By René Alvarado Martínez y Juan G. Sánchez Martínez / Translated from Spanish by Lorrie Jayne
René Alvarado Martínez hails from San Andrés Hidalgo, Huautla de Jiménez, in the northeast region of Oaxaca, México. As he tells it, from the time he was a child, René has created from earthen clay and reproduced images that he saw in free texts and books. He also remembers being seven and beginning to notice visitors arriving at his house in search of his father, a practitioner of traditional medicine, who guided the community with candles and, on a few rare occasions with the “sacred little ones”: the medicinal Mazatec mushroom. His mother, born in Rio Santiago, Huatla de Jimenez, the birthplace of the celebrated priestess María Sabina, also plays a part in his work.
Through the course of thousands of years, indigenous peoples throughout the world have kept track of their experiences with visionary plants and mushrooms, and have represented their spiritual knowledge through different codes and mediums. However, in recent years, the use of these medicines has made its way into the imagination of “arts and literature”in mainstream languages and circles. “Mushrooms and visionary plants,” have been referred to as “drugs” (from the Spanish-Arabic root ‘hatruka’ meaning lie), or “hallucinogens” (from the latin ‘alucinari’, to ramble senselessly), as “psychotropics” (from the Greek ‘psyche,’ mind/spirit, and ‘topein,’ an altered state), as “psychedelics” (from the Greek ‘psyche,’ mind/spirit, and ‘delos,’ to manifest oneself), and as “entheogens” (from the Greek ‘en,’ within, ‘theos,’ God, ‘gen,’ to be born) as plants that allow God to flower within- this latest expression has been proposed by Gordon Wasson, Jonathan Ott, and Carl Ruck. René Alvarado Martínez’ work is inspired by the Mazatec practice of ingestion of “the sacred little ones,” the mushrooms/medicines, who René uses the word “entheogens” to name.
Once he was in high school, René forayed into techniques such as acrylics, pastels, and stained-glass. Later he migrated to the city of Tecamachalco, in the state of Puebla, where he developed oil painting and other mixed techniques. René has participated in more than fifty collective and individual exhibitions. His work (paintings textured with Mazatec dyes and earth, carvings with obsidian on clay, ritual sculptures, and lamps) can be found in private collections in California, New York, Colombia, Argentina, Japan, Australia, and in multiple cities in Mexico.
In the words of the artist:
“During my career I have painted with colors, watercolors, acrylics, pastels, ink, drypoint, oils, mixed techniques, engravings, and natural dyes from the Mazatec region. I am also currently sculpting with clay, branches, and corrugated cardboard. Through painting I am planting an awareness of ”Human Being” in every extension of the word. I believe that through art a new world can be built. Art is an expression, a feeling, a language, a spirit of the soul made matter.”
His own iconography runs throughout René Alvarado Martínez’ work: beneath the moon, the seeds of corn align with the corners of the universe; the “sacred little ones” and the candles guide the trip and the trance that reveals the spiraling snail, that primordial image that René identifies with unity and flow; beneath the stars, the serpents, wisdom and renovation, interlace man and woman, the last protectress of the “the sacred little ones,” the creative force, the cosmic mother. Just as it does in María Sabina’s songs and evening ceremonies, Christian iconography and vocabulary sometimes superimposes itself upon the visions of the sacred mushrooms. Today, some of the elders of the community celebrate René’s work.
As in mystic poetry, René’s work captures the ecstasy of the curandero who looks into the abyss of mystery, and brings back with him knowledge of the origin of illness, the root of the cure. But these works also reflect the pillars of Mazatec celebrations that are related to the agricultural calendar- the seven maizes, the offerings to the hills and mountains, and the huehuentones, groups who dress for the Day of the Dead, whose songs and drums travel house to house, carrying advice and awareness, greeting everyone as if they were their ancestors, their family.
René explains:
In my works I give expression to our ancestral knowledge and the elements that are used in a ceremony that includes entheogens: the candle, the sahumerio or copal burner, and the mushrooms. I also bring forth the sacred elements: the moon, the sun, and the stars! I immortalize and share our culture, our roots, our people, our town, our customs and traditions, the connection with our surroundings, nature itself, the supernatural, such as the chikones, guardians of the mountains, the rivers, the caves, the wind- manifesting within as well as outside of ritual, in our history and our cosmovision which contains the Sierra Mazateca. I rescue our mother tongue, since it is the net of communication between the living and the dead, along with our ancestors, deities and guardians and the knowledge that they emanate. Visionary art.
More regarding “the sacred little ones”and mazatec art
The art of Filogonio Naxín bets upon the freedom of shapes. Reaching beyond galleries, museums and art schools, Naxín dislocates definitions of “traditional” and visualizes bridges in oil, acrylic, and watercolor with which he crosses from the Mazatec language to the techniques of Western art.
Kitaay Bizhikikwe ndizhinikaaz, waabizheshi ndodem. Anishinaabe miinwa Métis ndow, bezho Mide kwe ndow. My name is Kitaay bizhikikwe, my English name is Amanda Myers. I am of the marten clan, Three Fires Midewiwin Lodge, and of Anishnaabe and Métis lineage connecting to Indigenous communities across northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Ontario (Madelaine Island, Bad River, Sagamok, Garden River, and Walpole Island) My ancestors of the Cadotte/Cadeau and Myers/Mailette lines lived off the land, travelling, trading and trapping, before settling here in SW Ontario. Connection to land and identity is what inspires my visual artwork. When I consider our mother, the earth beneath me, I know that spirit is all around me. I know that when I speak, all of creation is listening. When I have conversations with nature and I consider who I am and who my ancestors were, I can see things out on the landscape, so I paint what I see. My work represents my conversations with the landscape around me and how that looks to me visually.
The painting titled They Know Better, came from a conversation with water activist, Tom Cull. He asked me to collaborate on a performance for the upcoming Culture Days Festival. While we looked out into the downtown of London, Ontario, I could see through the buildings, and I thought of her, Deshkan ziibing (known colonially as the River Thames). He talked about his work with the water, and I talked about my responsibility to the water as Anishinaabekwe. The forks of the river came to my mind and the stories that I knew about it. I considered it now, the commerciality of the space, the concrete, the metal, and the way that people here talk about this beautiful life force. They often comment on how dirty she looks, how polluted she is, instead of telling her that we are grateful for her work, that we love her for what she does for us. Without the movement of this river what would happen? That’s when I could see her, Midewanakwe spirit. She was wondering, what is happening here, why don’t they pay attention to what is around them? If we pay attention, our grandmothers are always here reminding us, that is what I could see in this work, that is what I tried to show.
