Transterritorial Spirituality
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Angela Mictlanxochitl recently completed her doctorate at the California Institute of Integral Studies, with her thesis project “Testimonio and Knowledge Production Among Transterritorial Mexican and Mexican American Indigenous Spiritual Practitioners: A Decolonial, Participatory, and Grassroots Postmodernist Inquiry.” In this conversation, we touch on the power of reclaiming our ancestral knowledge, how to be a guest in sacred spaces, the beauty, and fluidity of building relationships with people and land, and how “there’s not one single way to be” who we are. Currently, she is exploring the social impact of ancestral spiritual movements for community building and leadership.
You can find Angela at…
Instagram: @ojoojo
LinkedIn: Angela Anderson Guerrero
Exploring Responsibly is 100% self-funded and generosity-powered. At this time, I am only able to offer each guest the equivalent of a cup of coffee for their time. So please go and check out their work and ways in which you can support them - all relevant links can be found in the show notes. If you want to support this space further you can also become a Patreon at patreon.com/gabaccia .
I once more want to thank you for being here,
Gabaccia
The following conversation transcript was generated using an AI service and with very slight human editing, which means there may be parts that do not make sense, have typos, etc. In the ideal world, we would have all the means to make our transcripts more accessible and completely human-proofed. Coming soon.
TRANSCRIPT
Gabaccia 00:49
I feel like I need to have a soundtrack for when I start the live and Instagram is telling everyone that we're going live because this is just always the awkward moment right but welcome everyone thank you for making the time to join us today I’m gonna wait a couple more seconds and we'll get officially started this is so exciting it's our first show of 2021 so thank you everyone who's hopping on. So, let's let's go for it I want to thank you all and welcome you all to episode five of Exploring Responsibly I'm Gabaccia your host my pronouns are she, her, hers and I am tuning in live from the land of the Pueblo people and the Jicarilla Apache people also known as Santa Fe, New Mexico. Exploring Responsibly is a live conversation series that traverses our sense of accountability, our actions and our philosophies around our relationships with nature and the world. Today we'll be covering topics at the intersections of art critical psychology community and ancestral indigenous knowledge all thank you to our guest Angela Mictlanxochitl, who is about to and while she is coming on... oh hi
Angela 02:45
Hey
Gabaccia 02:46
Hi hermana! So I wanted to read a little bit of your bio because I think it's the it's so beautiful so Angela recently completed her Doctorate at the California Institute of Integral Studies with her thesis project which is something that I’m really excited about talking tonight which is titled Testimonio and Knowledge Production Among Transterritorial Mexican and Mexican American Indigenous Spiritual Practitioners a decolonial participatory and grassroots postmodernist inquiry and I’m so excited to learn how you do this work around communities bridging indigenous knowledge our race inquiry and critical psychology so thanks so much for joining me tonight Angela how are you doing?
Angela 03:37
I'm good it's been it's been a busy day so i just wanted to offer some sage to serve grounder energies
Gabaccia 03:45
oh thank you so much
Angela 03:48
it's you know spring is renewal but I think also things can kind of get all bunched up and a lot of things are brought to the surface sometimes so with the permission of all the spirits and all the directions and permission of all the beautiful hearts that are joining us via Instagram, all the energies that guide and bless you Gabby and your camino I just want to give thanks and gratitude to be alive to be survivors and to have this space to talk about Exploring Responsibly Armadale
Gabaccia 04:29
Thank you so much for that, yes I am receiving all of this beautiful blessing thank you. Why don't we start with you in a long as needed sentence telling us who is Angela?
Angela 04:49
I... wow that's a big question. Angela is a spirit being who's doing her best to honor her lineages, to honor the contradictions of being a part of a colonial settler sort of dynamic and the privileges of my education, the privileges that I have to travel and transport myself to different places and spaces of encounter. I'm also very vulnerable and sensitive human being, who it doesn't take a lot for tears to come out of these eyes. And I want to think it's because of the compassion that I've been trying to cultivate in myself things to, to my spiritual work in the Camino. And also, most importantly, to all the beautiful people in my life, who have opened up my heart and my knowledge in so many ways, and that stretches from the Central Valley of California, where I was born and raised to experiences at Notre Dame to Bolivia, you know, back to Chicago, you know, San Francisco, and now here in Mexico, and many, many more in between all of that. But yeah, at the end of the day, I think, I hope to be somebody of love and caring, and sharing, so
Gabaccia 06:24
Beautiful, and I think you are, at least to me, at least to me, you are, and I want to just to let everybody know that I've known Angela now for 10, maybe 12 years, maybe even more. And while we have only physically crossed paths, maybe five times I have always felt like this very deep connection and sisterhood and, and beautiful energy around you. So, I really appreciate that and I appreciate you taking the time to connect virtually and share a little bit of that with my community and your community as well. So, my next question is what I ask everyone that comes on, on the show, and it is what dose Exploring Eesponsibly mean to you?
