master's thesis I did, um, which I might have gone overkill a bit um compared to some of the other theses that got published and rewarded degrees uh this year uh in the history department. Uh but um you know I'm I'm happy to get back into it because I do think we need to pick up the sword and shield and the pen and paper or whatever the digital the digital uh proverbial pen and page as it as it is these days. So all right.

Joe Payne 2:01:41

Well, thank you so much. People should go out and read your thesis and uh have a great day. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it. Bye bye. Bye.