I often use the technique of overlapping images digitally to create the foundation of my painting, here I overlapped a historic image of the Thames River in London, England, with the current image of the forks in London, Ontario. I wanted to go back to when humans started to interfere with the landscape here. I use many layers of transparency in my work to create the images that I can see in my mind’s eye.
I see my work in writing and photography as an “act of attention,” as a way of seeing and re-seeing the universe around and within us. My poems and photographs often call attention to the wounds in our world—environmental degradation, race and class-based inequities, human suffering. But they are equally as likely to take notice of the intricacies of the everyday world—“the translucent claws of newborn mice”—or to varied pathways of spiritual connection. Art, in centering our attention, can change perception and invite a re-imagining of meaning.
My writing often traces a process of becoming, of learning how to be in the world. In Anishinaabemowin, we speak of minobimaadiziwin, the good life. Because I am invested in this becoming, my work in literature and the other arts evokes search, or the feeling of leaning toward the light. In my practice, the lens through which I refract experience often involves justice. It brings together the artistic re-seeing or vision with the Latin spiritus as in breath to speak. For me, spiritus, the gift of voice, involves not only the ability, but also the responsibility to speak.
This obligation of voice, however, can sometimes manifest itself in restraint. Poetry, at its finest, leaves room for the unsaid or unsayable; photography leaves room for the unseen or unknowable. Art is all about question and gesture. It invites a reader, listener, viewer into a dynamic process. Poetry, by its very nature gestures beyond itself; wants to crack open the surface of language and invite us into experience itself. Likewise, photography can gesture beyond mere representation. Both lean close to all borders of being—balance on the verge of vision.
Artists do not simply represent the world – although they do that work too; but on our best days, we create a pathway that ultimately fills with silence. We arrive at the edge of the known and peer beyond. In the midst of immense wild places like the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, for instance, we know—not by reason, but by instinct—that this is sacred. We taste our own smallness. In such moments, our experience or “truth” remains on some level inexpressible. How do you say “human insignificance” in writing and mean “belonging”? Art, at its best, leaves space for this ambiguity, for this complexity of feeling.
A White Earth childhood water rich and money poor.
Vaporous being transformed in cycles—
the alluvial stories pulled from Minnesota lakes
harvested like white fish, like manoomin,
like old prophecies of seed growing on water.
Legends of Anishinaabeg spirit beings:
cloud bearer Thunderbird who brings us rain,
winter windigo like Ice Woman, or Mishibizhii
who roars with spit and hiss of rapids—
great underwater panther, you copper us
to these tributaries of balance. Rills. A cosmology
of nibi. We believe our bodies thirst. Our earth.
One element. Aniibiishaaboo. Tea brown
wealth. Like maple sap. Amber. The liquid eye of moon.
Now she turns tide, and each wedded being gyrates
to the sound, its river body curving.
We, women of ageless waters, endure;
like each flower drinks from night,
holds dew. Our bodies a libretto,
saturated, an aquifer—we speak words
from ancient water.
Nibii-wiiyawan Bawaadanan *
Wazhashk
agaashiinyi memiishanowed bagizod
biwak-dakamaadagaayin
mashkawendaman
googiigwaashkwaniyamban
dimii-miinaandeg gagwedweyamban.
Gigoopazomigoog
ninii-chiwaawaabiganoojinh akiing
ogichidaa Anishinaabe
awesiinaajimowinong, aadizookaanag
dash debaajimojig onisaakonanaanaawaa
nengaaj enji-mamaanjiding
gdobikwaakoninjiins
miidash gakina Nibiishinaabeg
debwewendamowaad.
Waabandan negawan
aah sa ongow eta
maaaji-mishiikenh-minis
minwaabandaan aakiing maampii
niigaanigaabawiying
agamigong
Wazhashk waabamang, niikaaninaanig
zhiibaasige zaaga’iganan gaye ziibiinsan
mashkiig zhawendang
mikwendang
waawiindang
ezhi-bagosendamowaad
ezhi-googiiwaad
agaashiinyag memiishanowewaad begizojig
dibiki-miikanong.
Nangodinong enji-nibii-bawaajiganan
gidimagozijig aakiing endaaying
bakadenodang
dash nagamoying
jiibenaakeying
noosone’igeying
bakobiiying.
* Translation by Margaret Noodin
Dreams of Water Bodies
Wazhashk,
small whiskered swimmer,
you, a fluid arrow crossing waterways
with the simple determination
of one who has dived
purple deep into mythic quest.
Belittled or despised
as water rat on land;
hero of our Anishinaabeg people
in animal tales, creation stories
whose tellers open slowly,
magically like within a dream,
your tiny clenched fist
so all water tribes
might believe.
See the small grains of sand—
Ah, only those poor few—
but they become our turtle island
this good and well-dreamed land
where we stand in this moment
on the edge of so many bodies of water
and watch Wazhashk, our brother,
slip through pools and streams and lakes
this marshland earth hallowed by
the memory
the telling
the hope
the dive
of sleek-whiskered-swimmers
who mark a dark path.
And sometimes in our water dreams
we pitiful land-dwellers
in longing
recall, and singing
make spirits ready
to follow:
bakobii.**
**Go down into the water.
Poem for a Tattered Planet: If the Measure is Life
Born
under the canopy of plenty
the sweet unfolding
season’s of a planet’s youth,
in the trance of capitalism we take our fill
content with the status quo
pull our shades on encroaching collapse
say something about Anthropocene,
the energy barter and the holy fortress of science.
But beyond
the throat of commerce,
beneath the reflection
of the celestial river,
within the ancient copper beauty of belonging
we stand encircled
inhabit the Ish,
navigate by the singing of songs.
Though money fog settles around,
confounds measure
today veil of mystery shifts
lifts for momentary sigh t.
Here
find rhythm of a tattered planet,
feel on panther mound
a pulse. Listen—don’t count.
Feel small life drum beneath ______.
My core. I am ancient refracted light
or sound
traveling,
my frequency a constant
my voice
bending at angles
to become whole in another surface—
say a poem.
Say a poem
perpendicular to the boundary
of meaning,
make it a prism or possibility
sing of turtle or cast the mythic lumen
of thunderbird here
on the flat f alter of words:
This page not contract
but covenant.
Sacred where.
When neither image nor voice
will twin itself,
In the thick moist cloud
of being
if the measure is life
each limb a nimble test of tree
glimpse not see nor calculate.
This Shroud of Commerce shrouds meaning.
In the technology of documentary genocide
in the destructive bonanza of the industrial age—
declare the death of planet
as it passes through a sound speed gradient
comes out on the other side
a lost echo of human greed
repeating itself
repeating itself
repea t in g
Each splinter of language
bent in complicated formulas of inference
of ownership
as fog forgets then remembers form.
But we find measure in metaphor
vibration earth timbre.
