Resisting the Settler Gaze: California Indigenous Feminisms

Resisting the Settler Gaze: California Indigenous Feminisms

Luhui Whitebear

The settler gaze has created the conditions in which Indigenous women and TwoSpirit people experience high levels of violence both historically and in current times. This essay analyzes California Indigenous feminist resistance to the violences in the mission impacted region of the Californias. Toypurina, Bárbara Gandiaga, and Yaquenonsat are discussed as examples of California Indigenous feminist resistance to settler colonial systems that contributed to the murdered and missing Indigenous women, girl, and Two-Spirit (MMIWG2S+) crisis during their time period. These historic California Indigenous women are then compared with current efforts to address the MMIWG2S+ crisis in California and beyond. Counter-colonial Indigenous intergenerational storytelling is used as a methodology to read these stories and the settler records in order to resist the settler gaze.

Keywords: California Indigenous / Counter-colonial / Indigenous feminisms / Indigenous resistance / Intergenerational storytelling / MMIW / Settler colonialism / Settler gaze / Two-Spirit

“CALIFORNIA IS A STORY. California is many stories.”

—Deborah Miranda, Bad Indians

Introduction

In the construction of the settler state of California, Indigenous people have been framed as relics of the past and gone, leaving only fragments remaining usually in the hands of non-Native scholars and hobbyists whose narratives

©2023 Feminist Formations, Vol. 35 No. 1 (Spring) pp. 97–116

reify the absence of Indigenous peoples, our voices, agency, and rights. This fragmentary thinking can be found scattered across lands, settler records, public school curriculum, and public tellings. Thus, the damaging master narrative has shaped how Indigenous Californians are viewed, discussed, taught about, and decentered historically and in present times. As an Indigenous person from California who grew up with a strong connection to my Coastal Chumash heritage, lands, and waters, I have always known that the dominant story about Indigenous California was incomplete and dominated by settler stories of who we are. Family and Tribal research has offered me a clearer connection to my Cochími and settler ancestors as well as the histories that enable me to draw the path they traveled to who I am today. Working through counter-colonial intergenerational methodology and engaging alternative constructions of the usefulness of fractal analysis, this essay is a work of reclamation. It is written from my perspective as an Indigenous California person and contributes to the growing academic work by Indigenous California people to reclaim our stories and connections in resistance to the settler gaze from which our stories are dominated.

I call this work counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling. It is a rhetorical practice to disrupt the process of settler colonial erasure and to reclaim cultural memories within Indigenous activist circles as well as within Indigenous communities more broadly. Counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling is a rhetorical practice within Indigenous activism that reclaims critical pieces of our histories and identities that are often hidden or erased from dominant discourse within and about Indigenous activism. Counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling is a praxis: it is both theory and methodology combined, informed by Indigenous activism, grounded in Indigenous feminist and queer analyses, and intervening to restore balance and healing within Indigenous communities. It is a counter to the settler colonial discourses and systems of oppression that have been intentionally imposed upon us to disrupt our connections to our lands and our identities.

Through this essay I use counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling to look between and within three stories of Indigenous feminist activism during the Spanish mission period of California. It is here I look for patterns that reveal recognizable fractals. I also engage with adrienne marie brown’s use of fractals for systemic change to see that, “The patterns of the universe repeat at scale. There is a structural echo that suggests two things: one, that there are shapes and patterns fundamental to our universe, and two, that what we practice at a small scale can reverberate to the largest scale” (brown 2017, 52). By using counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling I look for those patterns across time, those left in colonial records and our retellings of Indigenous California histories, to listen for the echoes of the ancestors that remain waiting to be heard. These fractals offer entry points to work towards reclaiming our histories

and cultural memories of Indigenous California that have been long dominated by settler colonial tellings.

The term California is being used in this essay to describe both what is often referred to as Baja California and Alta California to draw attention to ways in which settler borders attempt to sever our connections, histories, and current day issues. The term Indigenous Californians refer to those who have ancestral connections to the settler state of California, whereas Indigenous in this essay refers to the original peoples of the Americas more broadly. Two-Spirit means Indigenous people whose gender and/or sexual identities exist beyond the settler imposed cis-heteropatriachal norms. While the identities themselves are not new, the term Two-Spirit itself was agreed upon as an umbrella term for Indigenous people to replace the derogatory term “berdarche” in 1990 at the Intertribal Native American, First Nations, Gay and Lesbian American Conference in Winnipeg (Driskill et al. 2011, 5). These blanket terms are not intended to replace our own terms and names for our peoples and identities and are rather used as uni er terms.

To encapsulate settler colonialism to its very core, it is the process in which groups from other lands assume superiority in order to attempt to replace existing Indigenous customs, governing systems, societal norms, political frameworks, and ways of being. In other words, “settler colonialism is a persistent social and political formation in which newcomers/colonizers/setters come to a place, claim it as their own, and do whatever it takes to disappear the Indigenous peoples that are there” (Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill 2013, 12). The settler society constructs what is considered acceptable and the ways in which societies are assembled. Settler colonialism is always about seeking to replace what is with a goal of land and resource acquisition and the accumulation of wealth-based power (Barnd 2017). One of the results of settler colonial processes to control the continual erasure of Indigenous people is the creation, cultivation, and use of the settler gaze.

