Exploring my Indigenous, Chicana roots

Referenced during this podcast:

- "1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Colombus" by Charles Mann
- "The Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs" by Camilla Townsend
- "Braiding Sweetgrass" by Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Tales From Aztlantis (podcast)

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Transcript

Bernardette 1:07

It has been so long. So, so long. So hopefully if you're tuning back in. Welcome back I'm back. It's been a crazy month. If you're new. Hello, thank you so much for. Listening to my previous episodes. If you haven't, you should probably go back and listen to them because they do all sort of build on one another. And I just want to say that life really got in the way of me recording and. Uh, I think it happens to a lot of people. And so I'm back and I have content and I have some exciting. Interviews that I'm working on. And so I'm just going to jump right into today's episode. And say that I'm so happy to be recording and so excited to record this episode and get it live. During this kind of crazy holiday season. I don't know how many of you had this happen to you, but we had Thanksgiving and then got the flu. And so for the past 10 days, I have been pretty thick. Um, and I am just now starting to feel well and starting to feel like myself and my kids are back in their routines and we are starting to kind of. Normalize a little bit from a kind of a rough. Flew encounter. So if you haven't gotten vaccinated, Get vaccinated because it was really bad. And I, I know lots of people. I was one of those in the distant past before I had kids where I just said, you know, I don't really ever get the flu, so I probably don't need to get vaccinated. And I have to tell you that this. Flew experience humbled me. I was vaccinated. I'm a pretty healthy person and I had 104.3 temperature. And I just have not felt right for about 10 days. And it's only just been the last. Day or two that I've been able to really kind of take up my old habits and my old routine. So that being said, wear your masks. Take your echo Neisha and your elderberry syrup. And each are fermented vegetables. Drink, lots of tea and stay hydrated. And get those vaccinations folks. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and just jump into what I've been working on for the past few weeks. And let's keep this podcast ball rolling. Uh, as we go through this holiday season. And to the darkness of your, and really get into the dark and sort of internal time and interior time of the winter coming up in January. So here we go. Let's kick off this episode. And I hope that you all. Stay well through this holiday season. Sending you guys, lots of energy and lots of healing and lots of luck and dodging this year as viruses. The story of how I got here in this life in this moment is the accumulation of what came before. Where my children go after this and whether their children and children's children have a fruitful and peaceful future. Partially depends. On me understanding as much as I can. The threads of history, macro and micro that are directing and impacting my life. It's also important for me to understand for my own spiritual wellbeing. I spent the last 42 years going along with the idea that my identity was what other people told me. That my voice and my art and my expression required others to understand them. And approve of them. Instead of really going within myself and asking what the past has brought into my present. And how I can use it to actively shape my future. So part of that story, part of the story of who I am and how I became and came to this place. Is my dad's family story. And my dad's family on both sides. Is Mexican and mostly indigenous. I want to say that our experience is not the experience of every Mexican immigrant family or indigenous Mexican family. But I'm sure that there are going to be elements that are familiar to many others. So first, a quick digression for the purposes of explaining some of my terminology. I will usually use indigenous in preference to Latino or Hispanic when I'm speaking of people of partly or mostly indigenous descent. Because both Latino and Hispanic to find the people of the Americas in the context of their colonizers. And both terms were deliberately. They were deliberately. Uh, formulated. To erase indigenous identity. So, if I'm talking about people from a specific country who may or may not have indigenous identity, I'll just use their ethnicity. For example, Colombian or Chilean, I will use Chicano or Chicana specifically to speak about descendants of primarily indigenous Mexican people who live in the United States and are first, second or third generation. And I will also switch between native, native, American and Indian. When talking about native and indigenous folks from north America, since all of those terms are used variously by the communities themselves in. Different situations. So. This is obviously a tricky territory. Upfront. I want to apologize if I use a term in correctly. And I'm always open to correction and to. Um, suggestions on how to better refer to people in communities in a ways. That they feel comfortable, um, while acknowledging that no community is a monolith. So the science of epigenetics tells us