Amid endless metric errors
of science or prayer
speak the ninety-nine names for god:
Gizhe-manidoo, Great Spirit, or longing,
Knower of Subtleties,
trembling aspen, the sung bones of salmon,
braided sweetgrass,
the sacred hair bundles of women,
this edible landscape—
aki, nabi, ishkode, noodin,
the ten little winds of our whirled fingertips,
this round dance of the seasons—
the ineffable flourishing.
With mind as holy wind
and voice a frog’s bellowous night song
we arrive.
Here sandhill cranes mark sky.
If the measure is life—
their clan legs the length of forever.
Here mirror of lake a canvas of belief.
If the measure is life—
refraction the trigger of all knowing.
Only this.
Now we place aseema,
the fragrant tobacco bodies of our relatives.
A sung offering.
To make the tattered whole.
A question of survival.
Of correlation.
Of vision.
The measure is life.
A Water Poem for Remembering
Yes, it’s true I speak ill of the living
in coded ways divorced from the dead.
Why Lyla June fasts on capitol steps.
Why Native women disappear like rabbits
reappear in rivers wrapped in death scarves.
A leader’s slight of voice a disgrace—
we’ve been magicked before into war.
Why we sing mikwendam*—even now
remember. On the coldest day of January
gather near ancestral waters, Michigami
(where the Milwaukee, Menominee,
& Kinnickinnic rivers meet like sisters)
where conical mounds still rise on bluffs
story good pathways—bold and blue as nibi.
* mikwendam: remember.
“Because We Come From Everything”
for Juan Felipe Herrera
Because every earthdiver nation somersaults in origin waters
I claim the holy swimming—dark becoming we share.
Because all the begets and begotten separate by sect
I smudge every line feet dancing each side, erase the divide.
Because we come from everything
from copper earth and the untranslated songs of air
from deep and ancient fires burning now in each traveler’s eye
from water’s fluid whispers and uncounted beats of silence
the held breath
between border and freedom
between wave and shore
between boat and land
between leaving and arriving.
Because we come from everywhere
from White Earth and Somalia, from Yemen and Cuba and the Yucatan
our mythic pockets stuffed with blessings for safe passage.
Because alphabet measures of entry and exit
document power
because documents: CDIB Passport Visa DACA Green Card,
block barricade segregate fence enclose—
wall.
Because bans
because directives executive orders
because paper decrees say detain say deport.
Look in the mirror and say Halt!You are under arrest. There must be a law.
because within your bodies illegal blood migrates
because air sneaks through narrow passages
because water seeps into every pore—
build a wall! remove the bad elements, keep nasty out.
Because color-coded dolls and pop-gun mentality teach empire
Because the tweeting talleys of alternative fact infect like plague
Because for some fantasized greatness equals uniform whiteness
Because power, greed, and fascism live on the same block
Because good fences make better metaphors than neighbors
I say wrong to “right-of-way,” no eminent domain, no wall.
Because I breathe in your air, you breathe in mine
You give me your breath, I give you mine
Because we share the same elemental dependence
belonging together to this alive place—aki, nabi, noodin, ishkode
earth water air fire and the blessed arrival and departure of seasons
the comings and goings of each animal relative
skies hung now with bineshiinyag* winged songs of return
no paper trail of identity; only this—
the essential migration of all being.
Because we come from everywhere
We claim this safe earth for all,
in every language—Anishinaabemowin, Arabic, Español, Braille, Dakota,
English—we say provide shelter, grant a haven
name me a sanctuary city.
* bineshiinyag: birds
The Solace of Forgotten Races
Once more ogitchidaa* light pipes:
fragrant ink snaking into atmosphere,
a mark upon the solstice sky—ascending
audible as December deer sign.
While today the dow rises falls rises,
truckdrivers sleep to idling engines—
an oasis between eighteen-hour shifts,
and America revs her biofuel frenzy
to conjure from a politician’s hat
bypass after DOT bypass, this sleight
of hand, progressive contracted erasure
of rice beds, sheep pastures, clapboard family homes,
and the riverwest Red Owl.
Now in the quiet of the archival moon,
the lost tribes of many nations gather
decipher mythic glyphs hidden
beneath the folded corners of oversized books.
Skillfully we levitate the ochre—ancient
stories meant to be burned painted sung.
Medicinal plants, shields, eclipsed dances,
assembled here in sweetgrass fields of the forgotten.
Outside the bleeping reach of GPS geocache,
beyond the longing of a drive-by economy,
under cover of the intelligentsias’ “folk culture”—
a healing drum, the scent of cedar
and origin fires still copper with life.
* ogitchidaa: warriors.
The Way We Love Something Small
Vowel sounds from a land
language not yet lost:
Mooningwanekaaning-minis. *
My tongue an island, too
swimming where Miigis ** rises.
This ache tiny but growing—
the place I keep it.
* Mooningwanekaaning-minis: Mooningwanekaaning means “home of the golden-breasted flicker” and Minis means “island”. This is the Anishinaabemowin name for Madeline Island.
** Miigis: This refers both to a cowrie shell and a Mide shell. The great cowrie/Miigis figures in the story of Ojibwe migration. It is said to have risen out of the water, appeared providing both light and warmth and guiding the people on their journey.
Manoominike-giizis *
Ricing moon
when poling arms groan
like autumn winds through white pine.
Old rhythms find the hands
bend and pound the rice,
rice kernels falling
falling onto wooden ribs
canoe bottoms filling with memories—
new moccasins dance the rice
huffs of spirit wind lift and carry the chaff
blown like tired histories
from birchbark winnowing baskets.
Now numbered
by pounds, seasons, or generations
lean slivers of parched grain
settle brown and rich
tasting of northern lakes
of centuries.
* Manoominike-giizis:the full moon of ricing, occuring in August or September.
For more about Kimberly M. Blaeser
Interview on her creative process, Wisconsin DPI, 2015.
“Rosetta Stone, Two” and “The Dignity of Gestures” & Picto-Poem “Eloquence of Aki.” About Place Journal: Dignity as an Endangered Species in the 21st Century. Ed. Pam Uschuk, Cindy Fuhrman, & Maggie Miller. May 2019.
Radio Poetry Performance, “A Song for Giving Back,” at “Making Waves: Live in Milwaukee,” To the Best of Our Knowledge, May 05, 2018.
Mâ y´u̲, hñähñu. Dí ofo,ga´tho to dí handi ha mâ hai, dra mengu: Nts´o̲tk´ani, mâ hai, mâ b´atha, dí ne ga xia´i ga´tho te ma na rä hñäki rä hñähñu, n´e te ma rä njohya ngetho dí b´u̲hu̲ ko rä zi mäka hai, dí ne ga xia´i te dí handi; rä zäna, rä hyadi, rä ndähi, yä tso̲, n´e ga´tho too b´ u̲hue ko rä zi mäka hai.
