This painting depicts Mission Carmel, the second of the Catholic missions founded by the Franciscan priest Junípero Serra (1713–1784), whose brutal tactics played a central role in the systematic subjugation of indigenous people. At Mission Carmel, near the native village of Tamo, Esselen and Ohlone Indians were forcibly relocated, baptized, enslaved, and punished. These abuses, combined with epidemics of diseases carried by missionaries, caused Native populations to decline by more than thirty percent between 1769 and 1846.

Many Native Californians resisted and survived missionization through uprisings, rebellions, and occupations of churches. Since the dissolution of the Mission system in the early nineteenth century, Native Californians have continued to resist the US government’s attempts to suppress or erase their cultures, sustaining communities and traditions that have flourished in their homelands for millennia.