that the stress is experienced by mothers. And grandmothers show up in their descendants. Uh, famine war oppression, violence, sexual, and physical violence and abuse. Et cetera. All of those stressors impact the physical and mental health of descendants. And I've come to believe that my own struggles with mental health, including body dysmorphia, disordered eating clinical depression. Uh, anxiety, questionable substance use and self harm are inextricably bound up with the history of my ancestors and the reverberations of their trauma through the generations. I know that these struggles and others more profound have affected other members of my dad's family as well. Over the past few years, I also realized that if I'm not more self-aware and responsible about spiritual housekeeping, I can create an echo chamber of that intergenerational trauma for my children. Rather than a safe Harbor and a place to celebrate the blessings that our ancestors persistence and strength have brought us. Broadly speaking, my indigenous ancestors and those of all people who descend from natives and the Americas are survivors. Of cultural and physical genocide. That is still ongoing. So it's physically happening in places like Brazil and other places where native people still living their traditional lives are being deliberately targeted and killed. It's culturally and spiritually happening in the United States where the dominant white European culture. He continues to break treaties with native tribes with zero compunction while suppressing the reality of American genocide. So they have successfully made people think that native Americans are all dead. Don't tell me, you've never heard anyone talk about native Americans in the past tense. And there are multiple major museums as I see this. With exhibits curated by native people that are basically titled we're still here. So I can't speak to the political situation. In Mexico. But I know that there are similar issues there with rampant discrimination and racism toward indigenous people. Economic oppression, et cetera. In a way, talking about my great-grandmother Kate. And my grandpa, Ralph, uh, and that side of the family is easier. Both because we had more oral connection and understanding of the story of that side of my family in, because I think that the history of racism toward black Americans is very much in the public eye. Even if that visibility has not resulted in the kind of restorative justice that black Americans deserve. Even if white Americans are sort of like, oh yeah. Okay. Well, sir, there was a lot of racism in the past. And they kind of dismiss it in the current day. At least the conversation is brought up over and over and over again. Uh, in my opinion, The history and the complexities of native American history. Chicano and indigenous identity are much less discussed. And if they are, it's usually through the lens of immigration. And economics. So when pundits and right-wing voters and the media. Kind of clutch their pearls, but immigration. They're specifically worried about brown people, about native people from Mexico, from central America coming into the United States. So many Americans are still surprised when they realize that there's a sizeable population of pale-skinned light haired, mainly European descended Mexicans living south of the border, or even that there are Mexicans whose ancestors were brought over as slaves from Africa to, rather than a nationality Mexican in the United States is frequently used as a shorthand for race and in the process, it's erased a lot of other identities. It's applied to people from all different central and south American nationalities and tribal Heritage's, it's applied to pretty much any brown skinned black haired person, so that even native people. Who are from parts of what is now called the United States. There were never even a part of Mexico or other countries in central and south America. Are told to go back from where you came. So similar to the discussion within the black community over blackness and the intersection of skin and color and identity. There is sometimes ferocious disagreement between north American native people and she Ganos or other indigenous people from central or south America over who gets, gets quote, unquote to be. Native American in the United States. Now for sure. The unique on complicated development. I have reservations Indian boarding schools, the federal Indian registry system, and those their impact on native identity, family dynamics, tribal membership, mental health spirituality. Economic opportunity, et cetera, is never, ever covered in popular culture in the detail that it deserves. I hope to have guests on in the future. Who can talk in a more informed way than I can about the spiritual experience of Indians in north America and how they're struggling or not with their identity as the colonial and legally imposed definitions of native. Bump up against the realities of love of children in the complexities of modern life. However. For the purposes of this episode, I simply want to point out. That the question of identity. And who gets to be native, who gets to call themselves indigenous. Directly impacts the spiritual journey of people like myself, who through the currents of history, genocide, and the movement of people due to war and