My root
My root, hñähñu. I am from that land where the cactus sprouts, the tzik’iä, through the word, I wish to share with you, the gaze of a ñähñu. I am Ûrosha.
Digepu̱, ho̱nse̲ xini
ha ra hyaznä
ya da dega ya xi
gí udihu̱ ra ñu ya te
gí nu̱´mi ra huähi
gí handi ra ´bahi
gí numañho ra zi Zänä
gí handi ra mothe
ya hñe dega ra hya´tsi.
Ra te
ha
ra te.
Ha ra hño̱mi dega mbonthi
bí ntsaya
ha ya ´ye n´e ya ´yot´i
ra ´bifi dega za
g
í
h
n
o̱
´t
s
e
Ra ndähi bi njone
ha ra nt´o̱ts´e ra ya xi
ha ra nt´o̱ts´e ra ya do
ha ra nt´o̱ts´e ra dega ra nespi
g
í
o̱
d
e
Ra nthuhu ya xi
ra nthuhu mâ hnini
ri noya ntu̱ngi
r´a y´o
bi ja ndunthi
ya mfädi
ha nuna ra xímhai
¿Gí o̱de?
¿Gí tsa?
¿Gí ´bu̱i?
¡Ra hña ri ´bu̱i!
Nubye̲,
ra ndähi da njone,
ya hme mâ ´yu̲, ¡ri te!
The faces of my roots
At times, only at times
in the brightness of the Moon
the eyes of the leaves
mark the path of things
look at the milpa,
look to the palm tree,
look to the Moon,
look to the well,
the everyday mirrors.
Time
over
time.
By the slope of the hill
decrease their fatigue
among rain and drought
the smoke of the firewood.
S
T
O
P
The wind whispers,
to the ears of leaves,
to the ears of rocks,
to the ear of the kitchen fire.
L
I
S
T
E
N
The song of the leaves,
the song of my people
its voice, flies lightly
leaving
traces
on
this land.
Do you hear it?
Do you feel it?
Do you live it?
Its language still breathes!
Now,
the wind has whispered,
the faces of my roots, they belong to you!
Haxä tso̱o̱
Hintó pädi tema da ja,
ra te,
pe ga´tho ra jä´i,
bi ma ha
ya nstaya.
Ya hña hindí ne ra nxui
ya nthuhu, embagí ge ra zi du ma da ehe
ha ya hnini mi jo´o ra jä´i…
Ha ra mfeni ja ya mfädi,
n´e ya hogä te,
ha nun´a ra mähets´i,
ra hyadi bi u´ti ya ´ñu:
ya te, ya tsintsu̱ n´e ya ´boza,
habu̱ into´ó bi ñä,
bi xikägi ya zi mäka te.
Ya zi mäka te,
ha nun´a ya zi da ha ya mähets´
bí tutuab´´i ra ndâhi.
Nubya ra m´u̱ ra hai, xá nk´ant´i.
Haxä tso̱o̱
In thalamus of uncertainty
time stopped us,
We made nooks.
Whisperings avoided the night
noise of sirens, foretold death
desolate streets, piercing absences...
Memory keeps
the warmth in the word,
in heaven waterfalls,
the sun showed paths:
insects, birds, trees,
after our silence,
they uncovered their mystery.
Neverending fragrances,
in the eye of the skyes,
sings the wind.
It is still spring.
Sofo
Ri täki ra de̲thä,
ri häni ra hats´i...
Ri hnu̲ti
ra te.
´Ramba ra ´be̲fi;
de̲tha,
ju̲
n´e mu.
N´a ra ndähi
degä ñ´ot´i
bi thogi
ra hoga njut´i
ha ra b´ o̲ts´e
ri e̲gi
pa ri xudi
ra xi hmutha.
Harvest
Shelling corn
They welcome dawn…
In looks
one glimpses,
hope.
In harvesting;
corn,
beans
and squash.
An autumnal breeze
shows through;
the seed
of the future.
Nänä Juliana
Ham´u̲
gi bense̲,
ya mfeni
ga tat´i,
xâhmä gi o̲de
ri ndäte
pa gi ja ra njohya.
Ngu rä do̲ nithu̲ ´mnxi,
ngu rä do̲ ní´bást´ä,
ngu rä rä do̲ nikamiñ´o,
ya mfeni bi ja ham´u̲
ya hneí dega ya tso̲
ge hingi hueti,
ngu ya beni
mâ xuxu.
Nuni bi hoki
ya b´et´e rä dänjua
njabu̲ mâ xuxu
da hoki
ko ndunthi ya mädi
n´e ko ndunthi ya njohya,
nuni bi hoka
ra b´e̲ fi
ko ya kähäkamiñ´o,
pa da peni ya dänjua
ge nuni da b´et´e,
nunä rä do̲ni
da donibye ha mâ b´atha,
ha mâ B´atha rä B´ot´ähi.
Nana Juliana
When you dedicate yourself
to the task
of the subtle
of thinking,
memories emerge.
One can perceive
the beat
of your heart
to be the scent of happiness.
Like a flower of biznaga,
like a flower of garambullo
or a flower of cardon
memories converge;
in a dance of stars,
that do not die out
like the memory
of my grandma Juliana.
Weaving the maguey fiber,
weaving slowly,
to permeate it with love.
She used
the prickly pear of camhiño
to wash the maguey fiber
that she used to weave,
do̲ni,
blooms in my valley,
in the Valle del Mezquital.
Di ne ga
¡Oh, xâhmä nuga dra ndähi!
Ko xe̲di n ́e xá te
ha nun ́a râ mahets ́í
nuga ga ja ndunthi ya guí
ha nun ́a ́yót ́ä haí.
¡Zäge nun ́a ra ́batha ya ja ndunthi ya te!
¡Di te̲ntho nun ́a mâ zi ja ́í
hinda ma de nuua mâ hnini!
Longing
Oh, if I were wind!
Fleeting and ungraspable
in the hole of the sky
I would drag clouds
to this thirsty land.
How fertile would this valley be!
How far would then
the departure of my people be!
Acteal *
December twenty second, forty five people
in a day of prayer and fasting for peace.
In the jungle sounds of goat’s horn.
The night turned pale.
The moon did not want to be a witness.
Nocturnal breeze, splashed with blood.
Men, women, and children massacred.
¡Chenalhó, Chenalhó, Chenalhó!
After the Sun rise,
“the day that was day,
was night”
dark phase of pain
of a community.
Train of waves demanding justice.
¡Chenalhó, Chenalhó, Chenalhó!
Time was extinguishing them.
Chenalhó,
Chenalhó,
Chenalhó…
Che,
nal,
hó…
Che,
nal,
hó…
Voices of justice, will they get lost in the winter?
