Category: indigenous
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1492 return to the source (to make things right for humanity)
Teotihuacán I used to know how to fly I became terrestrial ever since Teotihuacán became mortal… I am emerging out of Teotihuacan, the place of goddesses and gods, that is, our original peoples * Every day is indigenous people’s day. Every year since 1492 has been filled with indigenous hope and then more resistance. Every day…
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Becoming Buddha | Vallecitos Mountain Refuge retreat (July 1993)
Miracles are hard work: because breathing, because calmness, because conscientiousness is required. That is how Vallecitos appeared in Oakland, where I lived. Seemingly out of nowhere, a letter arrived at our offices in Oakland offering a scholarship to one of us at the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights to participate in the first-ever…
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Toppenish, rolling hills | story on Yakama lands
In 1948, maybe 1953, certain earlier, my brother Gilberto, when he was a 11 or 12 year old member of our migrant farmworker family that had travelled north and landed in Yakama lands to work in the fields, met White Swan. White Swan was then old, very old, deep in the winter season of his…
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White Swan | poems & story on Yakama lands
I I know this man, White Swan. As a child he would visit me, talk stories, bemoan the losses and the winterless years, and smoke sweet grass in an aged pipe. He would rub down the old horse that lived in the field next door to our migrant camp. The horse loved the handfuls of…
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Ceremonia | Ceremony
Ceremonia Our dead will never die Our life will never end We carry each other into the blue and brown realms, the red and black songs the yellow and the milky ways We embrace and trade places to reach the edge of space I accompany the migrant ghosts on their viaje/trips to drink together from…
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La palabra | The word
Una palabra es una palanca. Muchas palabras son un serrucho. Un cuento de palabras un martillo. Un poema de palabras un cuchillo. Una historia de palabras: navajas para afeitar la conciencia. El diccionario real una carcel para las lenguas Un mapa de palabras El horizonte desbaratado los límites del reino humano El esqueleto de…
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Xoloixcuintles | Year of the Mexican Dog
Xoloixcuintles Tenía dos escuincles cuando era niño que todavía tenía mamá el escuincle con sus dos xolitos y nuestra casa que no era nuestra sino del ranchero Harding estaba al lado del cañaveral allí correteábamos y nos escondíamos entre las lenguas verdes de la caña Nuestra casa estaba construida sobre un camposanto los huracanes y…
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Every day is the day of my dead
1. I harvest their suns and their pleasures erupt on my tongue My dead are troubled, always asking for more time on earth, Rebirth without redeath Love without betrayal Fire without water to burn alive They are not ghosts who inhabit the stairwells of my brain They do not possess anything They didn’t possess nothing…
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Xiricahua | POWs
Xiricahua The prisoner of wars Unbraids the ancestors Unafraid of the imperial cage She is free wherever she stands She dreams us whenever she feels alone She holds her left hand against her rib cage Feels life defeat death Feels freedom disentangle herself from the settler She looks past us she sees us where she…
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The human story | We are all migrants, really …
The human story that turns against herself: forced migrations. Humanity became humanity when she rose up and started walking, following the rhythms and flows of the natural world. The first migrations were forced by the changes that occurred in the relationship between humans and the natural world. These changes in turn affected and transformed the…
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