What Was Angel Island?

A film by Daniel Chein and Kelly Grabianowski

© 2012

Funded by The Farnley Tyas Foundation

and sponsored by San Francisco State University

TRANSCRIPT

Daniel Quan: It was a place of isolation. A way to control and make sure nobody was trying to escape.

Frank Ross: For the most part the caretakers of Angel Island have ignored the existence of the Miwok People out there.

Breck Parkman: It's incredibly important the story it tells is very significant. It's one of the resources that we have spent lots of money to better protect, better preserve, better interpret.

Frank Ross: You know what was the purpose of Angel Island?

Breck Parkman: The earliest use of Angel Island has yet to be determined. If you go back in time to the end of the last ice age Angel Island wasn't an Island it was a mountaintop. San Francisco Bay was a big valley filled with grass and incredible animals. It was that way up until about 12,000 years ago. The water started rising in the ocean and around 7,000 years ago the water started coming out through the Golden Gate. And eventually Angel Island became an island.

The entire island is part of a cultural landscape. And no matter where you look you'll find evidence, archaeological and historic of the occupations. The ones that are most important are all of 'em. There's no site that's more important than the others. There are particular sites that are more newsworthy from time to time but they're all part of one story. And it's the story of our species living and making use of that island.

– 2 –

Boy 1: That's what, I never really knew, that that's what happened, I really didn't know that.

Boy 2: So, like I thought this was like a happy place … Boy 3: Yeah!

Boy 1: But … Boy 3: It's like torture being in there locked up!

Boy 1: interrogation! Boy 2: Racism!

Boy 3: Doctor checks! Boy 2: Physicals!

Girl 1: They had to leave their families. Boy 2: We came here not knowing about Angel Island until we got here.

Boy 1: Then when you learn … he has to do all this! He had regrets. Boy 2: Could've just stayed home.

Daniel Quan: There aren't firm statistics that we know of right now, but the estimate's somewhere between half a million to 3/4 of a million people immigrated through Angel Island. The majority of them were from Asia.

My first trip to Angel Island my wife and I went through the immigration station. There was an old exhibit there and my wife saw a picture of her grandfather [laughs] on display. And we started thinking, “Well gee, what is this, you know? And how can we find out more?” So we each started doing some individual research and then I came to find out that my own father had immigrated through Angel Island. Both our fathers had passed away, um, neither one of them ever said one word about being on Angel Island.

Frank Ross: There was some conflict. State Parks felt that there was very little remnants of the Miwok People out there. Which came to the forefront during the Immigration Restoration Project. Because it was said that there was very little of the Coast Miwok village underneath the immigration station when in fact there was quite a bit intact.

I never did see the final report as to what their findings were or what their interpretation of the level of occupation might have been. There was a Native American presence there for thousands of years. Everybody said. “Oh, they just came there and would have a celebration of some type and leave.” When in fact what we saw where there was actually habitation there for long periods of time.

You know it's troubling, get rid of the Indian people so there's no um evidence of people inhabiting this area, evidence that this is Coastal Miwok territory. Remove all the Indian uh, burials and artifacts so that eventually all we'll have is a cleansed soil. And an earth that has been depleted of all of its value. It's like when you're driving down the freeway and, and you see a dead animal in the road people just keep running it over until it's no longer there.

– 3 –

Well, we do the same thing, I think in our community and you hear it, you read, you see it in the news you know its unfortunate that we're gotten so far away from caring about each other

Teri Pope: I run the Living History Programs here at Angel Island, including this one that's going on today. Kids come in and have a twenty-four hour living history experience of Civil War soldiers.

This is Camp Reynolds and it really was the first sight the army used on Angel Island. It was an artillery site, there was a fear that there were confederate ships that were gonna come into the Bay and take the gold that was leaving to go and support the Union War effort coming out of California.

For the field trip to work really well the teachers do as much prep work as they can before hand by teaching them what it was like to be a soldier. When they come here and they learn about Angel Island's role in the Civil War, I think it surprises most of them.

I also think the skills they pick up in the different stations - going through the different activities - really helps them understand how hard a soldier’s life was. How hard life outside of our modern period is. Occasionally I get a soldier - or I get a student here - whose father or mother has been deployed. By going thorough this process of marching, learning to march a little bit and learning what it's like to carry a fifteen-pound musket, they learn that that was hard work. It teaches you that maybe other people today are living a different style of lives than we do in this country or than they might do in their neighborhoods.

Daniel Quan: The interpretation of the past was somewhat controversial because at the time we were doing this it was sort of a popular thing to gloss over a lot of this stuff in public history. And so we said, “Well let's be realistic here. Let's talk about what really happened.” The idea was to bring it out in a way that is told in the voice of the person as opposed to us trying to reinterpreted that history and then cause a lot of controversy over how that history is written or how it's interpreted.

If you could put it in the first person, it would be a much more powerful experience and people who visit could then draw out of that whatever they feel. The use of the poetry - extracting words from the poetry - that we engraved on the walls, for instance. They're just ways of evoking emotions and thought-provoking phrases that people can catch on to. And when they string the pieces all together they can reflect on that there's some meaning to it.

The power of the place is in the words and thoughts of the people. It gives us a chance to not only walk in their shoes, but to listen to their words. And that's one of the more powerful forms of interpretation of history. It gives us a chance to connect in a way that you wouldn't normally get um, just by reading something on a plaque.

Breck Parkman: The fact that Angel Island is now a State Park means that it belongs to all of us. It's a public land. And the mission of State Parks is not only to protect the important natural and cultural resources found on Angel Island, but to find ways to allow the public to come and to learn and to recreate and appreciate everything that Angel Island has to offer.

– 4 –

People do that regularly and they ride bicycles around the island or they take hikes to the top of Mount Livermore. They go on tours of historic structures. They'll find their own way around the island. People come out and they do picnicking, people sailboats over and dock at Ayala Cove and spend the day on the island. Sometimes people will come out and spend the night on their boats. So, the public comes to better understand and appreciate the history.

lot of people come because of the view. You circle the island, you climb to the top of the mountain it's probably one of the best views in San Francisco. And while enjoying the view they get some exercise and they learn something about history.

Teri Pope: We'll put squad one right here.

Daniel Quan: I think there's a lot of life lessons that you can learn from that history that are applicable to the situation that we're in today. You know, there's so much controversy about illegal immigration - who should be here and who shouldn't and immigrant rights. I think that if you look at what happened in the past - the Exclusion Laws that we had - and you look at who actually did come through despite those laws, I think you can point to the fact that we've got a better society and a better America with the inclusion of people rather than the exclusion of them.

So, what does that tell us about now? I mean, can we look at ourselves and say, “Oh, it's better to just leave a group of people out without any regard for what they might possibly contribute to society here?”

Teri Pope: … the ground, but don't all go follow the flag. OK? All right. Frank Ross: It comes down to the State Park, you know. The State Park really doesn't

value that particular period of time. You know they value the missiles period or the immigration period. They always and they've said this to me. They've said well you know, nobody's gonna come here because the Miwok occupied this island.

The State Park's interest isn't in exploring the inhabitants of the Coast Miwok, but it would be nice to see these sights protected for the purpose of preservation. That's part of the history of the island. It's our home. As a tribal person, as a Coastal Miwok, Marin County - Angel Island - is all my home.

Teri Pope: Present arms!