Angela 07:30
That's easier to answer. And I think, you know, for me, exploring responses rapidly is sort of the, you know, the heart of my doctoral work, the questions that, that encouraged and motivated me to do the work and to sort of go on this journey and Exploring Responsibly is knowledge of self-knowledge of my relations, and knowledge of colonial and settler politics shared of all of the power dynamics that inhibit, or challenge us to be responsible in, in our space in this world, in our relations with one another.
Gabaccia 08:12
Whoa, that's gonna be a hard one to top. But I'm going to agree. I think I think that's definitely spot on. I love that you brought up the, you know, knowledge of self, and in, in the relationships of everything else, and specifically, the colonial politics that we inhabit, and that are part of the duality that you were talking about how you know, we exist in this complex arena of specially as brown people, right, we, we have a history of being a oppress, and what does that mean, as we're trying to make a name for ourselves then, and inhabit this world and participate in the systems that we didn't choose to have? to begin with? So, I appreciate that a lot. How do you how, how did you arrive at connecting with your lineage and seeking that ancestral indigenous guidance?
Angela 09:25
You know, I think, I think we're all born with it. I think, you know, it's kind of it's, it's like a seed and when it it finds the right time to sprout, it comes out. And for me, I think that started when I went to Bolivia. For the first time when I was an undergraduate, I went to Bolivia to work with small Christian communities based out of the liberation theology model in the Catholic Church. And what I loved about that model was that it was all about sort of thinking for yourself and acting for yourself in that context it was based on the scriptures. But I think being surrounded and embedded in indigenous state and cosmology, something cosmic or mystical happened within my being that made me question who I was, and how, how I was becoming in the world. And when I came back from Bolivia, I was i was unsettled, I wasn't at ease with myself. I even remember when I was in Bolivia, I called a good friend of mine who's now in spirit world father, Don McNeil, and I'm like, I can't, I can't say I'm not. I'm not worthy in the mats, like, it just doesn't doesn't make sense to me. And from that moment, I kept on asking, why am I doubting my worthiness in the world? Like, I, I was aware, I'm a bi, I'm a biracial woman. And so, growing up biracial, I understood like I was the width than the formula and I never understood what that was and why I wasn't Mexican enough sometimes. So, when I came back to the US, and I was doing my graduate work, I bothered the same men father, Don introduced me to a mentor Silvia Fuente. And, and I started to read the book Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, who just passed away a couple of months ago. And what I loved about the book, which is also a movie, if you haven't seen it, is that the character Ultima was a curandera. And I was fascinated and drawn to her persona, because she brought in sort of something that I think we forget, which is an earth spirituality, you know, how do we relate to the land? How do we connect to the spirit of, of each day, the rising sun and the moon and know the animals? But at the same time, I was very grounded in a way where I didn't want to sort of go on this quest to find an Ultima. But I simply just made a prayer like I, I want to shift in my spirituality, if anything, I want to come back into my spirituality and not be a part of an institution. And at that time, I was invited to a Latina Leadership Conference in California. And before I was living in Chicago, so I saw my family, and I was gifted a few things once at one I already had a drum that I had made due to the work I was doing some sweat lodge work I was doing. And when I came home, my dad gifted me this virgen, the Milagros miracle virgin. Like, you know, she was maybe about this size. And my mom gifted me like boots and like a wooden ranchera hat. And so, I arrived in this like professional setting with like, top-notch executive, Latina leaders throughout the country, like with the drum the virgen and the ranchera head on. And they were like, what the heck is this one, I was young, and then two on with my whole getup. But it was you know, things happen in a way that I think are important because my dad's mother was a curandera, and that she was a white lady, but she was a spiritual kind of woman in where we came from. And for me, the way that I narrated is that thanks to having the virgen, having the drum and having the ranchera hat, it was kind of all these, these parts of me coming together that ultimately led me to my spiritual teacher, Rosa, y'all don't know quietly, who, who gravitated to me right away, and at the end of that encuentro, invited me to a Lakota Sundance ceremony. And I said, Yes, like, I didn't ask where how, what? Nada? Like, yes. And three months later, I was driving 14 hours to Minnesota to go into a ceremony that completely changed my life. And from that ceremony, it took me to Moondance back to Mexico, where I entered another sort of a process of initiation, and within the Mesoamerican tradition, and yeah, there's tons of stories. since that point, it's been over 15 years ago that that happened. So