poverty. Our farm moved from our tribal structure, language and spiritual system. A lot of native religious practices are closed. Rightly. So they're closed to outsiders and they're so immeshed with culture and language. That to separate them is like tearing apart a tapestry and then trying to figure out the design from the threads in front of you. So when we decide to look back at our ancestral practices, how do we navigate the Gulf between. Who our people were and who we are now, hundreds of years later. And in some cases, hundreds or thousands of miles from their ancestral lands. And I think there are some people who might ask. Why bother, why try and pick out some of their values and possibly worship their gods. To which I would respond that native people on this continent had their own diverse philosophies and poetry. They're stories of bravery and cowardice creation and purpose, their stories were drowned in blood and fire by the conquest. Bye bye disease. Um, by genocide. But they, and their descendants persisted. And my people and the other native people of the Americas had knowledge worth having and stories worth honoring on par with those of any inches civilization. Fundamentally, I believe that their spiritual teachings and the role of people. Uh, their spiritual teachings about the role of people in the world. The fluid and cyclical nature of time. Our relationship to the living world and our spiritual responsibility to the other beings that share our world are critically important. During this time of climate apocalypse. Also not to pursue an understanding and a familiarity with my ancestors feels like acquiescing to the cultural genocide that destroyed so much. So on any one of the topics. That have touched on and will continue to, to discuss, uh, could be, and probably have been the subjects of people's master's thesis. These are extremely complicated historical and political topics that I'm addressing. Glancingly in order to aluminate my internal journey into reclaiming my indigenous identity. And forming my own spiritual identity without misappropriating Northern native American culture. Uh, much credit for any of this information goes to reading braiding Sweetgrass by Robin wall. Kimmer 1491 by Charles Mann and the fifth son. A new history of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend. Also a lot of really new and good information came from listening to the tales from Atlantis. Podcast. Uh, put on by curly eighth lap. Oh, I, uh, and Ruben out again. Excuse me. That's Ruben. Out of the history of migrate grandma. Oh, so. So to pull it in and just say the history of my great-grandmother. But on Ceto like so many indigenous people in Mexico is a story of dislocation for one reason or another. Born in 1889, she was orphaned at six and moved to a home where she was at best, a poor relation. And at worst exploited child labor. After she married the only Stovall. Vasquez. They were likely displaced or moved perhaps to seek better economic circumstances, perhaps also because the Mexican civil war was raging during the early 20th century. And in the United States, they were very likely discriminated against and use this cheap labor. It wasn't safe in the United States. Um, it's important to remember that in the late 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds, indigenous Mexicans were lynched in the west and the Southwest. And according to the bare bones of my family's, story that I know that I have access to. They moved back and forth across the border numerous times. And this free movement echoes the story of their ancestors earlier in history in the 16 and 17 hundreds, Spanish colonizers used as tech and Michigan soldiers to conquer and oppress the people, the Southwest. And even before that, Uh, the Mashika had actually moved south into Mexico from what is now the American Southwest. And several waves over hundreds and thousands of years, settling in developing cities and city states. Um, Aslan the mythical birthplace of Michigan identity. Was a story even before the Michigan empire rose to prominence in central Mexico. And as Camilla Townsend says in the fifth son, even before there was a Mashika empire. Aslan was used to represent the communal memory of homes left long ago. And so I find it interesting that modern day, Chicano and Mexican American activists use it in much the same way. Um, you'll see. T-shirts you'll see banners. You'll see. Lots of, um, Are dedicated to the idea of us law. Of reviving us line of bringing it back. Uh, in some way. And so it's interesting because I think as we'll hear, when I interview my father, his generation, the one who developed the political term Chicano. Felt this sense of dislocation and displacement. Very strongly. They were aware that they weren't Indian. Uh, they weren't Mexican, but they also weren't fully American. So. I decided to tell the story with T-to as a starting point for the very unscientific reason that I spent more time with my grandmother Bessie her daughter. Then with my grandfather's family who lived mostly in Mexico. Um, Though with not someone I heard a lot about, she passed away before I was born when my dad was young and frankly, Our family story has some uncertainties on a lot of holes in it. Even her maiden name of Nettie might not be her real maiden name. Oral family tradition is that she was born in Arizona and that she was a patchy. 