Weshoyot Alvitre is a Tongva and Scottish comic book artist, writer and illustrator. She was born in the Santa Monica Mountains on the property of Satwiwa, a cultural center started by her father Art Alvitre. She grew up close to the land and was raised with traditional knowledge that inspires the work she does today. Weshoyot has been working in the comics medium for over 15 years. Her work focuses on art and writing that visualizes historical material through an Indigenous lens. She has also contributed art responses to contemporary Indigenous issues using pop-culture, sci-fi and archival research materials to spark conversations and re-frame colonial narratives.
Her work has been featured in the anthologies of Moonshot Volumes 2 and 3, Deerwoman: An anthology, Imminent Cuisine the Zine, and Marvel Voices: Indigenous Voices. Alvitre has also received numerous awards for her children’s book illustrations in ‘At The Mountains Base’ (Kokila 2019) and ‘Living Ghosts & Mischievous Monsters’ (Scholastic 2021). Alvitre’s current projects ‘Toypurina: Our Lady of Sorrows’ and ‘Lone’ focus on the re-telling of stories from her own tribal community, using historical fact, primary accounts and tribal knowledge to provide fuller representation of those from her Tongva history.
Alvitre has made a conscious choice to work primarily within Native-owned publications and educational avenues, to further support a self-funded narrative on past, present and future native issues.