Political Response to the Internment of Gabrielino Remains

Indian activist Robert Dorame displays a warm respect for his Native American ancestors. I am of Indian heritage, as well, but I do not see the value of plunging time and energy into the proper burial of long-gone ancestors when we have a political class in Sacramento which has done nothing but sink us deeper into debt and deficits and dysfunction. I respect the due respect that individuals wish to pay their ancestors, yet I am more concerned with our state’s present and fiscal future, including what we may be leaving to our posterity.

“There is a sense of finality now,” Dorame mentioned, crediting Los Angeles councilman Bill Rosendahl for providing a plot of land for the ancestral remains of the Gabrielino tribe.

The greater need for fiscal finality at the city and state level, however, has yet to be reached.

When Juan Cabrillo, Portuguese explorer for the Spanish Empire, first saw the clouds of smoke issuing from the South Bay regions, I do not believe that either he or the Native residents imagined that the sparsely inhabited California of burgeoning with natural resources and potential would one day become a state overrun with government mandates, overregulation, and the diminution of individual and business-based initiative, a state witnessing a significant uptick in emigration in contrast to centuries of immigration and settlement.

Along with the ancestral remains of the Gabrielino tribe, perhaps Councilman Bill Rosendahl can make room for the multi-million dollar deficits eating away at the City of Los Angeles? Perhaps he can dig a little deeper and make space for the multi-billion dollar deficits which wrack Sacramento and send a shudder down the entire state line? Will the rest of the city of Los Angeles dig its own grave with deficits and entitlement burdens, as well?

Will California residents today go the way of the Gabrielinos of centuries past? Let us dedicate ourselves not just to preserving the past, but ensuring a haven for the future, one in which the government plays a much lesser role, one in which our leaders stop ignoring the growing fiscal responsibilities at the expense of pursuing local special interest causes.