The settler gaze is used to describe Indigenous California women and TwoSpirit people as casualties of settler violence; it is a dangerous narrative that continues to shape our realities in current times. Indigenous feminisms tell us we are much more than that. We are mothers, healers, resisters, warriors, and leaders worthy of dignity, respect, and life. As an Indigenous California person, I understand that Indigenous feminisms rely on our connections to stories, lands, waters, and ancestors. It is a responsibility. I take this work seriously, as a purpose, and with care. As I bring forth the stories shared in this essay, I explain the settler gaze as well as explore Indigenous California feminist resistance to it to show how rhetorical and discursive representations of anti-Indigeneity, and the particularities of misogyny, are re ected, resisted, and used to shape our stories and lived realities.

The Settler Gaze

There are many ways to gaze: in a mirror, at another, at art, towards nature. All offer a re ection of ourselves within the worlds around us. Unlike re ective gazes, the settler gaze is a tool constructed by settlers in order to create a set of constructs that settlers, expansionists, and governmental agents use to maintain the imaginary of those subjected to settler colonial systems and the purpose of the settler. The settler gaze is a powerful tool used by settlers to put forth what they imagine Indigenous people to be, which is reinforced by settler norms that create distinctions and devised that signify relational elements between settlers and Indigenous people. The basis of the settler gaze is rooted in domination and the erasure of the experiences and identities of Indigenous people. Mary Louise Pratt interrogates settler art and writing as produced along contact zones; the role they play is to uphold settler superiority over Indigenous people and lands. Pratt argues that “de-exoticizing places and peoples become in the eyes of the seeing-man repugnant conglomerations of incongruities, asymmetries, perversions, absence, and emptiness” (Pratt 1992, 220). The images created through settler records and art reinforce the settler imaginary of the vast emptiness of Indigenous California waiting to be conquered.

The settler gaze is a tool in which settlers build systems to differentiate Indigenous people through a lens of conquer and subjugation. For example, the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians provided a state sanctioned slave market of Indigenous Californians well beyond the passage of the thirteenth Amendment in 1789. This act, which “was not repealed in its entirety until 1937,” also allowed for the abduction of Indigenous children by settlers in order to use them for indentured servitude (Johnson-Dodds 2002, 5). The settler gaze deeply informed that law by building upon stereotypes of Indigenous people and the “danger” they posed when consuming alcohol, for example, and con ated Indigenous people with colonial stereotypes of the “savage Indian” who was represented as resistant to progress and unaware of what is best for their children. The settler gaze was used to justify continued slavery of Indigenous Californians based on the established practice of Indigenous bodies used as labor for construction of the settler state that began with the Spanish mission system. Many markers throughout California, like the mission system, “Indian schools,” Alcatraz, and racist-misogynistic place names serve as monuments to the settler gaze and its power to reduce Indigenous peoples, societies, and rights while providing the justi cation of settler dominance for generations to come. The settler gaze is systemic, rhetorical, and based upon settler colonial consciousness.

Tamara L. Hunt describes the colonial gaze as how colonial powers, “saw the colonies through eyes that were blurred by misinformation, misconception, and stereotypes” (Hunt and Lessard 2002, 1). Much like the colonial gaze, the settler gaze is used to assert the image it creates of Indigenous people

as a way to assume self-proclaimed authority and control of our lands, waters, and bodies, and much like the male gaze, the settler gaze is dependent on cisheteropatriarchal expectations of where one’s ostensible place is in society. The settler gaze is used to create the image of who we should be and how we should show up in the world, and in the settler world, that is conquerable. In her article, “Domesticating Imperialism: Sexual Politics and the Archaeology of Empire,” Barara Voss describes “imperial visions of colonial seduction” that “existed in the imaginations of colonial explorers” (Voss 2008, 193). Colonizers constructed the settler gaze from the place from which we would be viewed and where they imagined we belonged. For Indigenous people, that becomes the past—the place we belong in order for settlers to convince themselves there is justi cation for ongoing occupation and exploitation of our lands and waters. For Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people, that became compounded by gendered and sexual domination. The place we belong is in the memory with fragments of who we were remaining—a tragic tale of the past “portrayed as passive victims of colonization” (Voss 2008, 193) and a casualty necessary for the society that exists now.

For Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people, the settler gaze has been used to depict our bodies as being deserving of violence due to heteropatriarchal and heteropaternalist constructions of perceptions that we are “weak, incompetent, naïve, and confused” (Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill 2013, 13). The continual oversexualization of Indigenous women has also created a means to embed these violences into everyday life and in law and policy. The settler gaze is embedded into the settler records and makes possible the high levels of violence we face in current times, which will be discussed later in this essay. The historic erasure and reliance on these types of archival records perpetuate a cycle of violence against Indigenous people in California, particularly Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people. As a result, our resistance becomes part of who we are as we must continually assert our roles in our communities as well as our presence in the settler records of resisters, leaders, and warriors. The settler gaze is used to shape where we t in these records yet, “the pens and lenses of non-Native soldiers, missionaries, and settlers provide much of the fragmentary written evidence from which we can catch glimpses into the rich lives of these warriors” (Tatonetti 2021, 27). These fragmentary pieces, today theorized as fractals, are left behind intentionally or not, allow us to learn from and bring into the larger story of Indigenous feminist resistance. Counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling calls for us to listen to these stories to recenter our knowledges rather than carry forward colonial knowledges of who we are. This particular Indigenous feminist lens not only helps us recognize the settler gaze, it helps us nd the stories, deconstruct—rather than return—the settler gaze, and reimagine our worlds with us at the center, in order to reconstruct our stories of Indigenous feminist resistance.

Indigenous Feminisms

Settler violences have shaped the ways in which Indigenous people experience feminism. While some Indigenous women have asserted that feminism does not have a place in Indigenous circles, I agree with the longstanding assertions by Indigenous feminists like Paula Gunn Allen that feminism drew its roots from Indigenous women’s political leadership and autonomy (Gunn Allen 1986). Additionally, Luana Ross reminds us that feminism has often created hostile spaces as they have asked us to ostracize Indigenous men rather than call them into collective healing while also reminding us that feminism allows us a way to bring gendered experiences into conversations about Indigenous issues (Ross 2009). The word feminism may feel new to Indigenous communities, but it has been part of our communities long before the word existed. Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people’s leadership and political autonomy have always been part of who we are, but “whitestream” feminism has grappled with how to bring in matters of Indigenous sovereignty and identity to broader feminist efforts for generations (Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill 2013). The Indigenous feminists that were drawn upon for whitestream feminism are our fractals. They knew that remaining committed to Indigenous women’s leadership, they would impact the larger scale beyond their speci c peoples. They were, and are, our continued connections to our sovereignty as Indigenous people.

Indigenous feminisms calls for whitestream feminism to be accountable for the ways settler colonial violence is reinforced by feminist actions and the erasure of Indigenous feminisms. This calls for whitestream feminism to grapple with how it has used and bene ted from the settler gaze. It also calls for our own communities to be accountable to the ways settler colonial violence shows up in our communities due to internalized oppression and lateral violence. This calls for our own communities to understand and heal from the ways we have been conditioned by the settler gaze. Just like the calls to accountability are braided together by Indigenous feminisms, a bulk of scholarship using an Indigenous feminist lens calls for the recognition of the connections between the violences towards lands and bodies. Particularly, “The violences towards Indigenous bodies and lands are intertwined and part of the settler colonial paradigm. At its root, Indigenous feminism is about these connections as well as the ways in which settler colonialism has in icted gendered violence on our bodies and spirits because of who we are as Indigenous people” (Whitebear 2020). In the context of Indigenous California, these ties to lands and bodies are threaded through our experiences with settler colonial systems. California Indigenous feminisms ask us to restore the relationships to our lands, waters, and cultural memories, especially through stories, by countering settler colonial dominance. It asks us to remember we are more than what the settler records depict us as.

Our stories are controlled by the dominant narrative as being situated in the past, especially in the areas impacted directly by the California mission system, which is the focus of the remainder of this essay. As part of Indigenous feminist theory and methodology, counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling provides a way to examine settler records and look for stories between where gaps remain—cracks left as doors or windows opening to our past in order to reach through and pull stories of Indigenous resistance forward to us. It is a pathway to our ancestors to travel back and forth across with an understanding the there is never a single story or single truth to explain who we are and why we resisted.

Indigenous California and Resistance

The dominant story of the construction of the Unites States tells a story of manifest destiny and westward expansion. California enters the conversation primarily through the gold rush and the rapid acquisition of land after statehood. The settler gaze is used to reinforce this as “the” story of California. However, the story of statehood and colonization started much earlier. As the declaration of independence was being signed, the California mission system was already established with missions spanning across both Baja California and Alta California. These missions were part of Junípero Serra’s “Sacred Expedition” under the direction of Spain to colonize and convert Indigenous Californians while also establishing military bases known as presidios (Whitebear 2022). Alta California was later simply renamed California at statehood, distinguishing itself from México while retaining an aesthetic of a romanticized Spanish past by retaining the California part of the name. The missions themselves hold stories of both trauma and resistance in their walls, beams, and graves. Each time I visit Mission Santa Barbara, I touch the same adobe and wood that some of my ancestors touched—a very real connection and touch across time to them. Their stories, and others remain waiting for us to return to.

The dominant tellings of California describe the missions as places Indigenous people “helped” build and chose to be at. The settler gaze is used to assert that Indigenous people are remembered as a tragic tale lost to disease and, in more recent times, genocide. It is framed as a “sad story” with fragments of Indigenous communities remaining. Even in describing Indigenous people, a progression of colonization is used to describe their place in the settler system: Indios (Indians) become neophytes (new converts) before reaching status as solidero (soldier) or gente de razon (people of reason) (Dartt 2009). Indigenous women and Two-Spirt people are highly invisiblized in all accounts with sprinkles of representation here and there. Colonizers strove to eradicate Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people’s leadership, presence, and political autonomy.