23 and me ancestry.com though has a conflicting family history telling me she was born in quit. I'm auto in Mexico. Although I can't find her. So although I can find her civil marriage, registration, and documents from border crossings that have this information, I can't find any birth certificate for her. Um, she married 18. She had nine children. And the family moved back and forth across the border, working for the railroad and also as migrant farm workers. At one point my father said my grandmother remembers that they were rich. Quote unquote and owned a couple of houses. But then my great grandfather fell during his work on the railroad. And after languishing for a year, he died. So after that they lost their homes and whatever financial security they had, and they worked as migrant farm workers. Sometimes in bad times, just cutting firewood to sell by the fire by the road. Uh, some of my great-grandmother's children were born in Mexico. Some like my grandmother were born in the United States. And I think for rich, the imagined artistic taste of what it might've been like for my grandmother and her siblings in the United States during that time. I strongly urge you. Uh, as readers or as listeners to this podcast to read the book, rain of gold by Victor V S and your. Um, it paints a really evocative. Image of what California and Texas and Arizona. Would have felt like around the turn of the century for Mexican American immigrant families. Um, after a long time of moving around. After work. Uh, due to the generosity of the groups or farming family and Gilroy. Um, my great grandmother and her children were able to settle down in one town. And that's where my grandmother met my grandfather and where my father and his siblings were born. Whenever I think about my dad's family, I really feel my grandmother's spirit and my grandmother's presence. Very strongly. I can feel her thin soft skin of her hands with the bones kind of stark underneath them. And knuckles increasingly swollen with arthritis is the years past. I smell her oil of Olay face cream. Religiously applied every day. And I see the pink and rose colored lipsticks. She wore. I can feel the stitching on her sweater. And her soft body pressing against my face. When she gave me a hug, when I was a child. I see her standing at a counter and making dozens and dozens of tortillas for the packs of cousins running wild through the house. Or stirring a giant stockpot full over famous green Chile. I hear her praying the rosary sometimes in long sessions that would bring the whole family together. With the kids having to do shifts of praying the rosary in her bedroom. As she got older and after my grandfather died, she spent more time in bed watching old movies and sometimes after school cartoons. With me and my sister. We lived with her for a couple of years. When we moved back to California, after my father finished his medical school residency. And we visited frequently after that, even when we got our own house. And I could probably draw the outline of her house from memory actually. Uh, she and my grandfather had purchased that house through an incredible amount of determination and hard work on their part and the part of my aunts and uncles and my father. As he was growing up. Um, first and you went in. The entry hall had light brown tile and to the left, there was a sitting room with smooth green carpet and wide windows looking out on the streets. It was a room that hardly got used except for holidays. And it was decorated with these ranks of fancy Barbie dolls and other dolls carefully arranged on low shelves. And further down the entry hall, you went into the darker living room with modeled brown carpet and a rarely used fireplace. TV and sliding glass door to a courtyard. And in between the two. Uh, connecting the square, the busiest room of the house and the beating heart of family gatherings, the kitchen and the dining room. Both of them, actually, all of them were invariably spotless, no matter what my grandmother had made or how many people had been over. Branching off from the entry hall. There were three bedrooms and two bathrooms toward the back of the house. Her bedroom was a sanctuary and a retreat. Down a short walk on carpet covered in thick plastic to protect it. It was a kind of a sacred space where grandchildren could pile on the bed and snuggle with her, where we watched then her and Cleopatra. Even sometimes after school cartoons that she probably didn't like, but we did. There was the smiling face of white Jesus on the wall, the small card of the. Kinda where the loop bit tucked into her dresser, mirror and other Catholic touches everywhere. My grandmother was a devout Catholic. And she prayed the rosary daily and made more than weekly trips to the local church for various community activities when she was healthy and more active. She was small, but really large in personality, or maybe that was just being a small person myself when it spent most of my time with her. My grandfather died shortly before we moved in with her. And he was a very hardworking man. Uh, kind of a tough man with hard hands. And allowed laugh and he smoked cigarettes and. Yeah. I had a very, very big personality. And I don't know if it was family