Ernest P. Salas Teutimes

Toypurina: The Joan of Arc of California, by Ernest P. Salas Teutimes, Andrew Salas, Christina Swindall Martinez, and Gary Stickel, is a book written and published by Native Americans ancestral to the Los Angeles area. Stickel is an archaeologist who has worked in the L.A. area for decades. The other three are members of the Kizh/Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians, one of several Gabrielino groups trying to achieve federal recognition. Stickel is their Tribal archaeologist, and Ernest Salas Teutimes is their Spiritual Leader and Chief, Andrew Salas is Chairman, and Christina Swindall Martinez is Secretary.

The Gabrielino were the Native American group living in the Los Angeles Basin and surrounding areas when the Spanish came. Most believe their ancestral name was Tongva, although these writers and their Tribe disagree, believing it was Kizh. They are known as Gabrielino because that is the name the Spanish gave them when they began to missionize them at Mission San Gabriel Arcangel.

Toypurina tells the story of a Gabrielino woman shaman who lead a revolt against the Spanish in 1785. She would have been only about 25 at the time. The authors draw parallels between her and St. Joan of Arc, but fortunately the work focuses on Toypurina rather than St. Joan.

The book is focused on Toypurina's revolt, and is follows academic protocol, ably citing sources. Although often speculative, it is firmly grounded in fact, and backs everything up with sources. But it is not simply a historic work on the revolt; in fact, in many ways it is the opposite of that. The authors do give the basic facts of the revolt and point the reader to the academic histories. But the the thrust of the book is actually a Gabrielino-Kizh critique of these histories. "With this work, we, the Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians-Kizh Nation are writing a new kind of history for us -- our own history." The work begins with a fifteen-page description of Gabrielino culture, from the Gabrielino perspective.

The book is published by the Kizh Tribal Press (itself an achievement), and is handsomely bound. The book can be ordered ($15 + shipping) from the Kizh Tribal Press.… (meer)