¡Chenalhó, Chenalhó, Chenalhó!
¡Chenalhó, Chenalhó, Chenalhó!
* The Acteal massacre occurred on December 22, 1997, in Chiapas.
Rosa Maqueda Vicente leads community workshops. Rosa has published essay(“Ecos de nuestras lenguas originarias, 2017), short story (“Ar thuhu ya gigi” / “El canto de los grillos” y “Ar `mui ya deni”/“El origen de las luciérnagas”, 2018), and poetry formats (Originaria, 2019). Her stanzas have been included in A donde la luz llegue (2018), Ocho entre ocho Hidalgo: Crítica, crónica y comunidad (2019), Xochitlajtoli Poesía Contemporánea en Lenguas Originarias (2019), Antología Originaria (2019), Aún queda la noche (2019), and “La Mexicana”, suite for Orquesta de Jazz y Arpa (2019). Regarding Cultural Dissemination, has collaborated in Revista MEUI from this side. Her work has been published in Gaceta UAQ, Difusión, Historia, Identidad, Querétaro, Qro. UAQ. Dya yu̱hu̱ / Somos raíces.
About the translator
Carolina Bloem teaches Latin American Studies and Spanish at Salt Lake Community College. Her research focuses on present-day Wayuu oraliture and its impact both in local and international communities. Past research interests include travel writing in 19th-Century Colombia and Venezuela and conduct manuals and their biopolitical role in society.
Lukas Avendaño (1977) is a muxe artist and anthropologist from the Tehuantepec isthmus in Oaxaca. In his work, he explores notions of sexual, gender, and ethnic identity through muxeidad. Avendaño describes muxeidad as “un hecho social total”, a total social fact, performed by people born as men who fulfill roles that are not typically considered masculine. Though it would be easy to make an equivalency between gay and muxe, or transgender and muxe, it can best be described as a third gender specific to Be’ena’ Za’a (Zapotec) culture. Muxes are a community of Indigenous people who are assigned male at birth and take on traditional women’s roles presenting not as women but as muxes. Avendaño’s work is a reflection on muxeidad, sexuality, eroticism, and the tensions that exist around it. Though muxeidad is understood and generally accepted as part of Be’ena’ Za’a society, it exists within a structure that privileges fixed roles for men and women, respectively. It is important to note that his work provides a reflection on muxeidad from within rather than without, that is, he critically explores what it means to be muxe as muxe himself, providing an alternative to academic analyses that can exoticize.
In Réquiem para un alcaraván, Avendaño reflects on traditional women’s roles, particularly in rites and ceremonies of the Tehuantepec region (a wedding, mourning, a funeral), many of which are denied to muxes. For the wedding ceremony, the artist prepares the stage by decorating for the occasion, and then blindfolded, selects a member of the audience who presents as male to marry him. Such a union would not be well regarded in traditional Be’ena’ Za’a society, even though same-sex marriage was recently legalized in Oaxaca, an initiative spearheaded by a muxe scholar and activist, Amaranta Gómez Regalado, in August 2019.
On May 10, 2018 in Tehuantepec, his younger brother, Bruno Avendaño, disappeared during a brief vacation from his duties in the navy. He hasn’t been found since and the artist has used his platform as an international artist to bring attention to the issue of the disappeared in Mexico. Other artists and activists join him as he travels around the world to show his work and create spaces where he can ask for answers at Mexican consulates and embassies for his brother as well as the 60,000+ individuals that have disappeared in Mexico in the last decade and a half.
Rita holds a doctorate in Spanish with a specialization in Latin American Literature from the University of Toronto. She is a professor of languages in the School of Liberal Studies at Conestoga College in Kitchener, Ontario. Her research examines contemporary Maya literature from a cultural and gender studies perspective. She recently co-authored a book Unwriting Maya Literature: Ts’íib as Recorded Knowledge (March 2019) with Paul M. Worley, in which they privilege the Maya category ts’íib over constructions of the literary in order to reveal how Maya peoples themselves conceive of cultural production. https://ritampalacios.com
Raquel Antun Tsamaraint is a Shuar poet, originally from the Provence of Morona Santiago (Ecuadorian Amazon). She is a native speaker of Shuar Chicham, a language that she protects and spreads through education and literature. Anents are prayer songs that bring about action, strong words that the Shuar elders have cultivated from time immemorial. The Kichwa poet, Yana Lema, who collaborates with Siwar Mayu and has compiled the collection, Ñawpa pachamanta purik rimaykuna / Antiguas palabras andantes. Poesía de los pueblos y nacionalidades indígenas del Ecuador (2016), sent us these words to introduce the work of Raquel Antun Tsamaraint:
“The forms of relations between all living beings in the jungle are so very deep and close. In the voice of Raquel, we encounter the coexistence between humans and all that exists in the forest. The life of plants and sacred animals are interlaced with the lives of humans, whether man or woman. Even so, this poet shares with us not only the sense of her nation, Shuar, but also of the Shuar woman. I can say that her verses are anent, sacred songs, new songs guided by the ancestral anent that the women of her people have sung and continue to sing. She speaks of caves, of food, of the jaguar, of tobacco, of the peccaries – and in all of this, she speaks with a woman’s sense. For this reason it gives me great pleasure to present the poetry of Raquel Antun, a voice at once coloquial and direct, while at the same time deep and loving.
Lorrie Jayne, a collaborator in Siwar Mayu, teaches Spanish, Portuguese, and Personal Narrative in the Languages and Literatures Department at UNCA in Asheville, North Carolina. She lives with her husband and daughters in the Appalachian Mountains where she enjoys plants, people, and poetry.
Juan G. Sánchez Martínez grew up in Bakatá, Colombian Andes. He dedicates both his creative and scholarly writing to indigenous cultural expressions from Abiayala (the Americas.) His book of poetry, Altamar, was awarded in 2016 with the National Prize Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia. He collaborates and translates for Siwar Mayu. Recent work: Muyurina y el presente profundo (Pakarina/Hawansuyo, 2019); and Cinema, Literature and Art Against Extractivism in Latin America. Dialogo 22.1 (DePaul University, 2019.)
The art of Filogonio Naxín bets upon the freedom of shapes. Reaching beyond galleries, museums and art schools, Naxín dislocates definitions of “traditional” and visualizes bridges in oil, acrylic, and watercolor with which he crosses from the Mazatec language to the techniques of Western art.
