Please sign the petition below, in support of Indigenous Californians who are at this moment on a walk to draw awareness to the crimes against their people by the mission system founded by Junípero Serra. He was no saint! All of you who have liked posts in support of Native rights, sovereignty, and against genocide, this is a place where you can make your voice count!
The Tongva medicine woman Toypurina, of Japchavit ranchería, led a rebellion at San Gabriel Mission in what would later be Los Angeles. [Notice that it is built like a fortress!] She recruited six villages, joined by two others, to join in overthrowing the mission on Oct 25, 1785; but some convert betrayed their plan to the priests, who set soldiers to ambush them, and all were captured and imprisoned for three years.
A Spanish document Ynterrogatorio de la india gentil ("Interrogation of the pagan Indian woman") relates of the young medicine woman, "She was unarmed... she came to animate their will to fight." After three years, they exiled Toypurina to a Spanish base in Monterrey (which says something about how threatened they were by her) but released the male warriors, after flogging them with 20-25 lashes. Antonia I. Castañeda explains, "This punishment was levied as much for following the leadership of women as for rebelling against Spanish domination. On sentencing them, Fages stated that their public whippings were 'to serve as a warning to all,' for he would 'admonish them about their ingratitude, underscoring their perversity and unmasking their deceitful tricks by which they allowed themselves to be dominated by the aforesaid woman.' "
Castañeda goes on to make this very important point: "Precisely because historical documents portray both Toypurina and the Chumash visionary of 1801 as 'witches and sorceresses,' we need to understand witchcraft within gendered relations of power in the Spanish /European world..." Truly. And this applies not only to Jeanne d'Arc and the European witch hunts generally, but also to the babaylan / catalonan in the Philippines, reinterpreted as "witches" and "devil-ridden old women" by Spanish colonials. Same constructs deployed in Africa, Peru, and across the European empires for centuries.
More info on the Tongva medicine woman Toypurina, of Japchavit ranchería, who led a rebellion at San Gabriel Mission in what would later be Los Angeles. She recruited six villages, joined by two others, to join in overthrowing the mission on Oct 25, 1785; but some convert betrayed their plan to the priests, who set soldiers to ambush them, and all were captured and imprisoned for three years. A Spanish document Ynterrogatorio de la india gentil ("Interrogation of the pagan Indian woman") relates of the young medicine woman, "She was unarmed... she came to animate their will to fight." After three years, they exiled Toypurina to a Spanish base in Monterrey (which says something about how threatened they were by her) but released the male warriors, after flogging them with 20-25 lashes. Antonia I. Castañeda explains, "This punishment was levied as much for following the leadership of women as for rebelling against Spanish domination. On sentencing them, Fages stated that their public whippings were 'to serve as a warning to all,' for he would 'admonish them about their ingratitude, underscoring their perversity and unmasking their deceitful tricks by which they allowed themselves to be dominated by the aforesaid woman.' "
Castañeda goes on to make this very important point: "Precisely because historical documents portray both Toypurina and the Chumash visionary of 1801 as 'witches and sorceresses,' we need to understand witchcraft within gendered relations of power in the Spanish /European world..." Truly. And this applies not only to Jeanne d'Arc and the European witch hunts generally, but also to the babaylan / catalonan in the Philippines, reinterpreted as "witches" and "devil-ridden old women" by Spanish colonials. Same constructs deployed in Africa, Peru, and across the European empires for centuries.
Source: "Engendering the History of Alta California, 1769-1848: Gender, Sexuality, and the Family, in Contested Eden: California Before the Gold Rush, U of California Press, 1997.
Time to show solidarity for Indigenous people, in California, in the US, in North America, in all the Americas, all over the world. - Max Dashu
Urge Pope Francis to abandon the canonization of Junipero Serra
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