Despite the story that has been constructed about California Indigenous people being docile casualties of colonization, there was resistance. There has always been resistance. For example, the largest organized uprising in the mission

system was the Chumash Revolt of 1824 (Beebe and Senkewicz 1996). This revolt began at Mission Santa Ines and spread to La Purisma and Mission Santa Barbara resulting in a massive uprising and the burning of all three missions to varying degrees. Counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling offers a path to the fractal remains about this resistance within settler records.

The signi cance of this revolt has been largely missing in discussions about Indigenous resistance to colonization and minimized by settler retellings, both contributing to the master narrative created through the settler gaze about Indigenous California. In particular the Mission Santa Ines webpage describes the uprising as lasting “less than a week” rather than four months (Mission Santa Ines, n.d.). This misrepresentation separates this mission from the others and upholds a narrative that the missions maintained control of the Chumash people. In reality, most of the mission was burned to the ground and therefore no longer needed Chumash presence at Santa Ines which allowed the people to either ee or join in resistance at one of the other missions, which many did (Blackburn 1975).

There is also not much documentation about who was involved with the planning of the revolt. The vague descriptions rely on centering men as the leaders and those who made decisions and mostly only includes names of the padres and military of cers (Beebe and Senkewicz 1996; Blackburn 1975; Hudson 1980). This dominant telling is not in alignment with the shared leadership men, women, and Two-Spirit, or aqi, people held in Chumash societies. The Chumash Revolt was also a planned and coordinated effort that spanned across a large part of the central Chumash territory. In passing down the story of the revolt in an interview with J.P. Harrington, Maria Solares includes a description of one of the wots (chiefs) asking for the men and women of Santa Ines to travel to La Purisma “so that if they were all to be killed they would all die together” (Blackburn 1975, 224). She goes on to say that along the road to La Purisma, “many Indian men and women were strung out along the road” (Blackburn 1975, 225). This short description helps show that both men and women were ready to ght together in resistance to the mission control of their lands, bodies, and waters. Given there is much documentation of aqi presence in Chumash societies (Miranda 2010a), it is not far off to say there were men, women, and aqi people involved with the Chumash Revolt.

This is one story of many about Indigenous resistance in the mission impacted region of California against settler colonial control and violence. The remainder of this essay uses counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling to focus on the stories of three Indigenous women from the California mission impacted region who also resisted settler colonialism in their own communities, and as a result, resist the settler gaze and settler records. These three women are part of the fractal patterns of Indigenous feminist resistance in California. The following sections that explore these women’s stories confront settler records through counter-colonial interrogation and rewriting.

Toypurina as a Land Defender

The settler gaze works as rhetorical device that is used to decide how Indigenous people are remembered throughout settler records. Many times, settler histories directly clash with community rememberings of the very same people. Toypurina is an example of an Indigenous woman whose story has been dominated by the settler gaze in settler records. Known as a Tongva medicine woman, Toypurina is most well known for her involvement with the uprising at Mission San Gabriel. Her story is also becoming one of the most reclaimed stories of resistance by Indigenous Californians—a testament of the power of counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling and story reclamation as a form of resistance to the master narrative about Indigenous California women.

The Lost LA Curriculum Project is an example of how decolonized praxes in story reclamation serve to reimagine local histories and change the ways in which collective consciousness is informed. The Lost LA Curriculum Project has brought in several accounts of Toypurina’s story to help students in the Los Angeles public schools to learn more about local Indigenous histories. They include one of the earliest documentations in settler records about Toypurina’s involvement with the uprising as told by Mission San Gabriel’s of cial historian Thomas Workman Temple II in his article titled “Toypurina the Witch and the Indian Uprising at San Gabriel.” In the description of her, Temple writes of Toypurina as being “an Indian sorceress” and “the Indian witch” (Waldron, n.d., 7). His retelling of this moment in which the Indigenous resisters were captured not only describe her in a romanticized way using terminology of the time that was meant to bring in fear, but he also ensured he documented her as deceiving her people rather than leading them. It is important to note that this depiction of Toypurina was written in 1931, forty-six years after the uprising itself, much like the famous Chief Seattle speech was constructed using the settler imaginary and settler gaze decades after he delivered it. The retellings through the settler gaze shaped the view of Toypurina at the time of the uprising and were passed down to Temple, a person of mixed Indigenous and colonizer ancestry. It was reinforced through academic publication and therefore became viewed as “legitimate.”

In his article “Sources of Rebellion: Indian Testimony and the Mission San Gabriel Uprising of 1785,” Steven W. Hackel interrogates Temple’s accounts of the uprising, including his assertion of Toypurina as being one of the main organizers of the uprising (Hackel 2003). Hackel’s analysis offers an important view on relying on Temple’s article documentation in how it relies on stereotypes and a romanticized depiction of testimonies. At the same time Hackel upholds the settler gaze of Indigenous women by minimizing Toypurina’s involvement in the rebellion. Regardless of whether this was intentional, the framing around who was the leader of the rebellion centers Nicolás José as the authoritative gure and Toypurina as more of a bystander whose participation was purchased through beads (Hackel 2003).