trauma, uh, because his FA his family does have some violent connections. Uh, maybe distance. Most of them were in Mexico. Or just the busy-ness of an immigrant family. But when I was growing up, there were not a lot of stories about my grandfather's family, even though some of them did eventually make it to the United States and they did live in California. Um, they didn't really visit us that much in Gilroy. That I remember they kept kind of separate from my grandmother's basket, his family. And we lived in a town full of my grandmother's cousins and family and her siblings. Uh, my grandparents and their older kids work their way from farm workers to restaurant owners. Um, my dad was pretty small and my grandfather started his restaurant, but they all still worked at the cannery as he was growing up. And they did other work to get by and to support the family. So I think that kind of work doesn't really leave a lot of time for nostalgia and stories that the past. And also, although I know there was a lot of love. I know there was also a lot of physical violence in my grandparents' home, where my father was growing up and they were really serious problems with gang involvement. Alcohol and drugs, both in my father's immediate and also extended family. And there are a lot of jokes in popular culture about Mexicans and drinking. And certainly I think that culturally, there's almost a lot of pride about the drinking and in some ways, pride about being tough. Not taking any shit, you know, fighting physically with anyone who fucks with you or your family. You know, And I have to give credit to my dad. I think he really tried to keep us tied to my family, to his family. But also kind of protected as much as he could from the very real possibility of getting swept up in some of the violence. That was a part of my family. And that affected a lot of my cousins. So honestly, I think that if I had been a boy, things may have been much harder for him. And although the violence never directly touched me. It was frequently lurking in the corners and running under in between conversations. You know, a shadow of possibility. And sort of an unspoken counterpoint to a lot of people's problems. Um, that they struggled with. And I watched and I listened as it swept many of my cousins up in this grip and even, you know, brushed pretty close to my sister. Um, I spent a lot of my time with my head buried in a book. And so I really. Didn't. I didn't engage with it a lot. But I think that if you grew up in a family where your cousins and your aunts and your uncles and your extended family, I do have truly dangerous people. In them and involved with them. The awareness of that seeps in. And so it's interesting because I told my mom that, you know, everyone has this stereotypical image, you know, of the west coast Bato. Super hardcore, you know, cholo. And that it's funny. It's people. Well, it's not funny, but people. People are like, oh, well, Mexicans aren't like that. And I'm like, well, For me, they are. That's that's my family. That's, that's what my family looked like. You know, like Baptists. you know, like it was not. There are some stories that I would tell, but I don't really want to put our business out like that on a podcast because that's people don't. There's just some stories you don't put on recordings, but anyways, so. It's just strange because people have certain stereotypes about Chicanos, about Mexicans, about Mexican American families. And. Even though that's definitely not every Mexican American. Um, A lot of it was my family. So it's, it's a little strange, um, But I think it's obvious to me now that I'm older and I have more distance that the drinking and the violence. Uh, in my extended family and my community. Is a result of cultural and historical trauma. Um, the distrust of non-family members that I grew up absorbing the idea. I think, I remember my dad saying this, that friends come and go, but that family is forever. And no matter what, you always help family. And I think that just shows how deeply my family is traumatized by cycles of violence, poverty, and oppression. I mean, even the depth and fervency of my grandmother's uh, faith. Like so many other Mykonos. Um, has roots in the brutality of disease and flames of conquest is swept through the Americas when the Spanish arrived. Um, In reading 1491 and the fifth son, I was constantly reminded of how much I allowed both racism and romanticization to cloud my perception of my ancestors and their faith and the complexities of their life. Um, Racism because I was pretty astonished to learn and reading those books. Of the tens of millions of people who lived in the Americas and the richness and sophistication of the indigenous cultures across north central and south America. Uh, racism also because I had accepted a narrative that devastated. Native communities had only been forced into accepting Catholicism and Spanish rule. Instead. Of realizing that even as people's worlds crumbled around them, Uh, because of instability caused by plague. Um, you know, by just the shock of such a different group of people invading and coming in. That they were still people, um, that they had options and they took them and they exercise them that some genuinely converted, you know, maybe feeling abandoned by their gods. Some accepted