San Antonio’s first American Indian Center and art gallery that’s owned and operated by Indigenous people of Texas opened its doors Friday with a promise of improving lives and bringing healing to a historically forgotten people.
The sky unleashed light rain before sunlight burst through the clouds during the hourlong dedication of the four-building, 12,000-square-foot campus just east of downtown at 1616 E. Commerce. The nonprofit American Indians in Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions bought the property from Communities in Schools, an educational nonprofit, and will use it as a busy gathering place that offers a slew of support services for the Indigenous community.
The center was hailed by Native American leaders and elected officials as a place that will empower women, children and families through social, health and wellness services; heritage and history projects; and cultural arts programs. Many spoke of the Indigenous “first people” who lived in San Antonio for thousands of years before a 1691 Spanish expedition that arrived on the feast day of St. Anthony led to a renaming of the city.
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“Very few people know that many of our family members upheld the American Revolution,” said Raymond Hernandez, co-founder of the American Indians in Texas, or AIT.
He reflected on his ancestors and other native people who toiled to build mission churches, acequias and other structures of the Spanish Colonial era that planted seeds for what now is the nation’s seventh-largest city. The United States is a relatively young nation, “still trying to find its way,” he said.
“And we’re here today. We haven’t left,” Hernandez said.
County Court No. 13 Judge Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez, whose docket often focuses on domestic abuse, said the new center offers hope of breaking cycles of “generational violence” that Native Americans have suffered since colonial times. She’s found success in a specialty Reflejo Court started a few years ago, using a native-based curriculum, “that could heal the wounded; that could get our people sober, and we could give them the skills to find housing and to get employed.”
“We heal the root of the problem. And that’s the behaviors that are trauma-based. They’re rooted in trauma in things that were done to us,” Gonzalez said. “This will be one of the many, many places that we will frequent weekly, daily, to make sure that we … break that cycle of violence.”
State Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins committed to promoting an understanding of “the critical role that Indians have played in this great country.”
Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert also pledged their support.
“This center will be an incredible addition to San Antonio, a huge element of pride for our community,” Nirenberg said. “Each and every day is a step toward us building a city for all of us. And to do that, we have to remember all of us in our history.”
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Calvert read a proclamation approved by the Bexar County Commissioners Court, and he reaffirmed the county’s goal of an accurate portrayal of the role that Indigenous people played in the community’s history, including the Mission San Antonio de Valero — the first local permanent mission that became the fort known as the Alamo. The county has pledged $25 million to a new Alamo museum and visitor center.
“We are evolving to understand that we are brothers and sisters,” Calvert said. “Far too many contributions have been ignored. And we are the generation that is going to set history right.”
Ramón Vásquez, executive director of AIT, said the center will empower the nonprofit, formed nearly 30 years ago by the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation, to be “a bridge builder for communities.”
The San Antonio Area Foundation provided a $250,000 seed grant for the center, and AIT continues to raise money for facility upgrades and programming.
For more information, visit aitscm.org or call 210-227-4940.
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