By using counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling in reading the spaces between and gaps that remain, we can see that Nicolás José relied on Toypurina to gain support for the rebellion. Whether or not she planned or initiated the rebellion should not discount her involvement or serve as a source of disappointment of California feminist and/or activist scholarship. Based on analysis of her testimony, Hackel asserts that Toypurina was involved with the rebellion due to land disposition by both the Spanish colonizers and other Indigenous people who were being moved to Tongva lands (Hackel 2003). In his essay titled “The Rebellion Against the Mission of the Saintly Prince the Archangel, San Gabriel of the Temblors, 1785,” Eric Frith further asserts that, “Toypurina was taking her stand against demographic and ecological compression; the steady undermining of community integrity and stability; and the disruption of a subsistence way of life by a nascent, and growing, commercial political economy” (Frith 2014). By the current day standards, she would be described as a land defender.

Toypurina was not a casualty of a changing time, nor did she play a minor role in the rebellion. While her conviction for her role did not result in her death, she was exiled from the San Gabriel area, sending a message to her people that resistance was not an option in order to stay connected to land and community. She assumed a role of leadership and served as a diplomat between villages, garnering support of the people to rebel against the settler colonial forces that were taking over their lands and resources. This was a direct threat to the heteropatriarchal norms upheld by the mission system. She is remembered across generations of Indigenous peoples through stories as a warrior woman that helped lead her people against settler colonialism, a piece of the ongoing fractal patterns. She also serves as a current day source of inspiration through public art and education described by one mural creator as representing “the ultimate strength, the woman ghter, the mother who protects her children from harm at Ramona Gardens” (John 2014). This community description represents the people and how her memory is carried on—a counter to the settler gaze upheld in dominant discourse, especially in academia.

Bárbara Gandiaga in Resistance to Sexual Violence

As with Toypurina, the settler gaze was used to shape the way in which Bárbara Gandiaga has been remembered in the settler records. Bárbara O. Reyes discusses the settler accounts of Gandiaga, thought of as either Kumeyaay or Pa-ipai, in Private Women, Public Lives: Gender and the Missions of California. Reyes brings forth the only documentation of Gandiaga in settler records during the deliberations about her involvement in the death of two padres at Mission Santo Tomás in Baja California. The settler accounts depict her as a woman pleading for her life and claiming no involvement in the assassination of one of the padres named Eduardo Surroca, a crime for which she was executed for

nonetheless (Reyes 2009). Her posthumous conviction of the assassination of another padre named Miguel Lopéz four months earlier than Surroca’s death is also discussed by Reyes.

I draw from Reyes’ interrogation of the settler records in comparison to the oral histories of Gandiaga and the gendered violence that occurred in the California missions. I agree with Reyes’ assertion that Gandiaga held the selfagency and autonomy to advocate for justice against the padres, likely for acts of violence, despite her containment within the mission walls. Reyes’ deep analysis of testimonies of how Gandiaga’s story was retold by her own people help ll the gaps in the settler records of her motive to be involved with seeking justice. Counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling calls us to listen to these stories. Given she was moved from the monjerío (women’s quarters/nunnery in the missions), which are also well documented sites of sexual violence (Miranda 2013; Rizzo 2020), to a private quarter adjacent to the padres’ sleeping quarters (Reyes 2009), it is not hard to draw the line to what she was subjected to. Sexual violence was prevalent in the missions, and as more stories emerge through the writing of primarily Indigenous women, the more stories like Gandiaga’s can be recovered. Her story is a reminder that settlers controlled the courts, records, and silences to maintain settler control both in their times and to the present day. Today, Gandiaga’s name is added to ever growing murdered and missing Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Sprit people (MMIWG2S+) list, who have been subjected to sexual violence and death due to settler colonial systems and consciousness. The settler colonial system in which she lived controlled the legal system, and even with her own claims to innocence, the story among her people was that she was able to seek justice in her own terms. While she did not kill the padre herself, she was able to gather the support she needed from Indigenous men at the mission in order for the padre to be assassinated. These actions were a direct threat to the settler colonial system, and much like has been done many times by colonizers, fear was used to control the people. Gandiaga was publicly executed alongside two Indigenous men, Lázaro Rosales and Alexandro de la Cruz, also convicted for the death of Surroca (Reyes 2009). The message sent was that if you speak up about violence and seek justice, you will be punished and/or executed. The result was the reinforcement of silence around colonial violence, especially around sexual violence.

Much like Toypurina, examining the fractal realities of Gandiaga’s life, we are able to reproduce accurate accounts of both the ways in which each gure has been discounted in settler records and recorded as not having agency and political autonomy, and yet, work to take back and reimagine the historical record in holistic fashion. In settler records, Gandiaga is framed as jealous woman and/ or as just following the orders of men (Reyes 2009). Even in tourist materials about Baja California, Gandiaga is described as “an Indian domestic” yet also named as instigating the murders of both the padres (Kier, n.d.). Her story is reduced to a single sentence using the settler gaze with a reminder that she was

an Indigenous woman that was supposed to serve her superiors—a contemporary assertion of heteropatriarchal structures. Her resistance to violence and the leadership she assumed with some of the Indigenous men in the mission are turned into a story that label her simply as a murderer that deserved death. The larger narrative constructed by the travel site also reinforce a message the Indigenous women are dangerous, especially since the two men also convicted of the murder of Surroca are not named. Resistance to settler violence is notably more dangerous if Indigenous women are involved.