Gabaccia 14:24
Wow, that's, that sounds like a really powerful moment in your life, with you saying that you were invited into this Lakota space. I immediately had this question of how do we respectfully come into those sacred spaces? Obviously, an invitation I feel like it's appropriate and necessary, but after that invitation how you approach that kind of space that you know like you said we'll have it in us but there's a lot of identity politics that come and play so i'm wondering what your thoughts are on that
Angela 15:15
Yeah well I mean I think coming in as somebody who doesn't know anything one has to be very very careful and mindful I was fortunate to have my madrina as a guide to kind of beat she was there to receive me she was there to instruct me and she always reminded me of the classic "calladita te ves más bonita" like why they look more cute and approachable right and so for me that's kind of been my mo when I go into spaces that I’m not familiar with I don't I’m not familiar with a tradition i'm a guest is i listen i observe and i offer my sort of my support i offer my service but even then i tried to be very mindful of when to do that because i don't want to to come off as pushy is come off as trying to appropriate or yeah it's like going into somebody's house you don't start going looking in somebody's cupboards or cabinets or looking around the house you see you sit down and you wait you wait to sort of be instructed and then sometimes they need help with something so you you you're there to assist and to help when they need and through sort of the waiting the listening and observing you know little by little people will start to approach you and that's when you start to have conversations and it could be random stuff but that's the relationship building partner think when you start to build the relationship with the community the land the ceremony whatever it may be that's when we start to learn how to how to be more responsible and respectful in that space and whether or not you should be there because i think sometimes just because we arrived doesn't mean that we necessarily need to be in that space as well and i was actually confronted with that question in the middle of the ceremony because some things happened at a spiritual level and i chose to stay because i was given a responsibility and i didn't want to let go of my responsibility and it was a vulnerable position because i didn't know anybody but i earned a lot of respect from the people there because i chose to stay so
Gabaccia 17:36
Wow that's thanks for thank you for for sharing those kinds of guidelines i think yeah as we approach things with respect i think the mindfulness of not taking up space where it's not ours to take is really important. When you talk about building relationships with the people and the land how do you see that play in the communities that you're a part of or the communities that you come in contact with?
Angela 18:17
Yeah it's funny is word playing because i think a lot of it is play i think i always feel like i'm guided by my my my guardianes, my animal spirits and so particularly when you you have to travel a long distance to get somewhere you start to notice things right? or if you get lost like the first time i went to sundance i didn't know where i was going i got lost but it took me where i needed to be in order to find out where i needed to go you know i think you also learn to sort of pay attention like to look at the sky to see what's presenting itself but i think before i leave anywhere always ask permission and i asked for protection because there's all different types of entities there's like there's all different types of communities everywhere we go and i try to be very cognizant of sort of the different rooms that we're activating when we when we go into spiritual space so i usually ask permission like i burn sage or i offer tobacco i let other people know where i'm going to sort of collect information or to get instructions and when i arrive somewhere you know i give thanks for for arriving and for being the place and then i usually take an offering to whoever it is that i'm seeing so it could be things that they requested it could be tobacco it could be food but i don't like that my i try not to have it empty hands. It's always having something it's not it's for the people, but it's also for the land, you know, even if it's just putting a little bit of water on the ground, but it's it's making some type of contact and exchange to, to give things and then to ask for that continued and support and protection and opening That, essentially, I think we're, we're seeking when we go to a destination, or we meet with people.
Gabaccia 20:29
And these practices, and I've been so privileged to have been on the receiving end of one of your offerings during that beautiful Blood Moon in Joshua Tree a couple of years ago. Are these practices that you learn and adopted from your mentors? Are these practices that you have been kind of crafting on your own? How has that been for you?
