Latest / Tales From Aztlantis / Episode 60: Borderland Indigeneity w/Carlos Aceves!

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Episode 60: Borderland Indigeneity w/Carlos Aceves! · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_04: Hello, dear listeners, and welcome to another episode of Tales from Mastlantes.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_04: I am Ruben Ariano Tlagatecat and I will be your host for this very special episode.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_04: Back in 2019, in what I like to call the before times, I spent a year serving as a visiting professor in the history department of the University of Texas at El Paso.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_04: I was there from August 2018 to May of 2019, so not quite an entire calendric year, but what we call an academic year.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_04: And while I was there, I got to know the place a little bit and also made some new friends both in and outside of campus.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_04: And I really did get to enjoy my time out there and getting to know the people who like to call themselves and refer to themselves as fronterizos, people of the borderlands.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_04: In particular, I would like to thank Dr.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_04: David Romo and his partner, Dr.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_04: Ligia Adwiles, for taking me in when I first arrived in El Paso and letting me stay in one of their casitas in their home, which was about a 30-minute drive north of El Paso, in a little town that was actually not in Texas, but in the New Mexico side of the area.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_04: Again, while I was there, I made a lot of friends, uh, especially uh on campus and at UTEP.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_04: And uh one of the people that I really got to know really well because we hit it off and we had a lot of things in common was Dr.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_04: Miguel Juarez.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_04: And so um by the end of the fall semester of 2018, we had been talking about maybe collaborating and doing something together, and then we uh decided that hey, why don't we uh try out doing the podcasting since that was kind of like at a time when podcasting was beginning to sort of take off, and of course, um we called it Los Profesors because we were both professors, uh, and we decided that the topics that we were going to address uh were topics that dealt with the issues of the the borderland region, so in terms of Mexican Americans, things that deal with uh El Paso Juarez and things like that.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_04: And so I think we in total uh did about eight episodes that were released.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not sure if we did more that were not released, I don't recall, it's been a while.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_04: And out of all the episodes that we did, this is one that falls well within the purview of the Tils from Aslantes podcast because it is uh an interview with the person who was at the forefront of uh the emerging Mexicayot movement here in Texas some 40 odd years ago now, and he's been at it ever since, and he has uh not relented and he continues to be a part of that tradition.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_04: And his name is Carlos Aceves Yolowitzcalot.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_04: And as you will hear here in a minute in the kind of lengthy uh introduction that I did for him back then, I debated whether or not to sort of edit some of that out, but I decided against it.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um so I won't get too much into his bio here in this preface.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_04: He has devoted his life to Chicano Mexicano indigenity in the US-Mexico borderlands.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_04: He is someone who, if even if you don't know who he is, if you are part of the Mexicao tradition here in Texas, or some people might call it the red road, or some people might even call it just the indigenous spirituality, however you prefer to define it, more than likely some of the things that you've done have come through the things that people like Carlos Aceves introduced um back in the late 70s, but more specifically in the early 80s.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_04: And so he's been, like I said, he's been at it for quite some time.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_04: And so Carlos, you know, he one of the things that he's done over the years is uh a Chinachli project, which he's worked on for several decades now at this point.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, at the time of the interview back in 2019, he and his partner, uh Lucia Carmona, had been working on trying to get a uh charge school, Ben Las Cruces, New Mexico, that incorporated uh the Chinachli project, which you'll hear more about here in a minute, but it basically incorporates indigenous pedagogy into childhood education, and they've accomplished uh some of those goals to this day.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_04: I know for a fact that they've been able to incorporate some of the pedagogy into public schools, but I'm not sure about actually establishing the charter school that they'd planned.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_04: And so I wanted to share this interview that I did with him back in 2019 because it really highlights a lot of the things that have become part of the Mexica Mexicayod community, especially here in Texas.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_04: And so, with that said, I will go ahead and uh let you listen to the episode.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_04: Carlos has been a Texas resident since moving from Mexico with his parents at the age of two.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_04: He earned a degree in mass communication in 1976, and his first career was working in instructional media for 15 years.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_04: He went back for his elementary bilingual teacher certification in 1992 and returned for a master's of educational psychology in 1996.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_04: All of his degrees are from the University of Texas at El Paso or UTEP.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_04: He retired as an elementary bilingual teacher in 2014 after 23 years of teaching.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_04: His interest in Mesoamerican history and culture inspired him to apply ancient pedagogical models to contemporary educational settings, often with great success in the classroom.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_04: This has allowed him the opportunity to present at national forums such as the National Association for Bilingual Education and other university settings.