The Baja California travel site is replicating the same type of public narrative and message that was being sent back in 1806 when Gandiaga was executed: know your place. In the borderlands of Baja California, the current day rates of MMIWG2S+ are not given a statistical number, but they are known as being high. The use of public facing rhetoric is a settler colonial tool of control, especially in this area of Baja California. Reyes writes, “The way in which acts of aggression against her that occurred in the ‘private setting’ were invisible in the colonial judicial proceeding, yet the act of resistance against this oppression was transferred into a public arena and became an opportunity for colonial institutions to exert power over the colonized” (Reyes 2009, 78). Gandiaga was murdered not for killing the padre, but rather for speaking up against violence towards Indigenous bodies. She was murdered by the settler state. Through oral histories, Gandiaga was described as being placed between the two men and higher on the scaffolds when they were executed (Reyes 2009). Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people have been conditioned by settler colonial systems to keep silent about violences that occur in the private setting through fear by these types of public facing assertions of control. While the travel site does not give details, the reminder of what happened to Gandiaga is asserted through the mention of her name alone. Public discourse surrounding speaking up about violences can still have dangerous consequences for Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people. Gandiaga’s story in the larger pattern of fractals of Indigenous feminist resistance is especially important to countering these public discourses related to normalizing sexual violence and murder of Indigenous people.

Yaquenonsat the Matriarch

Much like Bárbara Gandiaga, an Ohlone women named Yaquenonsat, also known as known as Fausta, helped plan the assassination of one of the padres named Quintana without carrying out the killing herself (Rizzo 2020). While this took place a couple years after Gandiaga’s execution and several hundred miles away at Mission Santa Cruz, the assertion of Indigenous women’s leadership and autonomy is present in Yaquenonsat’s story as well. The act of seeking justice for sexual violence is also present. Martin Rizzo discusses Yaquenonsat’s story in conversation with another woman named Yunan that was also involved

with the plan to assassinate Quintana (2020). While this essay focuses on Yaquenonsat, it should be noted that the women involved with leadership and resistance should be viewed as the norm rather than exceptions of the time. Much like Toypurina and Gandiaga’s stories, Yaquenonsat’s story has been hidden due to the settler gaze. Indigenous women are not supposed to resist, and they are especially not supposed to remain free when they do. Countercolonial intergenerational storytelling helps us follow Yaquenonsat’s resistance and leadership within the mission walls.

Unlike Gandiaga, Yaquenonsat was closer to her thirties when she entered mission life. She was a mother and listed as a monja (nun) in the settler records (Rizzo 2020). The settler gaze is used to argue that she was converted and assumed a life of religious servitude. However, I agree with Rizzo that being listed as a monja had less to do with religion as it has to do with political positioning and leadership for women like Yaquenonsat. Her political autonomy as an Indigenous woman coupled with her social positioning pre-mission life afforded her the latitude to use settler roles to assume her existing leadership. Yaquenonsat found a way to navigate the violence and oppressive settler colonial system to continue to exert her position within her Ohlone community while within the mission walls.

Holding a leadership position with both her people and the church gave Yaquenonsat the ability to be in communication with the padres. Quintana was known for his cruelty towards Indigenous people and his violence behavior, including sexual violence (Rizzo 2020). The settler records retell his story as being murdered by Indigenous people and Indigenous oral histories tell his story as being killed in response to raping a young woman, “although historical records remain silent about the particulars” (Rizzo 2020, 309) Like with other settler records, much is missing surrounding the why behind Quintana’s assassination, but the gaps are lled by similar cases and oral histories. The reason for his assassination is not important to the settler records, but how he was killed is especially important to the settler records given the women involved in the planning remained hidden from settler persecution.

The sexual violence in the missions was not included in the settler records, yet it was present. The stories passed down generationally between Indigenous people retold what had happened. In her book Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, Deborah Miranda writes a letter to Vicenta Gutierrez based on the documents left by J.P. Harrington through his interviews with Isabel Meadows and Kitsepawit, also known as Fernando Librado. Meadows documented Vicenta’s rape by one of the padres named José Real at Carmel Mission and Kitsepawit documented the ways in which the priests worked in collaboration with nuns in the monjerios to rape the Indigenous women and girls forced to live in them more broadly (Miranda 2013, 22–23). These powerful retellings by Meadows and Kitsepawit help ll those gaps in the settler records of what was happening to Indigenous people at the hands of the padres. This was counter-colonial

intergenerational storytelling in practice. In her article “ ‘Saying the Padre had Grabbed Her:’ Rape is the Weapon, Story is the Cure,” Miranda also discusses how after Vicenta disclosed the rape, her people sought justice leading Real to ee the mission and repost at the Monterey chapel (Miranda 2010b). Much like a message was sent at Carmel Mission, Yaquenonsat helped send a message that rape is not tolerated in her community—but at Mission Santa Cruz, the padre did not escape.

