View of two unidentified actors during their performance of the Ramona outdoor play, in the colorful Ramona Bowl in Hemet, California. The female actress is depicting Ramona, and the male is depicting one of the many Indians in the play. Each Spring from 1923 onward, with only brief interruptions during the Depression and during World War II, the people of Hemet and San Jacinto have presented this "spectacular dramatization" of Helen Hunt Jackson's "immortal" love story of the Indian maiden Ramona.

Helen Hunt Jackson wrote "Ramona" as a follow-up to her thoroughly documented account of mistreatments of Native American by the United States government. Her first book was titled "Century of Dishonor" and was given to government officials. Jackson then attempted to write a novel to convey the mistreatments and hardships native communities faced. She used the setting of the Californian mission. But her critique and attempted exposition of the colonial agenda to eliminate Native cultures was upended by white producers who emphasized the picturesque back drop and love story.

It has been reenacted in theaters as plays and films, and Ramona themed tourist centers opened around the southland. In Hemet, California, the setting of the novel, the annual Ramona pageant is still produced but with little to no reference to actual Native cultures or their issues. Fourth graders still reel when the initial cannons are fired at Hemet to start the play, without realizing they are sitting on land forcibly taken from Native Americans by their own government.