the new political reality and worked within it to gain power and influence, you know, using the new kind of as much as they could, you know, using their new. Structure to gain stability and, and, and. Uh, And support for their families. Uh, some welcomed Spanish rule because they hated the Mashika. Uh, others rebelled and resisted many. I'm sure it just put their heads down and tried to feed their families and survive, whatever that took. So romanticizing also, because I had wanted to overemphasize the nobility of the Aztec empire. Instead of recognizing the complexity of both the way that the empire rose. Uh, through pretty brutal war and through, uh, you know, a systematic form of taking captives and human sacrifice and the brutality that went with that in hand-in-hand with the poetry and the beauty. So I think there's a strong tendency in Chicano mythmaking to idealize the Michigan empire, to the point of denying that there was ritualized and regular human sacrifice. Or even saying stuff like the Michigan we're really vegan. And they also didn't kill people, both of which are totally false. And I think accepting the complex reality that our indigenous ancestors. Where people with the same vices and tendencies, that is all of our inheritance is important in healing ourselves and our communities. And I think it's also important to find out. What, how did they keep those vices and tendencies in check? What were the moral structures that they put in place? In their communities and how they related to the land and to other people and to themselves. And what were their conceptions of an honorable life. And. And a well lived life. Um, that might be beneficial to us today. So to embrace the side of my family, to embrace my dad's side of the family and to try and really. Be genuine about claiming an indigenous identity, rather than just relying on a problematic. Blood quantum I'm 27% indigenous. And so therefore I'm a native person. Um, I think it's important and I've been trying to learn as much history as possible. Both of the Mashika specifically, because that seems like that's who my people were. They were the Mashika maybe the Chichi Mecca that people. Possibly put at bed shop, but those are the three people that my grandmother's side of the family and my grandfather's side of the family. Probably came from. Um, but it's important to also learn the history of the Chicano movement here in the United States. I'm starting to read. The myths and I've even been trying. With mixed results. To learn to speak the language a little bit. I've purchased a calendar so I can follow the Mashika ritual calendar and make regular offerings to the Tisdale who are the gods that Theo. Uh, of the Aztecs, I felt really shy about actually invoking or worshiping specific to Dell, partially because of my reluctance to enter into DD worship, which is. Nothing to do with specific ancestry. It's just that DD worship. To me is a little bit fraught because I'm not really sure that I believe in deities that need to be worshiped or that worshiping deities and adding that layer of relationship to my life. In this world is something that I have the bandwidth for. So. Uh, so I haven't really entered into deity worship. Um, but I am considering sticking a toe in it. Just as a way of honoring those. Ancestors who came before, who lived in Mexico? Who had relationships with the spirits of this continent? So the other thing too, is that I think. That within the Mexican American. Culture. And there's, I think some spiritual traditions that are actually really helpful that I think anyone can access. Anybody can go to go to a curandera, but that are particularly meaningful for me in helping to deal with. Anxiety and with depression and with a lot of the other issues. That I have tried to deal with, Through Western medicine. So, for example, last year, for the first time in my life, I visited a queued on data to help me deal with. Some issues that were coming up that had been very negatively affecting my life and their relationships with family. And if you don't know a is a person who is trained in. Spiritual healing. Uh, sometimes they use herbs. Sometimes they use massage. Sometimes they just use talk. Sometimes they use other ceremony. Uh, and they diagnosed spiritual ailments and they use cures. Kudos to help, um, the person suffering from the spiritual ailments. And I want to emphasize that. They, I don't think there's any thought that they are going to permanently cure you. Um, I think there are definitely a powerful And curanderos. Who. People. Make claims about their powers. And, uh, like my family had a relationship with On data. Uh, from Northern Mexico and you know, my family, the story is that she put her son into remission from cancer four times over his life. And. Um, just the other stories that my mom's told about Graciela. Um, indicate to me that she was a brave, powerful person. And I never. I never actually got a kudos from her, but I know that she would be brought in to try and help my cousins. Um, at various points in their lives. Um, and my sister actually. Did have a Kuda from her when she was a teenager. Um, but I think that. It wasn't something that was talked about or contextualized when we were younger. And so when I went to this quote on data, I knew what I was going there for. I