Angela 20:58
I think most of it I've learned from my my mentors from my guides, it's you know, the going to a place listening, observing. But obviously, I put my special touch on it, right, I offer my my vital energy to whatever it is that I'm doing. And so I think that sort of the creativeness and also, whatever inspiration and I think it's really beautiful. When you're able to offer somebody, somebody something that can be really simple. It doesn't have to be extravagant, and they're like, Wow, I've been wanting this or how did you know and so for me, those are the little affirmations that, that I'm doing things in a good way. And sometimes I ask, what do you need, and that helps to?
Gabaccia 21:46
Absolutely, I have a story from last year, I did my first long backpacking trip. And the first couple of days were really intense. And there was a lot of like, internal external resistance, right, like the elements being alone on the trail for the longest time I was ever going to be. And around day three, I landed on this beautiful, but very intimidating landscape. And I got it was it was a beautiful Canyon. And it just looked like great bear country, which also made it intimidating. I was I was I could tell that I was the only person there for a couple miles probably. And, and I as I got to the place where I was going to pitch my tent, I realized that this resistance didn't make any sense that I had to connect. And intuitively, I decided that when I am backpacking or hiking or anything, I need to acknowledge the the forces and the spirits and all the beings that have cared for that land, and that still care for that land, and that have been connected to that land. And so I kind of made a little gratitude prayer that then I continue to do every night. And it just brought me so much peace. And I cannot even tell you how my trip kind of flipped 360 degrees after that. Just you know, I didn't. Yeah, it was just, it was just internal. It was just that, that that prayer, and that making that acknowledgment made the entire difference for me.
Angela 23:54
Yeah, because everything around you is alive. It's listening. It's feeling and i i think the universe wants to conspire in our favor. Right? And if we again, if we don't ask, we don't, we can't get that help. And I think that goes that goes with anything, you know, at home, on a trail in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, and if anything to I think, one, it's our surroundings want to help us but also it allows us to help ourselves, alright, because what you just shared is you, you acknowledge them, and you know what, something's not right. I need to help myself. And so that prayer emerged and that is one of your Yeah, one of your tools, one of your amulets that is there to to be sort of that stick, or whatever, you know, it may be to get you to to move forward. So that's, that's me.
Gabaccia 24:53
Yeah, that was that was pretty special to me. So and I'm glad I was I was able to get to that. to that moment, I want to go back to kind of the beginning of our conversation when you spoke about not being Mexican enough, because of being biracial. And I'm, I'm wondering if, if you feel like you're Mexican enough? Or how has that evolved in, in how you hold your identity?
Angela 25:29
Yeah, I don't think I asked if I'm enough anymore. Because I'm very, very unique, just as all of us are unique. And identity is a construct, right? It's a colonial and a settler construct as well meant to just mean, yeah, it discourages us in many ways. Obviously, I have an affinity, and a deep respect and love for what Mexico is, I'm living in Mexico now. But I realized that Mexican is many things as well, it's a whole panorama of things. And so, for me, you know, the Transterritorial Spirituality is really about who I am, right? It's about how do I how do I relate my knowledge of self, my knowledge and my relations and my knowledge of my settler-colonial complicity to to to be confident in how I show up in the world and the things that I choose to do. So I have to acknowledge the biracial ness, I have to acknowledge for their my Mexican lineage and heritage, I have to acknowledge my my US identity as well. Because we live in, in a in the system, that that we have to navigate and because of there's in justices and discriminations and so forth, you know, I'm very sort of practical, I like to be very practical. But at the same time, in spaces like this, I also want to advance a narrative that allows us to, to be in other forms of expression, right? Sometimes like that, what I love about your practices movement, and dance, you know, you can say so much I was talking to students from from wam the other day, and they opened up with this beautiful chant and dance that told me so much more about who they were, than their words can express. And so I think that's what I'm striving for, right is how can I show up and be who I am, without having to say anything. And that I think goes back to like, the offerings I tried to make with people. And like I said, I'm, I tried to be loving, caring, and sharing. And if, if I can do that, you know, that's, I'm in a good place. And the loving the caring and sharing is obviously nurtured by my lineages. It's nurtured by my experiences that come from the US that come from Mexico, but also comes from places I've occupied, sometimes it's, it's a trail, sometimes it's a ceremony, sometimes it's relationships to people, maybe it's a certain type of food that I like, it can be so so many things, and so who, who I am and my identity is in trans territorial spirituality is really about sort of knocking that all down, and really acknowledging sort of the multiplicity and the multiple dimensions of of who we are. And who I can be.