Yaquenonsat was able to navigate the settler system in the missions through a position of monja that signaled her allegiance to the church through the settler gaze. However, that same positioning allowed her to remain hidden as the church investigated Quintana’s murder nearly a year later. She was not suspected of helping plan the assassination and her people helped keep her name hidden from investigation (Rizzo 2020). She was able to exist in a space between leveraging the settler gaze for the bene t of her people and other Indigenous people at Mission Santa Cruz. Had she been caught, she would likely have faced similar public execution much like Bárbara Gandiaga as a form of fear and control. However, she continued to resist settler control even while contained within the mission walls. Yaquenonsat is part of the fractal pattern of Indigenous women’s resistance tied to the other Ohlone women as well as Toypurina, Gandiaga, Vicenta, Meadows, Kitsepawit, those at the Chumash revolt, and many others who resisted the impacts of the Spanish mission system in California. They are all part of that pattern spiraling from their ancestors to those of us in this generation as we continue the patterns forward to counter the settler colonial systems that are used to control our stories and cultural memories. They all help us escape from the ways in which we have been dominated by the settler gaze.

Breaking Free from the Mission Hold

In relation to how colonizers in positions of dominance and structural power used sexual violence as a tool of control, Miranda writes, “He re-educates the [N]ative woman: whatever she knew about gendered power, relationships between men and women, her own sexual agency and pleasure, has been violently over-written by this new curriculum of violation, submission, and complete lack of choice in the matter” (Miranda 2010b, 95). This domination over our bodies and lands has not only impacted our views of our own histories and places in society, it has shaped how dominant society views us in current times. That re-educating did not just impact Indigenous people, it impacted all people. Scholars have written extensively about the normalization of violence against our lands and bodies. This normalization has also contributed to the MMIWG2S+ crisis. Particularly, “The master narrative tells us that Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people are deserving of violence and are a threat to the colonial nations. Indigenous teachings tell us that our worlds cannot exist without them” (Whitebear 2021). It is

through Indigenous teachings and knowledge systems that we can unravel that re-educating that shaped the master narrative through Indigenous feminisms and Indigenous feminist theories (Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill 2013).

In California, Indigenous women have been resisting the attacks on our lands and bodies, as shown with the three women in this essay. Toypurian, Bárbara Gandiaga, and Yaquenonsat were facing the MMIWG2S+ crisis during their time and found ways to resist and intervene the settler colonial systems that made these violences possible. The passing down of resistance remains necessary in pushing back on the MMIWG2S+ crisis in current times as well. This is how we are part of the fractals and patterns of resistance. A study released by the Urban Indian Health Institute in 2018 listed California as one of the top ten states with large MMIWG2S+ urban case counts (Urban Indian Health Institute 2018). They also reported that about 75 percent of the cases identi ed in their full study did not include Tribal af liation—a re ection of the way the settler gaze has been used to render us as already disappeared. Additionally, the Sovereign Bodies Institute highlights the level of this violence in the California and in their 2021 report listed California as being in the top ve states nationwide with the highest level of MMIWG2S+ cases (Sovereign Bodies Institute 2021). As discussed on their social media, MMIW USA also recognizes the high rates of MMIWG2S+ cases in California as well as the role the Interstate 5 corridor plays in traf cking. They are also furthering this conversation by bringing conversations between MMIWG2S+ cases in México and the United States. The violence is still here—a continuation of that mission hold and the walls of silence the missions build around us. However, our resistance is still here as well. It shows up in ceremonial spaces, in the streets, on the ground doing searches, in the courtrooms, on the oors of senate, and in the classroom reclaiming, resistance, and seeking justice for those touched by colonial violence.

At the time this essay was written, there have been signi cant strides towards addressing the MMIWG2S+ crisis yet there is much work to do. Understanding the historic context to how we have arrived at this point helps us address the root issues. Growing bodies of what may be called Indigenous resistance scholarship are helping us all learn more and make the connections. In California, this violence is not new, nor is the resistance. Counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling can help us look to our stories, like those in this essay, and tie them to where we are in current times and understand how our Indigenous feminist resistance has always been the fractals glowing across generations in resistance to settler colonial violences. Organizations like the Urban Indian Health Institute, Sovereign Bodies Institute, and MMIW USA serve as platforms for our current day warrior women and Two-Spirit people to continue the resistance of the impacts created though the settler gaze. These moments of reclaiming the public narrative of what is acceptable and what is not can help offer healing to Indigenous communities.