felt a need for a, kind of a spiritual healing. That doesn't come from a psychologist's office. And it doesn't come from taking an antidepressant pill. And I sat there and she performed the healing ceremony on me. And it was an incredibly emotional experience. I cried. I felt. A lot of things. And, um, if I just described what she did, I think. It would be a little confusing, but suffice it to say that when I came out, I felt. So liberated. And so light. And for three days. After I visited the curandera, I had. Zero anxiety. I had zero depression. I had zero. Anger. Aye. Felt clear and I felt. And alloyed joy and relaxation. And it was amazing. It was like, I had been flying through clouds and all of a sudden I was flying in the clear air. And even though. The anxiety came back in. Even though. The pat the kind of stress and everything did seat back in. This was not a permanent cure. Would it helped with was for several months afterward. I was able, and even now I'm able to look back on the experience. And I'm able to remember that there was a time when I was not stressed out when I wasn't anxious. Based Leslie, over nothing. I, it relieved all of my free floating anxiety. And so I could watch that come back in kind of like watching the fog creep over the Hills. And I could look at that and say, oh, I see. That's not my default state. That's something that is coming in from outside. And I can choose to take it on. Or I can choose to. Seek out ways to push it away. And that was hugely powerful. I don't think I remember ever having no free floating anxiety. Since I was a small child. I don't have. I know I must've felt. Uh, that lack of free floating anxiety at some point, but I didn't have a conscious memory of being that relaxed and clear. Um, until I went to the good on that. And so I think that when you reconnect with ancestral healing practices, like Akuna. Veta and my case. Or, um, maybe if you know, various other, there's also, there's a lot of other kind of. Um, native and indigenous spiritual healing practices. I think that that kind of way of connecting and healing. Is different than what you would get through psychologist. We're even through an organized church, organized religion. Um, I had talked to a priest. You know, and rather than directly kind of connecting myself with my ancestors, with providing me with that sort of healing feeling. You know, the priest, the priest conversation had been not helpful. It had been about like, just giving it all up to God and sort of just pray about it. And I didn't. That just didn't at that didn't help me. Um, and so having that kind of hands-on. Spiritual healing really was a different experience. And I think really beneficial for me. And it showed me that ancestral healing practices, indigenous healing practices, and ways of connecting and relating to the ancestors, to your families. Et cetera, that that's valuable, that that can help heal. A lot of the spiritual malaise that comes with, um, with modern living and the kind of anxiety of what we're living under, as far as the climate apocalypse and overpopulation and. Anxieties around war and conflict. And so. I think that. You know, becoming or going back and reclaiming my indigenous identity came with, you know, recognizing that there are spiritual practices and ways of relating that are healthier. For me, and that might be healthier for other people. And so that's part of this journey also is both figuring out a context for me too. Worship and to connect with my ancestors, with the lands of the spirit, with the spirits of the land, with the spirits of, of the natural world around me, that I'm a part of figuring out how my relationship and obligation. Uh, to the other beings that I share this world with, is formed. And then also and by embracing spiritual practices that are healing in generative. Rather than ones that separate me from, from life and from nature and just focused on. The afterlife and what's going to happen when I die. Um, because frankly, and I'll talk about this in my next episode. Um, That's been my biggest complaint with Christianity. Well, No, it's been one of my big complaints is that. The Western and Christian. Viewpoint is very much focused on what happens after you die. And it has nothing to tell me about the beauty and the magic of living this current life. And my responsibility and the beautiful. Um, Cycle of life and death and rebirth. That surrounds us here. And it's all focused on whether or not you're going to go to heaven when you die. Like it's, it just seems so. It's like you have 80 or 90 years here. And focus on what you know, you know, you get every day here. What you don't know what happens when you die? Nobody does. So why don't focus on being a good person and being in good relationship with the earth now, instead of focusing on what happens when you die. It makes for it's very strange. So anyways, I'm going to bring this episode to a close. Um, It's been wonderful being back. And I hope in the. Next few weeks, I can get up some of the interviews that I have lined up. And I can go ahead and crystallize some of the other thoughts I've been having around my spiritual journey and things that have been calling to meet. And I want to say thank you for tuning in. So until next time. Get rest. Stay blessed. Wear your mask. And vaccinate.