Gabaccia 28:40
Wow, yes, yes. So much. Yes, I saw all those parts and I agree is always so much Yes. To everything that they they use, so generously share with me and today with us. So segue fully into Transterritorial spirituality. How did you approach your studies before your doctorate and how do you arrive at dedicating your thesis to kind of directly relate to this personal experience of yours with with transterritorial spirituality and it may be best to maybe describe transterritorial spirituality before we go into that bigger question.
Angela 29:34
Sure, sure. Well, yeah, it my dissertation, I use transterritorial ancestral spirituality, but I think trans spiritual spirituality also embodies what it is but in academia, the more words you use the you know,
Gabaccia 29:49
yeah.
Angela 29:51
But essentially trans transterritorial spirituality is all about sort of activating a space of encounter for for those seeking an ancestral spirituality while working through the intersections of colonial and settler knowing and the goal of it for me is to liberate our psychic and embodied knowing so that's trans territorial transterritorial spirituality in a nutshell. You know when i i never pursued a phd because i wanted to be a doctor i did it because i needed a space of refuge because entering my spiritual path my camino the sundance and moon dance turned my world upside down like literally like i lost my home i lost my job, so many things and because i'm not a person of expensive means the US offers us the opportunity to pursue an education where we can get loans or grants or things like that but kind of gives us that space to ask questions and so I approached my doctorate from a very sort of selfish kind of place like i just need refuge right now to figure out what's going on and what do i want to do about it and and originally you know i think being in an academic setting i kept on doing being back and forth like kind of getting caught up in the game of academics like oh i want to do this study about art and performance and blah blah blah but but something would tug at me like that's not why you're here right and so it brought me back to my community and the people that i i've been experiencing this path with and i kept on bumping heads with the the scholarship because our stories weren't represented what i was experiencing with my moon dance and sundance sisters was not represented or this whole talk of evolution of consciousness and you know evolutionary psychology i think it in it sounds good in principle but when i reflect on my community it's like well we already know this this is already this already existed there's no evolution to it right and so so the my doctoral work was just trying to figure out okay how do i capture the stories and what my community is learning via our experiences with one another in a way where i don't subjugate or objectified their knowledge in a way that i feel responsible for what i have to say in who i am as a scholar which is very very scary because soon as you put your thoughts out there you're open to criticism and it's you know cultural studies in general is very polemic regardless of what you're talking about and then too i was trying to bridge these conversations between mexicans and mexican americans and that doesn't happen very often and so i was lucky and honestly like i i engaged in researchers ceremony and a lot of Sean Wilson's work really inspired and encouraged me to do that and i i don't think my my dissertation kind of wrote itself like i would think well what do i do now and i would go and i find the book or someone would mention it was just be the perfect all kind of just kept coming together and what i developed was what i call the gotta call methodology where i approach my research in three phases and so i did the phase of you know collecting all of the background work of people and so forth well that that's literally i didn't have to do with it what i did was i leaned on the work of this phenomenal writer named Slit Varner Lex Kovitch who does this work of oral testimonies and one thing that she did with her work is she started to write books what it was just the voices of the people she was talking to and she focused on women and children and sort of worn torn areas of eastern europe and one no one ever talks to the woman in the children after war so that was one that was phenomenal into you open the book and it's their voices the author's voice all she does is curate what she heard and i was very moved by that because i wanted the people in my community to be listened to right often in academic work people are talking at us and i just wanted an opportunity to again to create that space of encounter and listen to what what my my community is sharing like i just told you how i came into my spiritual path they shared that with me and how can you not be enthralled and in brought into that and so i wanted to share that moment with with with people and then the second phase was me taking responsibility as a scholar practitioner, right? So, you know, I heard all this stuff for what do I think about it? And I kind of like give myself a carte blanche and said, okay, Angela, it's time for you to own up and speak. And so I just wrote, and I wrote, from a very honest, transparent place. My knowledge may be right or wrong. And that's okay. And I think that's part of it, too, is that a transteritorial spirituality isn't about like one truth. It's about multiple truths and about how, in contemporary times, when we access and reclaim knowledge, we're going to get some things wrong. And that's okay. And I think if we don't, if we don't put it out there, normally, it's not, we don't create the possibility for someone to say, hey, well, have you thought about it this way, or actually, you know, things are this way. And that's where the learning sort of deliberation process for me is that, and then the last sort of tear of that was, you know, the theoretical concept, which is the transterritorial spirituality, which I just spoke to, is really creating a more expansive space for us to have these conversations, right. I'm not seeking a utopic world, I'm not seeking like the right answers, there's not one way to be like a machico. There's not one way to be a Chicano or a Mexican spiritual practice, or there's many ways and there's so many different things happening. But at the same time, I think we have to be critically reflective with one another. If there's, we don't engage in that exercise with one another, the possibility due to a lot of damage or repeat sort of colonial settler habits and practices can occur. And so yeah, there's a definite sort of activism to I think, the work in a way to challenge one on individual level and hopefully to challenge communities as well.
