A man takes a nap near a war memorial to be unveiled at Father Serra Park in downtown Los Angeles. (Christina House / For the Los Angeles Times)

A memorial honoring the nearly 30,000 recipients of the nation’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor, is to be unveiled today in Los Angeles. But on Monday, representatives of those who say the memorial is built on the site of an ancient Native American village will go to court and seek to have the memorial removed.

Robert Garcia is the attorney suing the city on behalf of the Concerned Citizens for South Central Los Angeles, the El Pueblo Park Association, the Tongva Indian Ancestral Territorial Tribal Nation and a descendant of one of the city’s 44 original families

“We support Medal of Honor recipients and we believe they should be honored in an appropriate way at an appropriate place,” said Robert Garcia tells the Los Angeles Times, here. “Father Serra Park is not the right place, and this monument there is not the right way.”

The Times’ Seema Mehta writes that Garcia contends that because of its military connections, the monument is objectionable to Serra, the Catholic founder of the missions, and the Native Americans, who often were the victims of American forces.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Concerned Citizens for South Central Los Angeles, El Pueblo Park Association, Medal of Honor, Native American news, Tongva Indian Ancestral Territorial Tribal Nation