Commentary On Oct. 12, 2020, a group of Indigenous Peoples’ Day protesters entered the grounds of the Mission San Rafael Arcángel, a historic California mission about 20 miles north of San Francisco that’s now part of the Catholic parish of St. Raphael in Marin County. During the course of the protest some of the 50 or so activists present pulled down a six-foot statue of Junípero Serra, the 18th-century Franciscan priest who had founded California’s mission system when California was under Spanish rule. Serra was canonized a saint by Pope Francis in 2015, but among California’s progressives he has become a symbol of European colonization and enslavement of the Native Americans the missions sheltered and served. The statue-topplers had come prepared, bringing with them nylon rope and red paint. They used the rope to drag the statue to the ground, peeled off a layer of duct tape with which the …