Gabaccia 36:56
Wow. How did how did academia respond to this? Like how, how was what was it like to, to defend a work that that was based in so much part in people's stories versus just theories?
Angela 37:17
Well, my defense went great, because everybody, my community was there, and everybody loved it. And I'm a good scholar, sighs backed up all my stuff, right. But I did have some hiccups. Part of my chapters are written the first two years all in Spanish. And I remember my advisor saying, well, this is a US institution, you need to put it in English. And I'm like, no. And I mean, part of me didn't even want to translate it. But I gave in, and I translated it. And I put it in a whole other chapter, but just honoring sort of the language that was spoken, I think was, was a rupture in the academia. I think, too, I'm very, very critical of transpersonal psychology and decoloniality. And I went to a Summer Institute at Duke in North Carolina at one point with some of like, the lead de corniel scholars. And I mean, I was well-received, but I wanted to switch things up. Like I didn't want to be in the classroom with the projector and so forth. So I'm like, Can we go outside? Can I do my presentation outside because I wanted to, to burn some copal open up with the directions? And of course, like they were mowing the lawn, and like, some people were distinct, get it? But to me, that was a perfect moment, because my scholarship isn't about everybody getting it. It's about the people that it needs to reach. It's it's a very much of a living organism spirit. And so yeah, it's it's been weird and exhilarating and frustrating. But at the beginning, I was really angry. And then towards the end, I'm like, No, no, I can't, it's not worth being angry. At this very superficial stuff, pages on letters on a page. And so I, the work of glory ends, I'll do what actually helped me reclaim the process for myself, and have the courage to sort of create a methodology that works for me, and thanks to this work, and one of my committee members, we're actually writing a chapter now talking about reclaiming inquiry as care.
Gabaccia 39:33
Yeah, that was more. Yeah.
Angela 39:36
I mean, what started us to talk about is like, sort of how do we, how do we write and record how friendship inspires our work and keeps us sustains the work that we do, right? Because often we just focus on the outcome. But I know without my friends and the conversations, I have some I don't know if I'm able to do things Yes, as Vanessa says, from coraje take courage. And our friends are so important to that. And so we were talking about more of like your friendship, epistemology, but then we got an opportunity to look at it from a social justice research perspective. And again, I think often research forces us to relive our traumas. And we want to create an invitation for people not to do that. So are how do you think about your research from a caring perspective, rather than just sort of coming to, to show your point perspective, and it shifts things for everybody. So we're in the process of writing it. But I think for me, that's what happened in my work is I had to reclaim the caring process for myself, and most importantly, for my community. And as my, my other comadres, Susie said, Bella says, for future generations for the people who are going to be reading this in the future, so
Gabaccia 40:56
Wonderful. You just mentioned that the work of Gloria Anzaldúa really spoke to you or help you through this process of, you know, conceptualizing all these ideas and into and quote-unquote, academic work. Is there a specific work of hers that you will say was most influential? Or is it a collection of? of many?
Angela 41:26
Yeah, I think it's just her, you know, es muy cabrona. You know, I also have a lot of, I think, empathy for her because she, in her last year, she was really sick and alone, and she left us that your body of work that I was like, wow, you know, she injured so much to create this liberating space for us. Like, why don't I just jump into it as well? You know, I didn't I mean, I think I had a cognitive dissonance with Gloria's work at initially because obviously, time has moved on, right. And we have access to knowledge and experiences that she may or may not have had experience had. So how the expressions of things you know, I think, and sometimes, you know, we all want to have our, our voice. And so, but, but Gloria Yeah, she she gave me courage, right. And then it was a way to sort of honor her by taking part of her work using her lens, but essentially putting, inserting my voice and the voice of my community, in in what I created, so anything you read it first is gonna move you like impossible not to?
Gabaccia 42:48
Agreed. Well, if you had to recommend one work for folks to get started on her under her water, legacy, Borderlands.
