Indigenizing California Mission Art and Architecture

Examines how native artists kept their culture alive by creatively adapting under colonial rule

Between 1769 and 1823, the Franciscans established twenty-one missions in California, colonizing the ancestral territories of many Native communities between present-day Sonoma and San Diego. In Indigenizing California Mission Art and Architecture, Gabrieleno Tongva scholar Yve Chavez highlights how these communities preserved their cultural practices amid colonial oppression. Rooted in Chavez’s ancestral homeland and the neighboring Chumash region in coastal Southern California, her book focuses on Mission San Gabriel, Mission San Buenaventura, and Mission Santa Barbara. Recasting these sites as spaces of Native cultural heritage, Yve Chavez examines how Indigenous artists resisted assimilation while accommodating foreign ideas into their established practices.

Drawing on Indigenous knowledge and art historical research of performance and regalia, basketry, sculpture, and architecture, Chavez demonstrates how Native artists navigated colonial power structures, ensuring the survival of their customs during the mission era and beyond. Rather than replacing Indigenous identity, the missions became spaces through which Native people asserted their connection to the landscape and its resources. This analysis not only recasts mission art and architecture within an Indigenizing framework but also serves as a vital resource for understanding the ongoing significance of these sites for the descendants of mission survivors.

Yve Chavez (Gabrieleno Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians) is assistant professor of art history at the University of Oklahoma. She is coeditor of Visualizing Genocide: Indigenous Interventions in Art, Archives, and Museums.