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_04: As of July 2016, he has been a part of a team to research and create a charter school with an Indigenous-based pedagogy in southern New Mexico, Doña Ana County, through the Native American Community Academy Inspired Schools Network based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_04: Carlos has held many interesting jobs over the years, including that of video and graphics arts production at El Paso Community College, elementary bilingual teacher at Isleta ISD, elementary bilingual teacher at Canutillo ISD from 1995-2015, which was presumably your last teaching position.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_04: Carlos has also received numerous honors over the years, including from the University of Iowa in 1998 for exemplary academy standards in multicultural education, from the Calpulit La Alteca for La Rasa Youth Project in 1999, from New Mexico State's University Department of Curriculum and Instruction in recognition of 20 years of valuable contributions to Mesoamerican Education, and from Canotillo ISD for the Shinashli School Project in 2001.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_04: In addition to his work and honors, Carlos has numerous publications to his name, including a chapter called The Mesoamerican Manifesto: A Struggle to Reclaim Our Human Identity, in the book Becoming a Teacher in the New Society, edited by Elizabeth Quintero and Mary Kay Romo, published in 2003, and another entry titled The Shinashtli Project, Transforming Whiteness Through Mythic Pedagogy, in the book Identifying Race and Transforming Whiteness in the Classroom, edited by Virginia Lee and Judy Helfend in 2004.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_04: His latest publication is a monograph titled Nine Seasons Beyond 2012, a primer on Mesoamerican Philosophy, published by the Indigenous Cultures Institute in 2012 with a Spanish translation in 2016.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_04: And if I'm not mistaken, you also have another pending, upcoming publication, and perhaps we can start with that uh current work and go from there and talk about maybe your long history and involvement in education and how it intersects with indigenity.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_04: So welcome to the podcast, Carlos Aceres.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: My current project actually involves, as you said, uh setting up a charter school in Las Cruces, New Mexico for Doña Ana County.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: That would be an example of applied pedagogy, applied indigenous pedagogy, which we call the Shinashli Project.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: Most of my writing has been around developing a curriculum and curriculum guide, which is now complete.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: And this is the first time that there is a curriculum that doesn't involve just a few lessons or just a few uh presentations, but actually a guide for uh day-to-day in the classroom in early childhood education.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_04: Can you explain what some of those day-to-day interactions in the classroom look like?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the the Shinashi Project is uh uh I introduced it as an enrichment pro program at uh Kanutillo Elementary when I started teaching there.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, from the very uh first time that I started teaching at for the Isleta School District, I introduced that.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: The project has its origins in 1990 in Scottsdale, Arizona, where five of us, five educators, got together and we decided that it would be a good idea to introduce Nahuat culture into public education.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: How to do that?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we each had a different idea.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: And we came together on a common outline, and what I did here when I brought it to El Paso, first I uh I asked a couple uh teacher friends of mine to let me try it out in the classroom.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: And what I discovered was that uh we didn't have to focus strictly on content, on on teaching kids about history or or cultural components, but actually on process.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's a ceremonial framework where where children sit in a circle uh and it's it's almost like uh going to indigenous ceremony, except what you're doing is you're covering uh language arts, mathematics, history, things like that.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_04: I see.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_04: So we'll get into the whole notion of indigenous ceremony in a little bit, but just for the listeners that might not be aware or familiar with what this is, can you just kind of give a brief explanation of what that is and how that translates to the classroom itself?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_04: So the students don't necessarily sit in rows like your traditional environment in the school environment.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_04: They sit in in a circle on the floor.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the the ideal of Shinashli is to begin in a circle, and uh this is the circle that's centered by an object.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: It could be a mirror, it could be something else, and then around that object every student places something that belongs to them to achieve what is called totemic membership.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a way of of beginning with the unity of the circle.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then we we rely on uh salutations that involve uh uh metaphors.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: The metaphors act as uh mnemonic devices, and they also act as uh ways for children to transform knowledge from one mode to another.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: For example, we begin with one is the sun, two is the earth, three are the animals, four are the people, and so on.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then we explore each one of those metaphors, why ancient people would do that, would would assign numbers to natural phenomena or why uh we would identify so closely with nature.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: After that, the activities are not uh in rows, but what they call learning centers.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's really activities that are an extension of those discussions in the circle.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: And the the one of the differences is, well, first of all, that we uh use Nahuatl as an enrichment language, so the students can be exposed to parts of a language that is part of their heritage but which they don't know.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, as you know, there's more than 300 words of Nahuatl uh origin in the Spanish language, and that's a good exploration for them.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: Also, uh I've used Mesoamerican uh mathematics, the way that Mesoamerican people uh use math and and geometry.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: And and what I found that is that enhances it greatly enhances their overall performance in regular math class.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Is this a reference to the Nepal Walshin scene?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: The Nepur Walsin scene is just one.