We are More than Scattered Pieces

Indigenous ways of knowing, and what I described as counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling, have continued to pass down our truths as Indigenous people despite settler colonial attempts to silence and erase us. They are forms of resistance and a means to carry us forward into future generations. As I have written before, settler records are far from settled and are far from straight, both in terms of time as well as identities represented. This erasure from settler records continues to be used as weapon against us, especially in California mission impacted areas. Public record and settler records have used the settler gaze to decide whether Indigenous people are still “here.” In California, Spain used conversion, forced servitude, and caste in an attempt to erase us. México leveraged similar tactics for its short reign over California along with citizenship. The United States followed using germ warfare and massacre as old tools as well as national citizenship a new tool, leading us to where we are in current times as California Indigenous people in the mission impacted region facing settler records meant to quite literally to erase us. It is through nding ways to look at the “spaces between” that we can critically examine settler records for those often third spaces (Driskill 2016; Pérez 1999) our stories remain hidden safe from the settler gaze. This is where counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling offers a methodology to nd the pieces left behind. In discussing the absence of women from studies of the California missions, Martin Rizzo asserts that, “This absence, which signi es the rst point of these women’s misrepresentation, is obscured by the misconceptions and assumption of histories and the producers of archival documents” (Rizzo 2020, 291). Expanding on Rizzo’s assertion, I bring in the role of the settler gaze in upholding this continued erasure of Indigenous women and Two-Spirit resistance.

Despite the intentional colonial violence and attempts to contain us in the imaginary of who we should be, Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people have continued to resist erasure from the settler records, a continuation of generations of ancestors doing the same. In her book Written by the Body: Gender Expansiveness and Indigenous Non-cis Masculinities, Lisa Tatonetti explains, “Though hegemonic narrators may try to own the narratives of Indigenous warriors and de ne and defame Native peoples in their texts, the expansive ways in which such female-identi ed and gender-variant people inhabit their bodies, lives, and gender roles defy that containment” (Tatonetti 2021, 27). Yet the master narrative constructed through the settler gaze continues to decenter this resistance and continues to normalize violence against our bodies, a way to hold our bodies and identities in a colonial container of where we are supposed to be—a re ection of laws and policies that uphold violence towards us. Much like the mission walls and California Indian auction blocks, this type of violence contributes to the 500+ year crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people. Understanding that these connections are part of

ongoing settler colonial violences is imperative to help us in seeking justice, healing, and restoration for our communities. This essay helps pull pieces of our fractal stories together using counter-colonial intergenerational storytelling in resistance to the settler gaze that has served as the underpinning of these violences by looking for patterns in our stories.

Conclusion

Returning to brown, the term fractals is used to understand patterns. Dominant de nitions of the term end with fractals being able to cause chaos. However, brown writes, “When we speak of systemic change, we need to be fractal. Fractals—a way to speak of the patterns we see—move from the micro to the macro level. The same spirals we see on seashells can be found in the shape of galaxies. We must create patterns they cycle upwards. We are microsystems” (brown 2017, 59). Reading brown’s words, it is no wonder dominant de nitions of fractals bring in chaos as a caution. Chaos can disrupt. Disruption causes pause and an opportunity for change, which threaten systems of oppression. When we see that fractals emerge in our stories, both written and told across generations, we can see not only the replication of the settler gaze across time, we can also see the Indigenous feminist resistance that has always been there—a means to disrupt the settler colonial systems that rely on the settler gaze to keep up contained. Chaos. A word used to instill uneasiness and fear. In the stories presented in this essay, the chaos was necessary. I am in agreement with brown that these fractals can create systemic change. It is our power in recognizing them that the settler colonial systems fear. Indigenous feminists are a continuation of the fractals of the stories that our ancestors lived and an extension of them into the future generations. We are the patterns in the fractals that tell our stories of resistance across time.

Since contact, Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people have been resisting violence to our bodies and lands and have been using settler records to pass this knowledge down to us. As we reach up to them we must remember that, “we are engaged in a very Indigenous practice of: that of storytelling as education, as though-experiment, as community action to right wrong, as resistance to representation as victim” (Miranda 2013, 29). Toypurina, Bárbara Gandiaga, and Yaquenonsat were far from victims and serve as reminders and guides engaging in counter-colonial Indigenous intergenerational storytelling in the continued resistance against settler colonialism as well as the ways in which the settler gaze is used to control our narratives. Isabel Meadows, Kitsepawit, and Maria Solares remind us of the power of story and of ensuring we pass these stories down to counter the dominant narrative. They chose the stories to pass down to us in resistance to being erased to ensure they would be heard today. They are our fractals and guides we can gaze back at to recognize the patterns we see today. Miranda writes, “the story of sexual violence against women was a constant

and brutal element of reconquista, and in this history, Indian women are always documented as victims” (Miranda 2013, 96). We will no longer be conquered/ reconquered or documented as victims. We are resisters, survivors, leaders, and warriors. It is through our stories we will continue to reach through the cracks in the settler records across generations to coalesce a healing story together.

Luhui Whitebear is an enrolled member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation with Huestec and Cochimi ancestry. She is an assistant professor in the School of Language, Culture, and Society (Indigenous Studies) at Oregon State University. Her research interests include California Indigenous histories/current day issues, Indigenous feminisms, and Indigenous rhetorics. Luhui is also a mother, poet, and activist engaged in community-based work.

Notes

1. This theory and methodology is grounded in my experiences with intergenerational Indigenous activism and was developed during my doctoral research.

2. While there is signi cant scholarship related to the “disappearing Indian” and “people of the past,” erasure through settler records is what is being discussed in this section, particularly that of Indigenous feminist resistance in California.

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