Filogonio Naxín is from Mazatlán Villa de Flores, Cañada Region, Mazatec territory in the State of Oaxaca, Mexico. He is a native speaker of the Mazatec language. He has a B.A in Visual and Plastic Arts from the Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez, Oaxaca. Currently he illustrates books as well as offers painting, drawing and engraving workshops. Nixín has had more than 20 individual exhibitions, among which showings at the Institute of Graphic Arts of Oaxaca-IAGO, the Torre del Reloj Gallery in Polanco, and the INAH National Museum of World Cultures stand out. In 2015, the National Institute of Indigenous Languages published his bilingual book (Mazatec and Spanish), Minu xi kuatsura chichjána, Kui anima xi bantiya yajura / Qué cosa dice mi tata, Seres que se transforman. https://www.facebook.com/FilogonioNaxin
Naxín’s paintings gravitate around characters and landscapes in which human-beings, non-human-beings and more-than-human-beings merge. His last name, Naxín, means the nawal-spirit-horse, a presence in many of his canvases. In the indeterminacy of forms, these paintings invite you to enter a web of beings: a dog is a deer that is a whale that is a mouse that is a dinosaur that is a city. The “holy children” (as María Sabina called the medicinal mushrooms that grow in the mountains of Oaxaca) stand colorfully in this net that binds defined shapes and mystery.
At some point in her experience, the viewer may ask herself: Are these images fantasy? But how can I distinguish “fantasy” from “reality”? Or are these visions another way to represent what has always been there? In any case, it seems that the only way of being in this art is “being-in-between”: as in “Ngansudie / Earth”, where the body of the city is the stomach of a deer in which the Milky Way can be found; or as in “Ién Nima / Mazatec”, where the body of a dog is a ladder standing as a tree. Being-in-between levels, being-in-between bodies.
Suddenly, the viewer transits from amazement to laughter, as Naxín’s aesthetics reveal the fragility of human beings when they believe they are just “individuals”. In “Earth Mother ”, the seed, the corn, the flowing water are spontaneous traces of a hand/mountain full of life.
Naxín’s art has been said to be “surreal”, bringing to mind André Breton’s famous 1938 comment on Mexico: “Mexico is the most surreal country in the world”. However, in this context, what some see as surreal, borrowed from the unconscious or the absurd, is perhaps the opposite: an ancient/contemporary/conscious creativity like the one cultivated for milenia by many indigenous peoples from Abya-Yala (the Americas). Here, at Siwar Mayu, are some examples of this art. Filogonio Naxín’s work is an invitation for new generations to remember and daydream this fabric between languages, aesthetics and worlds.
In February 2020 Siwar Mayu met Antonio Calibán Catrileo and Manuel Carrión at UC San Diego, where they had been invited to the International Symposium of Indigenous Writers and their Critics, organized by Gloria E. Chacón. Singing, weaving, poetry came together in their presentation, from which this message was clear: in destabilizing the colonial structure, its complicity with the hetero-patriarchal system becomes visible. This month in Siwar Mayu we would like to celebrate Catrileo-Carrión Community’s video-essays, as well as share two unpublished texts by Antonio Calibán Catrileo, translated into English by our friend Felipe Q. Quintanilla. Thanks for your work, hermanxs!
In the words of Catrileo-Carrión’s own community:
In Mapuzungun, “epu” and “pillan” mean two and spirit respectively. The epupillan horizon, that is to say of two-spirit people in the Mapuche context, exceeds LGBTIQ+ categories; this is where its radicality lies because it puts sexual dimorphism in tension (…) Epupillan challenges the notion that the body is separated from the spirit; epupillan has lost its fear to cease thinking through binarism and has become a radical experience in the face of the coloniality of gender, therefore tensing the entire colonial paradigm of sex-gender identity constructions. Epupillan is an open provocation to explore diversity, to consider ourselves part of the itrofilmongen (biodiversity).
We could perceive the uncomfortable gaze of the wentru, seeing us together. Me, with my painted nails and dressing with some elements that, as tradition would say with a categorical tone, without the possibility of doubt, only the zomo could wear. During the prayer we had to deal with that: with the mocking and mistrustful looks. Uncomfortable looks, not understanding what I was, what we were. Until the elder women, the papay, came to ask my name and to come out and dance with the men, the wentru carriers of tradition. Fear of rejection, a thing I have felt time and time again, made me want to resist. But there I was, with a muñolonko on my head, wearing it like my sisters wear them, because, indeed, I have always been a female in my community. They never treated me as foreign, or out of place. For a second, I thought of removing myself, but then I felt the call of the papay who called my name once again. One of them said that the choyke purrun would not start if I did not also join them. I took a breath and contemplated the scene for a second: all the heterosexual families coming together around the rewe, and in the one corner was my community comprised by Manuel, Patricia, Consuelo, and Constanza. I saw that Consuelo, for the first time, had taken my kultrun, and started to play it, timidly. My eyes fogged up with emotion that I had never before verbalized. I looked intently at Manuel.
I joined those men, even though I didn’t have the smell of masculinity, but rather of something unclassifiable. I know that they didn’t want me there because I spoiled their performance of virile men emulating the courtship rituals of birds. I didn’t do it for that reason; for me, the choyke purrun was a space and time to derive pleasure from the dance and journey. I saw my community once again. They were there watching me. To them I dedicated this dance and prayer: to the pariahs of identity, the nameless, the faceless, the ones you don’t approach because their genders are not fully known. And I turned around the rewe. I closed my eyes and focused on those first shy percussions that Consuelo was making with my kultrun. Its heartbeat was delicate, sensitive. Different to the ones of the papay, a beat strong and clear, because they were the keepers of the tradition. But I closed my eyes and that sound faded; little by little, I started to feel my heartbeats synchronizing with Consuelo’s rhythm, and I asked the spirits that were visiting us at that moment, for them to dissolve my humanity during that short period of the ceremony. I asked them with every movement of my body for everyone to see me in this moment overflowing, for them to see me in transit through the energy of Antükuram. Our affinity came forth in each turn we did on the rewe. I danced to the rhythm of my community, lest we touch each other or manifest our love publicly. Our dance was not for the sake of difference, but rather a provocation. The mist covered the whole group in prayer, we could only listen to each other and see the spectral silhouettes. But still we knew that we were turning. I took Manuel to the dance, dared to grab his hand even if a man with a man was not permitted. I knew that neither of us was really a man. We were a shared energy that let itself be touched by chiwayantü, the mist. In that porous dance we kissed without touching: Manuel, the mist and I. It was a gesture of love epupillan. Far away we could hear Consuelo playing the kultrun vividly. Something in us had awakened.