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: The Nepal Walsin is a tool.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: But but it there's so much beyond the Nepopolcin scene.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: People don't realize that uh in Mesoamerica, more than 5,000 years ago, the the constant pi, which is used in geometry, was already known.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: But it was developed in differently than it was by Archimedes back in in Europe.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: What they call now Phi, the Phi constant, which is uh uh or the Fibonacci series.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Or all those all those things, uh, all those things were known in Mesoamerica, and not only that, but they were taught not not at uh at a college level or even in a high school level in in Mesoamerica, they were taught early childhood because there's ways of appropriately guiding children into learning about numbers and learning about uh science and and natural phenomena.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, one of the major things about our uh our way of doing math is we don't begin teaching young children, kindergartners, the numbers with a number one.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: We begin by teaching them with the number zero and how zero becomes one.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that concept is never, never taught in public schools.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: But when children grasp that concept, it sends them, you know, it places them in a whole different uh uh area of critical thinking.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_04: So, what would be one example of how a child would learn the lesson of converting the zero into a one?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: There's various ways that I approach it.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: I ask the children at this moment, what quantity are you?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: How many of you are there?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: And all will say, Yeah, well, there's one of me.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I say, Well, how old are you?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm you know, six years old.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I say, Okay, so at six years old you're the quantity of one.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: What quantity were you ten years ago?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: And they look at me and they say, Well, well, zero.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: Said, okay.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: So at one point you were zero, and then you became one.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about how that happened.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: That had to happen in order for you to be here, and that begins a dialogue.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: The other way is using the model of a spiral.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: The model of a spiral is zero, is infinity because it never ends.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: How do we make a spiral uh finite?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: By closing it and it becomes a circle.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's a very concrete model of how zero becomes one.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: And from there, I mean I could go on and on about what all that brings up.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: That that brings up a whole system, not just a concept of mathematics, but a concept of self, cosmogeny, cosmology.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_04: I see.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_04: So, what is the reception from students?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, I'm assuming that some of these students, some of them are new to the school system, and so they're being introduced to this mode of of teaching right from the beginning, or is there a mixture of both people who are new altogether to the school system or or students that come from a traditional school system and are now being immersed in this new way of indigenous uh teaching?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: I I uh accommodate to the circumstances.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: When I was a teacher, in the beginning I it would be done just in my classroom.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: When I went to teach in Kanutio, three years after I became a teacher, I began to organize it as an enrichment program for the bilingual program.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I recruited all the teachers to be part of the Shinashli project, and that would involve uh me going and doing lessons to their to the classroom, and then all together we would culminate the uh you know the the practice of these lessons in celebrating the Aztec New Year in March.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: And it would be it got to be uh the the you know the entire school almost the entire school participating.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_04: So the name of the project is the Shinashli Project.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: Shinashli Project.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_04: And so Shinashli has a specific meaning in Nawat.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe perhaps you can elaborate on what that means and how you came about choosing that name for your project and and what it means for the overall agenda of teaching kids and and indigenous knowledge and and through Nahuat and other methods.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, uh Nahuat culture is uh like all cultures, you know, that has its uh its richness, gifts, and qualities.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: And and one of the qualities that that Nahuat has is that um, first of all, it is not a a a noun-based language.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like most indigenous languages, they are verb-based.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh it's action.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: Every every word is or every phrase is an action.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: So if somebody is gonna be named uh uh something related to the clouds, they wouldn't be just named cloud, it would be cloud forming or cloud darkening or cloud ra gathering rain.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: It was always a verb base.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's the way children think.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's the way young children think.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: Young children don't think in terms of nouns, they think in terms of verbs.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: So they find it very natural for for this type of education, and the word shinachli itself uh expresses this concept.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: Shinachli means uh seed bursting, or a burst, you know, that's that's a verb, seed seed that is bursting.