Weshoyot Alvitre
“Our Creation story begins here.
A circle formed from the clay.
A ring forever tying us to the land.
A gathering place.
PUVUNGNA.
What they are doing now is mindless.
Coming onto our lands,
Capturing our water,
At Rancho Los Alamitos was mindless.
Building a university,
A place of education,
And not acknowledging
Our history of thousands
Upon thousands of years
Is mindless.
They are without minds.
Only beings without minds
can be capable of such
desecration.
Open land is bait for development.
They want to devour the flesh
Of our mother.
They are like coyote-
Like Eyacque.
Eyoton.
Thief.
Ano.
Imagine if time were to freeze-
-imagine if Eno did not steal from Quiot.
Where would we be?
As people of the earth still-
White clay in our mouths in prayer.
When we became
Like humans we
Learned to build.
Thatched homes of
Willow and tulle,
In the style of children:
Of ripe womb, round
And with openings
At the top to connect
Us to the stars-
To the creator.
And to Chinigchchinich.
In his last months,
Moyla Xwayyaant Mukat,
Ouiot requested to be
Taken to healing
Waters which run
Beneath the lands and
Connect them like arteries.
He did not speak often.
His voice was scarce and husky.
He was thinking hard about the groups of races of beings
Needed for the people to survive.
He was enchanted
By red legged
frog woman.
-WAHAWUT-
He watched her as she sat along the lakes edge.
She refused to swim.
Her long hair
Covered her back
But as she stood up,
His lust waned.
She heard his thoughts and
Vowed to poison him.
And so she did.
And Ouiot fell ill,
Preparing to die.
Ouiot was frail
And died in the
month of Tawnuyil Mukat
-big white month-
July.
His people were soon summoned
and they gathered at Puvungna.
So many came to the gathering
That the land could not contain them.
His funeral bundle was prepared in the most careful of ways.
Elderberry water washed his sparce belongings.
A pole was erected
High into the sky,
Like a swing tethered to the other worlds.
Patterns of the worlds above
And the worlds below
Were made in the sand
in the world we know.
White clay was used:
Covering the grounds
Like sacred snow.
White clay was placed
In the hair of all who attended.
The sun made halos
On the heads
Of all beings.
The land shone.
Smoke rose from
the fire like a dragon.
Eno came.
He leaped.
He bit.
But he could not reach
his fathers hearts
to steal.
The flames were too much
And the people came with sticks
To protect their father
As he interred.
Eno leapt away,
His fur was scorched
And covered in ash.
To this day his fur
Is singed from
Ouiot’s funerary pyre.
Today the land
Is overgrown with eucalyptus, scrub oaks,
And invasive weeds.
Non-Native plants
And dried, cut grass
Almost makes us forget
How beautiful we must have been.
How fertile and healthy
We once were…
How lovely we are.
The shells poke through the
Tired dirt, remnants and
Reminders that it was sacred ground.
That it is sacred ground.
As it will always be.
The legend of the land
Is often unknown: even
By it’s own people.
It’s scattered and
Fragmented like
Shell midden-
-like our oral history-
Like out language
Like our tribe
Like our grasps on sovereignty-
We remain.
We are wild
like the land.
We will always be
The earth underfoot.
No matter what weight
Is placed on our backs-
-no matter what they try
To build to stifle us-
-we will shake it off
Like water-
Like our mother
Does when she quakes-
We are ‘People of the earth’.
Tongva.
The earth always returns to itself;
Its original state.
The red ties
ornament the trees
letting visitors know these
are not just trees.
Red ochre
Is hard to find these days
Cotton is not
Traditional-
But neither are
Eucalyptus-
We have to reclaim
What we can after
Losing so much.
The trees are like us:
Our roots latched
To the earth mother
-TAMAAYAWUT_
To survive.
We are misfits.
Our DNA from across the seas,
Nourished by a mother who does not judge
Our foreign bark
And tree sap.
We are merely children
Grasping to hold onto whatever
Life we know.
The land will not let us perish.
It is not that cruel
Tamaayawut will not let us die.
We, as mix-blood children,
Products of love,
Products of rape,
Seeds from the Spanish stock and foreigners
-are still here today,
Surviving despite
Our biodiversity being varied-
-mixed
-half blood
-mulato
-mestizo
-indian-
Outside our control.
Sling our hearts
Over and over
Across this land
You mow over.
Tread our bones
And carelessly crush them
So carefully buried
-So carelessly crushed-
Like shell midden.
The things we treasure
Are not hard, long lasting.
They do not burden us like gold
Or other material wealth.
Instead they soften,
Absorb,
Turn to dust so we may breathe
Them in,
So they may plant themselves in our lungs
To our blood,
To our hearts.
Our families are not ghosts
They’re still on this land
Just in different form.
Intangible:
We will slip
From your hands.
The ancient ones watch
And discuss in soft
Buzzing and gentle breezes
Our language drifts
In and out of the branches
Like soft wings.
And when they are angry
The air becomes dizzy
And the grounds open
And shake.
The vibrations of the land
Then become bitter on the tongue,
But tasty in that way in which
memories are triggered.
When it gets dark,
And the sun’s soft glow
Disappears from the soft earth,
A presence settles on the land.
What a place to behold
Before the light pollution
Stole it’s still demeanor
And unmoving nuance.
The starlight would coat
the lands in the most
careful hues…
The moonlight would
Illuminate mothers curves
And crevices…
And the darkness would
Swallow us all back to
Another time-
But the same place.
Seeds would ride the
Warm winds and settle,
Heavy acorns would fall
Be nourished by their mothers
And take root
At their feet.
Our minds and bodies
So injured
Over so short a time
Could heal.
Imagine what that
could feel like?
Imagine who we could
Return to be?
I try to catch these thoughts,
These small tufts of memories,
Floating in the thick air
Over Puvungna,
Like seeds from our
Ancestors prayers.
The land is ripe.
We just need to remember…
The land is here
We just need to remember…
That the now
Is the past.
The present
Is the ever was.
Prayers for Puvungna.”
—Weshoyot Alvitre
Weshoyot Alvitre is a female author and illustrator from the Tongva tribe of Southern California. She currently resides with her husband and two children on Ventureno Chumash Territory in Ventura, California. Her work focuses on an Indigenous lens and voice on projects from children’s books to adult market graphic novels. She has recently been published as artist in “GHOSTRIVER: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga” graphic novel from Red Planet Books, ABQ. in collaboration with the Library Company of Philadelphia; “At The Mountains Base” written by Traci Sorell, Kokila; and was Art Director on the video game “When Rivers Were Trails.” She enjoys spinning yarn and collecting antiques.
Curator's Note
Weshoyot makes her own paper and ink. The materials for the piece are cotton, wool, and tobacco.

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