~
Wentru: man
Zomo: woman
Papay: women elders
Muñolonko: handkerchief that is tied to the head
Choyke purrun: dance of the ostrich
Rewe: altar, ceremonial space
Kultrun: mapuche drum
Antükuram: egg with no embryo
Chiwayantü: mist
Epupillan: two spirit
“Kizungünewün epupillan / Self-determination two-spirits”, a video-essay by the Catrileo Carrión Community
In Kizungünewün epupillan / Self-determination two-spirits, the Catrileo-Carrión community explores the full force of their epupillan multiplicity through both image and poetry. Epupillan self-determination challenges labels such as “champurria” (mestizo), “warriache” (urban Mapuche), “homo / heterosexual” and “Mapuche”, since the fossilized identities are colonial control weapons for both settler colonialism and internalized colonization. In a prologue and three chapters, Antonio Calibán, Manuel and Constanza self-reflect on how expectations about ethnic/racial classifications obstruct the possibilities of being, marginalizing those who “are not enough”, or who flow between different possibilities. While a spindle spins on the ground, we read on the screen:
They’ve performed a race test on us, they didn’t find the color they expected on our skins, neither in our features nor our hair; they also didn’t find in our names the correct origin or family, and our non-heterosexual relationship just made them uncomfortable. They did not find our mapuchidad pure enough. (4:30)
Performance + Poetry + Video + Ceremony + Moss from the water springs + Stones from a sleeping volcano = Healing for the body, the heart and the multiple spirit.
a life that chooses its present and its abundance.
Never void, never sinful.
There is a world full of beings like us,
We are the angle that opens and closes the circle.
We receive the force of the sun
To beat the prejudices of our people,
to rebelliously burn the place they took away from us.
But we are sprouting forth with the strength of Antükuram
And soon we will come back to dance atop our rewe
To lead the way for our overflowing journey.
~
Papay: women elders
Antükuram: egg with no embryo
Newen: strength
Rewe: altars, ceremonial spaces
About the translator
Western University ’12 PhD Hispanic Studies.
Felipe Q. Quintanilla is an Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at Western University, where his research and teaching cover a wide range of topics and genres, including the Salvadoran Post Civil memory and oral history; gender and sexuality in contemporary Latin American cinema and literature; U.S. Latin@ representation in popular media; and Spanish-English translation. His creative works have been included in several print anthologies as well as in various online publications. He was also co-editor of the Indigenous Message on Water that gathered wisdom, thoughts, verses, short stories, poems, and general reflections on the various local issues pertaining to water.
For more about the Catrileo-Carrión Community
Ngoymalayiñ / We don’t forget
Short film about the murder of Matías Valentín Catrileo Quezada in 2008, by a Chilean policeman. Excerpts from an interview with Catalina Catrileo, Matías’s sister, by a journalist who asks incisive questions, are included: “Catalina, do you feel Chilean? Would you like to feel Chilean or would you prefer an autonomous Mapuche state?” The answer: “The state is a repressive institution.” A public acknowledgment of impunity closes the video: a list of names of Mapuche leaders who have been killed during the contemporary Chilean “democracy”.
Famew Mvlepan Kaxvlew / I am here, wounded river
Video-essay/memoir about Antonio Calibán Catrileo’s radical decision of self-determination: changing his name in his birth certificate. The grandmother’s surname, the Mapocho river, and the wixal / loom are witnesses of this “des-whitening” process, in which the Mapuche identity is clearly not homogeneous.
Craig Santos Perez is an indigenous Chamoru poet from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam). He is the author of five books of poetry, co-editor of five anthologies, and professor at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa.
“I wrote this poem for International Mountain Day to raise awareness about the ecological and cultural value of mountains in Pacific islands and cultures, especially since the Pacific is not often imagined as a mountainous region. The poem also responds to historical and ongoing threats to mountains in the Pacific, including mining, deforestation, urbanism, militarism, and tourism. Specific to Hawai’i, I also wrote this poem in solidarity with native Hawaiians who are protecting their sacred mountain, Mauna Kea, from development and desecration by the colonial astronomy industry, who is planning to build the largest telescope in the world atop Mauna Kea. Hawaiians have established an encampment at the access road to the mountain to stop construction, and they have even created a free school there with daily classes, events, dancing, chanting, and other rituals. My wife, who’s Hawaiian, and our family went to the base of Mauna Kea last summer to perform our poetry and show solidarity. I performed “Chanting the Mountains” for the first time there. The pictures depict our experience.”
In bridging pop-culture with land issues and spirituality, indigenous youth have embraced genres such as rap, punk, jazz, graffiti, and heavy metal since the early 1990’s. In the case of hip-hop it shouldn’t surprise us that an aesthetic that was born at the crossroads between Black American, Caribbean and Latinx migrants at a time when the South Bronx, NY was burning, would be adopted by native artists who, as protectors of their lands, have been reminding indigenous and non-indigenous peoples alike that tradition and language must be constantly moving.
Rhythmic lyrics, drums, stomp-dances, pow-wows have been beating for millenia among First Nations from Abiayala (The Americas.) Together with the rich phonetics of glottal and tonal indigenous languages, they have sparked contemporary indigenous hip-hop. Furthermore, acknowledging non-alphabetic writings such as rock-paintings, petroglyphs, geoglyphs, ideograms and textiles, contemporary indigenous graffiti artists are occupying and reclaiming cities, materials and technologies. Today, in activating indigenous beats, languages and codes via hip-hop aesthetics, our guest-artists this month in Siwar Mayu are challenging stereotypes and expectations about indigeneity while empowering women, elders, children and keepers of the land (Juan G. Sánchez Martínez.)
Gonzalo Luanko is an artist of the new Cumbia & Rap Mapuche. As a teenager he started under the pseudonym “Soler Minute,” which he later evolved toward his “Mapuche identity”, adopting his first name as his artistic name. Luanko is a teacher of History and a composer with five albums already released. He has traveled throughout the Chilean territory and has taken his “kimün” (Mapuche wisdom) to other countries such as Uruguay, Argentina and the United States.
DJ. SELTZER
His discography, Inche Ta Luanko (2011), A Pies Pelados (2012), Oral Tradition (2015) and Ketrolelán (2017), contains verses that alternate between Spanish and Mapudungún, reactivating the native language and delivering a message to the new generations for the reconstruction of the Mapuche culture. His lyrics reflect upon the history of the struggle and worldview of his people. Instruments such as the trompe, pifilka, trutruka or kultrún appear frequently in his songs. His latest album called Ketrolelán / I am not silent includes the participation of Movimiento Original, Santa Feria and Spokesman. It was nominated for the Pulsar Awards 2018, in the Native Peoples category, and contains the song “Witrapaiñ / We are Standing” with Portavoz, whose videoclip was made in the Wallmapu / Tierra Mapuche. Luanko’s music evolution has taken him from hiphop to Latin American rhythms and today he is working with DJ Seltzer in a new album of Cumbia-Rap Mapuche.