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: And you could say, okay, well, but what is what was the implication of that?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: The implication of that is that at that moment it is no longer a seed, but at the same time it isn't it is not yet the plant that it's going to be.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_04: It's in the process of transformation, it's in the middle, right?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's a transformational moment.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: And transformational moments are what our ancestors were particularly uh uh keen on to observe and understand, because that's where that's where it's happening.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: If you're able to get in the middle of something, right as something is ending and something is beginning, then that's real power because you can determine for yourself what direction you want to head, and also you can understand something that's not normally understood when something is going on.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: When spring is going on, it's not as powerful as when spring is at the moment, you know, becoming summer.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: Because there's a whole lot of things that are happening at that moment in nature that are not happening before or after.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: Just in that one specific moment in time.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a it's a way of of understanding things, a way of studying things, a way of living your own life.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: To finish, in Achli is two words.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's a sheen, which means like literally explosion, and achli, which means seed.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: If you study the concept, uh I found studying the concept that it's very, very close to what is now called chaos theory.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_04: Chaos theory.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: Chaos theory.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_04: Can you explain how the two relate?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, chaos theory is that the universe uh weaves order out of chaos.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't come ordered.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: When you see something, it's random.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: Everything is random.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: And yet, out of that randomness, there's order.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: How does it achieve order?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: It achieves order through when certain things just come together.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: They're like when they're in motion towards that end beginning, they just seem to be flowing randomly.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: But when you're there at that moment when they come together, you see the order.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then, oh, so there's the order.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: But then in chaos theory, as soon as the order appears, then disorder continues because that's the nature of the universe.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: Our perception of the universe is we want to to create order out of it.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: When we study it in chaos theory, we see that disorder somehow always forming order, and then the process just continues.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: And that moment, that fractal moment, which is a term in chaos theory, that fractal moment, that's Shinashli.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_04: So the fractal moment in chaos theory is the Shinashli.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_04: And so if Shinashli were to be elaborated into uh a chaos theory of sorts, what would that look like?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_04: So Shinashli is the fractal of the chaos theory.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_04: In now what terms, what would it be?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: The chaos theory, what well it it's it's just a way of uh how we construct knowledge.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: We don't impose our own perceptions.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: We we construct knowledge based on that chaos chaos theory.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: For example, learning in the classroom.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: The richest learning classrooms that I've seen look chaotic.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Look like there's no order.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, there's a lot of talking, a lot of noise.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: But if you know, like through that circle, through that centering circle, that centering circle, that's a scene.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: When the children go out and begin doing their work, not ordered, not in the order that you want them to, but the order that they need to, it looks very chaotic.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: And you see a classroom where children are flowing from area to area, having conversations, very different.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: So so it's very unstructured.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Is it something similar to like a Montessori type setting?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: More like Waldorf education.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_04: Waldorf education.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: Waldorf education.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: Waldorf education.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Waldorf Education is related to Shinatchli in that Rudolf Steiner, the uh philosoph German, the Austrian, I think he was Austrian philosopher who developed it, was a European mystic around the turn of the of the twentieth century.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: And he had a a reputation for making things happen the unexplained.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: So in 1905, the German uh farmers asked him if they if they could help them renew agriculture because their agriculture was failing.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: And he did a series of lectures around Germany, teaching the German farmers how to renew their their their farming.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: And the concept that he used was he said a seed is is a is the universe, and when it bursts, it creates a moment of infinite possibilities.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's a precursor to um uh permaculture.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: And there's still people who do uh farming according to the uh the Steiner way.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: But but that's very very similar.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: So later on uh this um entrepreneur, this uh ri rich person, asked him to create a a school, an educ uh a school based on principles, these these spiritual principles, philosophical principles that uh that he expoused and he created uh a school.