SAN ANTONIO -In the late afternoon of April 5, 2023 park managers and division leads gathered inside a neighborhood VFW post to welcome the individuals and families of mission descendants. Park divisions such as the office of the Superintendent, administration, facilities, maintenance, visitor and resource protection, and interpretation and education shared their current work as well as future projects to the families. Feedback and collaboration with the community was a main focus on many of the park’s future projects. Around 40 individuals joined the National Park Service at this community gathering. Descendants enjoyed getting together with familiar faces from their communities and chatting with the park staff about the education, preservation, and protection of the mission sites managed by the national park.
Mission descendants come from a diverse group of Texans with combinations of Indigenous, Latino, and European heritage. These families have ancestors who lived on the mission lands before, during, and after the mission period in the 1700s. They make the missions a living community. The community gathers at these missions for some of their most important life events: baptism, confirmation, marriage, indigenous celebrations, and prayer. The mission sites are sacred spaces, especially to those who have ancestral ties to this history, lands, and waters. The park was honored to welcome the descendants of people who built the Spanish Colonial missions they work to protect in perpetuity.
San Antonio Missions National Historical Park and San Antonio Missions World Heritage Site is working with the diverse indigenous and other traditionally associated communities toward an inclusive, respectful recognition of the complex human history of this special place and refinement of the water and land acknowledgement toward a more just, equitable, relevant, and inclusive approach to site understanding and management.
Tags: news news release mission
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service