Kvmeche kvme zungukelu / good people who speak well
Lif piuke lif pulli ngelu / people with clean hearts and spirits
Poyentu nvtram nielu / have sweet conversations
Tañi pulli konki / where my spirit always goesÑi mongen mu liftun zuamki / my life needs to be clean
Liftun mvlele feita rume fali / if it needs to be cleaned, that’s worth it
Norche ngelan / I’m not always correct
Welu kvmeche ngen / but I’m a good person
Rume trani tañi mongen / my life goes down
Welu newenkvlen / but I’m still strong
Inche kimche ngelan / I am not wise
Welu chilkatuken / but I’m always learning
Kelluken ñi pu Che / I always help my people
Fei mu kvzaukvlen / which is why I work
Kvpape feyentun tañi kultruntun / for the belief to come and the kultrun to be played
Kvpape poyewvn tañi ngvlamtun / for the benefits of my advice to come
Lefvlkantun ñi piuke mu / my heart’s fast song
Kom tufachi zungu / all of these Tañi liftun / are how I clean things
Chorus
Kvtrankawvn mvlele / if there is suffering
Kiñe liftun / a cleaning
Afi zungu mvlele / if something ends
Kiñe liftun / a cleaning
Weza zungu mvlele / if there are bad things going on
Kiñe liftun / a cleaning
we newen nieam / to have renewed strength
Verse ll
Inche zuamlan tami koila ngvlam / I don’t need your false wisdom
Inche zuamlan tami vtrir nvtram / I don’t need jealous conversations
Fei ta kvmelay kvmelay kvmelay / that’s not right, not right, not right
Welu lif newen nieiñ aflayai / but we have clean internal strength
Kiñeke lelin neyen ayekan / some looks, breathing, happiness
Kuifike winkul kiñeke trekan / ancient mountains, some strolls
Kiñe llellipun mawvn lelfvn kurruf / a ceremony, rain, the countryside, the wind
Lifko kuifii kvtral / clean water ancient fire
Kom tufachi zungu niey lawen liftual / all of these have the medicine to clean
Kimi tami rakizuam llitual / your thoughts know to begin
Kiñe matetun purrun Datun / a mate, dance, healing
Kiñe yafutun lefkantun / a strengthening, running
Kiñe nampulkan niey liftun / a trip can cleanAkutuy kvme weftun / the rebirth is here
Inkakeiñ taiñ kewvn mongeli / we will defend out living language
Taiñ püllü mu weichatuki / our spirit fights
Taiñ Tukulpan akupe / let our memory come back
Cheu pvle traupaiñ wezache konkilpe / let bad people not enter where we get together
Taiñ trawvn kvme amupe / let our coming together be good
Taiñ liftun afkilpe / let the cleaning not end
Chorus ………
Verse III
Kvpape feyentun tañi kultruntun / for the belief to come and the kultrun to be played
Kvpape poyewvn tañi ngvlamtun / for the benefits of my advice to come
Lefvlkantun ñi piuke mu / my heart’s fast song
Kom tufachi zungu / all of these
Tañi liftun / are how I clean things
Chorus …….
~~~
Zara Monrroy (Comca’ac)
Roxana Sarahí Romero Monrroy was born in Hermosillo, Sonora in 1991. She is originally from the Comca ́ac nation in Sonora, México. She is a composer, poet, translator and writer. She is also an activist and fighter for human rights and gender equity. Zara is committed to preserving and transmitting the lyrical tradition Cmiique Iitom, through song and ritual representation of her ancient knowledge. She combines her own language and way of expressing the message of her ancestors with western genres. As a traditional Pascola dancer, Zara recreates the ancient art of facial painting, redefining it and adding to it new symbolic elements. She practices the ancient art of singing and composing in her mother tongue, Spanish, and English.
Comca ́ac Flag
Regardless, she believes that a well intentioned message doesn’t need translation- it only needs to touch the heart of those that hear it. Currently she is the founder and an active member of the ecology club AZOJ CANOJ that operates within the Comca ́ac territory, and is composed of young women from the Punta Chueca community in Sonora. She coordinates different events and procedures, such as setting up recycling workshops and waste management.
/ You, human that walks and breathes, why don’t you do the same, be thankful with everything and everyone, send good vibrations to the animals, to the people, with nature, that is calmness and happiness, harmonious with what you desire and ask for and everything will unfold.
One day you’ll know everything is temporary, but it is truly worth it, be thankful. Aren’t you a human that feels? Life is human, emotions and feelings, but this is real.
/ When you walk to the edge of the sea, be yourself, surrender with your heart in order to be and experience life as it is, everything is beautiful, the sea is beautiful, the sky is beautiful, the earth is beautiful, send positive vibrations and connect.
Taax sacaha taax ziix quipee caha insocta aha.
Hant quiij consacaixaaj aha.
/ that’s how this is, everything is good when we know we are in the right place, be yourself and thank the earth where you step .
(spoken at the end)
~~~
Tall Paul (Anishinaabe / Oneida)
Tall Paul is an Anishinaabe and Oneida Hip-Hop artist enrolled on the Leech Lake reservation in Minnesota. Born and raised in Minneapolis, his music strongly reflects his inner-city upbringing. From personal expressions of self, to thought provoking commentary on issues affecting Indigenous and diverse communities as a whole, Tall Paul’s music evokes a wide variety of substance and soul.
Ivan Melchor was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1997. Presently he studies history at the University of North Carolina Asheville. He has published his undergraduate thesis regarding the migration of Latinamericans to the western region of North Carolina. In 2019 he assisted in a project with the UNCA Department of Languages and Literature to translate a collection of interviews of immigrants from Asheville, N.C. USA.
Paul M. Worley is Associate Professor of Global Literature at Western Carolina University. He is the author of Telling and Being Told: Storytelling and Cultural Control in Contemporary Yucatec Maya Literatures (2013; oral performances recorded as part of this book project are available at tsikbalichmaya.org), and with Rita M Palacios is co-author of the forthcoming Unwriting Maya Literature: Ts’íib as Recorded Knowledge (2019). He is a Fulbright Scholar, and 2018 winner of the Sturgis Leavitt Award from the Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies. In addition to his academic work, he has translated selected works by Indigenous authors such as Hubert Malina, Adriana López, and Ruperta Bautista, serves as editor-at-large for México for the journal of world literature in English translation, Asymptote, and as poetry editor for the North Dakota Quarterly.
Juan G. Sánchez Martínez, grew up in Bakatá, Colombian Andes. He dedicates both his creative and scholarly writing to indigenous cultural expressions from Abiayala (the Americas.) His book of poetry, Altamar, was awarded in 2016 with the National Prize Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia. He collaborates and translates for Siwar Mayu, A River of Hummingbirds. Recent works: Muyurina y el presente profundo (Pakarina/Hawansuyo, 2019); and Cinema, Literature and Art Against Extractivism in Latin America. Dialogo 22.1 (DePaul University, 2019.)
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