A Native American Oakland woman is hoping her efforts to remove what she calls a culturally offensive Piedmont Avenue mural will soon pay off, although plans to paint over the artwork are now on hold.
Diane Williams has long opposed the mural, which was completed in 2006 and features a prominent image of a naked Ohlone man accepting Western clothes from what appears to be Catholic priests or monks.
Dubbed “The Capture of the Solid, Escape of the Soul,” the work is meant to depict the injustices inflicted on the area’s native inhabitants by Spanish colonists and missionaries, among other things.
Williams, 77, first encountered the mural while artist Rocky Rische-Baird was still working on it roughly 20 years ago at the corner of Piedmont Avenue and 41st Street and said she disliked it from the moment she set eyes on it.
“I’m faced with this fact that there’s a big old tall naked Indian with a rather large penis just hanging out there and being painted in detail and then I look some more and there’s Indian women with their breasts out,” said Williams, who said she is Athabascan.
Lacks ‘redeeming cultural message’
Williams takes offense to the depictions, which she said aren’t historically accurate, and to the grim subject matter as told by a non-Native American artist. She figures most Native people would agree.
“It’s not good for us to be depicted like this and what is the message? That we were savaged? That we were enslaved? That our ancestors are in torment,” she said. “Is there a redeeming cultural message for us?”
“We have real important messages to tell, as well, and we’d like to be listened to and heard and we’d like to tell our own story,” she said.
Williams went so far as to organize a protest for the unveiling of the mural but mostly let the issue drop for years until she was back on Piedmont Avenue following a medical appointment down the street.
“I walked by that mural again and I thought, ‘You know what? I’m done. I’m really done with looking at it,’” Williams said.
“We have real important messages to tell, as well, and we’d like to be listened to and heard and we’d like to tell our own story.”
Diane Williams, offended by mural
So she tracked down and contacted the building’s owner about painting over the mural and seems to have made an impact, as its tenants were recently informed via email that it would be gone soon.
News that the mural might be painted over provoked a passionate response from people who would like to see it remain, however, and a representative for the building’s ownership, SG Real Estate Co., said Wednesday that while it had received complaints from members of the Native American community, any such plans are now on hold indefinitely.
The company hopes the two sides can sit down and talk about possible solutions.
“For our part, we will be continuing to listen and hope to facilitate more dialog within the concerned community,” a company representative said in an email. “We aim only to be a supportive and caring member of the diverse community in which our small business resides and are simply doing our best to be conscientious.”
City says it has no role
Williams said she received a sympathetic email from the office of Oakland City Councilmember Zac Unger, in whose district the mural resides, but Unger on Tuesday said he didn’t have a comment about the content of the mural and suggested the city should stay out of it.
“Folks who want the mural left up or taken down should appeal to the property owners,” Unger said. “I very much believe that as a country we have decided that the government doesn’t have a role in regulating speech.”
A spokesperson for the city of Oakland said that despite the fact that the mural was partly funded by a city grant, city officials don’t have a role to play in decisions about its fate.
“Because the building is not City-owned or City-controlled property, and the artwork is also not owned or assigned to the City, the City has no involvement in modifications to or painting over the mural,” Oakland spokesperson Jean Walsh said in an email.
Walsh said there are federal and state laws that protect art on buildings and the property owner will have to talk to their own lawyers to figure out the best way to proceed.
The city has worked in recent years to ensure that public murals funded by the city now require approval from the Public Art Advisory Committee regarding locations, scopes of projects, artwork and artists, Walsh said.
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