Angela 42:57
Borderlands
Gabaccia 42:59
There you go. Borderlands everyone's homework. How do you see? You said your work is now kind of a spirit, living organism? What are some of the I'm gonna rephrase that? I'm trying to make a good question of that. I'm curious to know, where do you see it going? Like how and its new life after the defense? What are where are the places where it can be read where it can be explored? where it can be interacted with?
Angela 43:47
Well, I don't know. Exactly. I think like your invitation is one way that it just sort of it's finding its own path. I also done a couple of presentations with students I'm going to be talking to like education activists, DePaul in a few weeks. I talked to a colleague this past week about how it can sort of serve as a premise or a concept for mental health practitioners. There's a lot of ideas, I think, for me, I want to use it as an as a concept to one responsibly respect sort of people reclaiming ancestral knowledge and traditions. And I like this to sort of maybe that it can serve as someone you know, witness it against the elder bridge. You know, I think if this concept can be a bridge, that can help us preserve and act responsibly with our traditional knowledge, and, and ceremonies, so that we do not professionalize sort of the reclaiming of our spirituality, right? And so for me, I don't really, I don't want this work to be professionalized. I just want it to be a conversation. And hopefully, you know, it becomes a book. Beautiful. If not, that's fine. If it's just his continued bloody garb. That's beautiful. But my hope is that it's, it's a tool to expand the conversation and hopefully inspire other ways that we can, we can narrate and reclaim sort of that that space where we, yeah, we miss, we miss them, all the intersections of who we are. So
Gabaccia 45:48
Cool, how. So you talk about how your work revolves around this bridging of the indigenous knowledge and the art based inquiry and the critical psychology. So I'm interested in hearing, perhaps, like a, like an example of, of a way in which all of these things come together for that community activation.
Angela 46:16
I mean, I think it's happening all the time. I think for me, it's, it's the easiest place I see that happens is within performance art, especially indigenous performance art, like that you all are my heroes in so many ways. And again, my, my hermano Dakota Camacho, I think is a perfect example. And also the work of Jack Gray, the list goes on and on. And this conversation with the students from Guam, I, you know, I'm still sitting with it, and still inspired with it. Just because they, he's giving them permission, and inviting them to tap into their ancestral knowing, in their lineages, to create, and to put forth, you know, a new, you know, their understandings of the world and of their communities outside, not outside or within the academia. Right. And so the fact that they're opening and closing their class, their classes via zoom, with a chant and movement, I think, for me is that I mean, there's no words because there's things happening that we we won't know until they happen, right? Because we all show up in a space with different experiences, highs, lows, so forth, and something needs to give us that energy to move on right to wake up the next day. Yeah, I, I don't know. I think, for me, whenever we were able to connect to the idea that we're breathing, we're here in the world for a purpose, that's a win. And to me, that's all of these things coming together. Because there's so many, there's so many things in the world that is trying to put us down that literally is trying to kill us. So, you know, how we eat, you know, how we work, you know, literally now with the pandemic, you know, how we relate to one another, there's so many threads. And so, if we're able to, to use and tap into ancestral and creative knowledge and integrate it into our lives, like I think that's a creative act, right? You know, your, your prayer is a creative act that helps us survive in this world. If we choose to eat less meat and more plants, you know, that's also a creative act in terms of how do we, how we build nutrition, who we interact with, who are we talking to, like, I don't necessarily think that they have to be these big manifestations, right? They can be small actions as well, simply to sort of how we how we think. And if they're bigger ones, to which, you know, we know people who are doing these phenomenal things as well, that's, that's beautiful, but, but for me, I think the bottom line comes to survival. And so for me, transterritory of spirituality is something about helping us survive, and giving us the confidence and, and, and to liberate sort of our knowledge in our in our connection to our lineage, to the land to the spaces of knowing within our mind and with our soul, and and most importantly among one another.
Gabaccia 49:32
Wow. Absolutely. I definitely agree with that. When when you started talking about this, you brought up how you see this very well are very clear in performance art, and specifically an indigenous performance art. And as a performance studies, former scholar myself, I guess I'm I'm curious to hear from your perspective what is it about art that do we do we need art as a as a framework as a word that helps us liberate and free ourselves to express or this art need us?
