Santa Cruz Mission, completed in 1795 on a hill overlooking the city that carries its name, was the 12th in the chain of Spanish missions along the California coast. Santa Cruz became known as the “Hard Luck Mission,” a nickname that only hints at the challenges and hardships for its population of Native converts, who provided most of the hard labor, succumbed to diseases and were often held at the mission against their will.

Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park consists of a visitor center and the only remaining original building of the mission complex, the adobe that housed converted Native families. The park has long focused on telling the stories of the mission population; now, a new multimedia exhibit, cocreated by contemporary Native community members, builds a bridge from the past to the present and breathes life into stories full of tragedy and loss but also joy and human connections.

“Emotional” was a term that came up frequently among visitors, State Parks staff including Director Armando Quintero and Cultural Resources Division Chief and Tribal Liaison Leslie Hartzell, invited guests and about 60 Amah Mutsun Tribal Band members at the exhibit opening at the park on Nov. 2. The multimedia tour and exhibit, titled “People Who Lived Here,” explores history through narrative recordings on the Virtual Adventurer Mobile App, which can be downloaded through QR-codes displayed in the mission adobe’s rooms.

The project is based on the research and book of Dr. Martin Rizzo-Martinez, a professor at University of California, Santa Cruz, and was supported for State Parks by District Historic Lead Julie Sidel. Based on archeological and archival records, the exhibit reconstructs and documents the lives of five Native or mixed-race individuals who were connected to the mission. The life stories were scripted and narrated by contemporary young Native community members whose own ancestors experienced mission life and its impacts generations ago.

The tour leads through seven stops of the adobe, each of them centering on an individual life story and highlighting different aspects of mission life. Room 5, for example, connects everyday household items to the story of converted Native Maria Buena. Maria’s account, as scripted and narrated by Amah Mutsun tribal member Carolyn Rodriguez, breathes life into the story of a woman whose life illustrates the blending of Native and Catholic traditions that characterized much of mission society. Carolyn, a doctoral student at UCLA, said that assuming Maria’s voice was a very emotional experience and that she wanted to “tell the story in a way that honored all the women” who shared Maria’s experiences.

Visual artist Weshoyot Alvitre, of Tongva/Gabrielino and Scottish descent, created another link between the Native past and present. Her portraits of the historical adobe residents are based on the five contemporary tribal members who “embodied” them with their voices. Weshoyot herself is the exhibit’s voice of Clementina Montero, who shared the artist’s Tongva background, and whose story centers on the challenges of navigating mixed-race identity and displacement in colonial Spanish and Mexican California.

The event ended with a closing ceremony and a podium discussion with the project’s cocreators, which highlighted the exhibit’s powerful emotional impact on everyone who attended. Amah Mutsun Tribal Band Elder Eleanor Castro, who led the event’s opening prayer, described Santa Cruz Mission SHP’s exhibit as “closer to the truth” of Native people, whose voices have been suppressed or ignored for too long. Ultimately, though, the event was not only about the ”People Who Lived Here” but just as importantly, about the people who still live here, and who will continue to create stories for future generations.