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: And the school was named Waldorf because the name of the factory owner was Waldorf.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: And his family would send their children there, the owner, and then the workers' children would go there.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: And out of this developed an approach to education that is now known as Waldorf education.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: And it uses the same idea of Shinashli.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: Childhood is a moment where infinity becomes form.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it's adjusting to its memory of once being infinite.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: Which is going from zero to one.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: So when I researched it, I found a lot of similarities between that type of philosophy and that type of education and Shinashli.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_04: So where do you get your sources for the Shinashli method of teaching?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: In 1978, I met uh three people.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: Later I met another one in 1980, but in 78 there were three people that became crucial, you know, to what I'm doing now.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: And in 1978, I became a father, and I decided to give my my daughter a Nahuatl name.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, strictly out of cultural pride and cultural heritage.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Not because I knew anything about Nahuat culture or whatever.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: But I said, you know, this this little girl is gonna grow up, and she's gonna ask me why I named her the way I named her.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: And that sparked an interest, like a desire to want to know the roots a little bit more about the roots.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: And and not that I went out and I didn't put an ad in the paper, I didn't do anything, but I put out that intention, and then these three people pop up.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: And what these three people had in common is that there were people who for generations had been told after the Spaniards got here, you're gonna keep this tradition.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: And right now it's not safe because we're under European rule, but eventually, you know, it's gonna be safe to speak it and to teach it.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're gonna keep it across the generations.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: And and these are three families from very different places.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: Well, actually, there were there were two of them.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: The third one was a different one, but the the two of them they were different places.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: One was from Zacatecas, and the other one's family was from Michoacan.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: And what they were told was an indigenous tradition.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: Was it a specific indigenous tradition?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, the tradition uh of Senora Paula Juarez.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's a Nahuat tradition around a northern Zacatecas, Southern Durango.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: The original culture there, Nahua culture was around a place called Chachihuites.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: Chachihuites?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: Chachihuites, that's in Northern Zacatecas.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: If you look at Southern Durango and Northern Zacatecas, there's whole towns that had Nahuat names.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: In the center of those towns is this place called Chachihuites, and I went there.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: And the person, the keeper of that place, the spiritual keeper, not the government official, explained to us what it was, that it had once been like a university, like a center of knowledge, where much of the uh studies about you know what we know is the Aztec calendar and other things were done, and there was a civilization gathered around there.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: So she came out of that tradition.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: The other one was came out of the uh Purepeche tradition in Michoacan.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: But what's interesting is that both traditions are the same.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: They were.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: I found that all trad all the indigenous traditions are based on pretty much the same thing.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: What's called the medicine wheel.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: In the teachings of the medicine wheel, they might be different languages, but it's all the same.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: I've talked to Hopi about the Aztec calendar, and they know that.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: And they tell me things that are it's in a different form, in a different language, and like from a different geographical perspective, but it's all a natural process, a natural knowledge, a natural way.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, I met these two people, and and they said, Well, you know, I guess you're one of those that were meant to impart this knowledge to.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I started learning, they became my teachers.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: Here in El Paso, okay.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: Paula Juarez and uh Jesús Ventura.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and then at right at the same time I met another man, uh Ruperto Santana was his name.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: Ruperto Santana was the man who originally published the article showing the linguistic link between the word Mexica and the word chicano.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: It it's in a he published it in an obscure little academic magazine.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: Do you remember the name of the magazine?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: I don't, and I, you know, he gave it.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: That would be very useful.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: It would, it would.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: But he he showed it to me.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that was his name, and and I read the article and it and it said how it's you know, and it's what people say, you know, today.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: But that was he he wrote that like in like I want to say 71.