Angela 50:20
Well it's it's funny you say that like again art is one of those invented like where do these words come from right and mine and my teacher Sandy Saucedo always would remind me and in my mind and many indigenous languages the word art doesn't exist because it's just about living right and so yeah it's art is everything right and i think sometimes we forget how we how we craft our days and our habits there's an art to it. We can be as creative or as subtle as we want to be and there's something beautiful about that because again for me it's about survival so i mean i think in terms of like culture and art and what's happening because i do work with a lot of artists and i see art in those in those rooms sort of being manifest contemporary manifestations of spirit i was what yeah i mean we can there's so many it's like the music performance you visual art you know dance that list goes on and on and i think those manifestations of life are just sort of expressions and articulations of everything that's happening all the time right or things that spirit wants to catch our attention right like we need a big boom of whatever colors sometimes to to to remind us you know or to move something in us i think are in terms you know my my friend caribbean but i will say i just wrote a book short a series of short stories And Eat Them Out That Feed you and i recommend everybody to check out from but i can't wait to read it because it's sort of like a post ends i'll do a post Acuña post Sandra Cisneros of this integration of spirit world our understanding of life and death and how our imaginations operate in the world and it's it's really it's an art writing is an way it's an art to to acknowledge things that maybe get on that knowledge or and are invisible eyes due to our dominance structions of knowing and expressing to one another so yeah that i think that's how i see art is is sort of the it's art ruptures sort of the shell and allows us to sort of go deeper into the things that sometimes are shoved into a corner because of how of capitalism or how we how the dominant world wants us to to relate and act and and communicate with one another
Gabaccia 53:20
I appreciate you sharing all of that with us i am looking at the time and being mindful i want to start wrapping this up but first i want to ask you if number one is there a place where folks can read your dissertation or is there a place where folks can read more of your work
Angela 53:42
Soon there will be i mean anybody's welcome to write me and you can send me a message via instagram or reach out to you and put out my email my my dissertation will be uploaded to proquest hopefully by may and then you know i'm happy to send anybody a copy of it who wants to read it and then i'm also happy to have conversations just one on one with people like you know i think generosity of time is is really important and i always learn from from sharing the work with other people so yeah just get at me and and and then we'll see where it goes i'll definitely do a book proposal but i'm working with some mentors on how to figure that out right now
Gabaccia 54:26
Beautiful and there's there's always self publishing, luckily
Angela 54:34
I do if i don't publish the book i do want to self publish the testimonials of the participants just because there's such richard stories obviously what their collaboration and absolutely so
Gabaccia 54:47
Absolutely that's that's beautiful are there any upcoming projects that you have that we can all start getting excited about and look forward to
Angela 54:58
Well i mean i i think it's it's really just trying to keep this conversation of transterritorial spirituality alive which i ultimately i like to see it to expand into this concept of transterritorial citizenship just because as you know as i think about how you know what we're living right now how we think about our cities and communities I know a lot of professionals who who think and i work with and who are doing things but they're not they can't necessarily be explicit about it and in their sort of professional environment and for me i think if we invite sort of terrains of speaking territories of psyche territories of like multiple and conflicting histories territories of looking at intergenerational trauma to to larger conversations politics planning mental health hospital administration and the list goes on and on i really think that we can move to a model of citizenship where we actually are more mindful and caring of one another so that we can advance the sustainability of our of our planet
Gabaccia 56:12
Thank you so much for that i hope we get to hop back in here in a year to talk about transterritorial citizenship because yes that is certainly it i mean right now i'm just processing that those words together and how that makes so much organic sense in my body also as a person who is transterritorial because i was born here grew up there came back here and always navigating that in between right of belonging and what and creating what that means for myself so thank you hermana gracias, this was so wonderful thank you everyone who joined i hope you go and follow and Angela's work and i put her handle on the comments it's a ojoojo which basically means eye eye as in these eyes. Thank you Angela.
Angela 57:29
Yeah no let's let's go mati again i just want to close with some friends some Sabya to all the spirits in the hearts that listen there's some amazing people on this lining and to you Gaby, Gabaccia out for for your initiative your offerings of just pure energy and good intentions and again Exploring Responsibly it's that concept and the question itself i think can move can move us in so many ways so gracias and the summit there
Gabaccia 58:02
Appreciate it. Thank you everyone this was an episode of Exploring Responsibly I'm Gabaccia your host and i want to thank you all again for being here we'll see you next month or actually no wait we'll see you next week well next monday, next week if you want to join into a version of this conversation in spanish for all of you who are practicing bilingual or just curious about language you'll be welcomed so i'll be here again on tuesday at the same time with Angela in spanish and then i'll be releasing the lineup for the rest of the year soon so stay tuned everyone ciao!