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_02: 1971.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: So that far back.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: That far back, huh?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: But what the other thing about Ruperto Santana, and he was already an older, he was already in his 60s when I met him, is that when he was uh uh he had been a medical student in Unam in 1947, and in 1947, he volunteered to go to this village, now what village, to teach Spanish, because they were asking the students to volunteer to go teach Spanish.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: So he went, and the village that they sent him to was Milpal.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: Milpalta was one of the central, one of the main villages where the Mexicayo tradition was it was decided to be.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: And he told me about the renewal, you know.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: Before I met any other teachers in Mexico that ever told me about that, he told me about how they would meet and how it was uh you know that everything that that people like uh the maestros later I learned from those maestros, Ruperto Santana told me because he had been there.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_04: So he knew uh Luna Cárdenas.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, he knew all those people.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, he knew all those people.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_04: He knew all those people.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_04: He had to have been connected with him, at VIPA Alpha.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he he knew them, but he was just there to volunteer you know to teach Spanish.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: He was he was a young medical student.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so I knew about that.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: So when I I met these other maestros, I knew the story.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: But those two people, Señora Juarez and Jesús Ventura, were my first primary sources.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: Later I met uh Francisco Jiménez Lacael, and he, you know, it was the same thing except from what Señora Juarez taught me, was teaching me, and what Jesús Ventura was teaching me, was the same thing except that uh Tlacael called it Mexicao.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_04: But it's you know So did um Señora Juarez and and Señor Ventura call it anything in particular?
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: And Jesús Ventura had a specific name for it.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: That was his that was a name that he's Ara Michoacan.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_04: And so those those three people, and we'll we'll come back to some of that um hopefully if we have time uh in a little bit, but going back to the original question, so your inspiration for Shinashli stems from what you learned from from these three individuals going back to the late 70s, early 80s, and so how did it progress from from what you learned from them to you deciding that perhaps this is something that I can sort of incorporate into my own ways of teaching?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh after uh I met Senora Juarez and and Jesus Ventura and especially Tacaelel, I became involved in ceremony.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: And um in 1990, Tupac Enrique from Phoenix, he was the one that created the Shinashli Project.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, he created Shinashli, and then I'm the one that called it the Shinashli Project.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I see.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but he called up for a meeting in 1990 of people who would be interested in introducing Nahuatl culture into public education.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so I went and I, you know, I had always wanted to be a teacher, but I wasn't working as a teacher then.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I had I had several teacher friends of mine, and I asked them, you know, can I go to your classroom and try some of these things out?
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so I did for a year, and then I said, you know what, if I'm gonna really do this, I have to be a teacher myself.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so I became a teacher and and developed the project uh even more.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_04: You know, there's uh an old saying that I that I live by, the only way to really learn something is to teach it.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_04: And so that's kind of like the approach that you took.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_04: If you really want to learn how to implement this process in the schools, you're gonna have to be become a teacher yourself.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_04: That's be its profit, right?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_04: Is there anything else about the Shinashali project that you think the public might want to know?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: I I think many are familiar with the uh the story of uh the Tucson Rasa Studies Project that was outlawed by a few years ago, we're going about what, five, six years now?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: In twenty twelve it was uh formally outlawed by the state legislature in Arizona.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: Rasa Studies, that particular program came out of the Shinashli project.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: That was Shinashle.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: And uh interestingly enough, in 2012 when when the Rasa Studies in Tucson was legally shut down at my school and where I was teaching, my principal said, You will do this no more.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh really?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: Period.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_04: And the school was which one?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: Canutillo Elementary.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: And and shortly thereafter is when I retired.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: And now I'm doing it back at the Canutio School District, but in a different school that built children's elementary, and then uh also trying to uh uh get this school started in Las Cruces.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_04: And you have someone that's collaborating with you uh in Las Cruces in New Mexico.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: Well we have we have a board, we have uh organizer, we have it's it's you know it's sponsored by the NACA Native American Community Academy Inspired Schools Network.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_04: Well what I mean is you're not the only one that's teaching this, right?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we haven't start well, you haven't started the school yet.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: But at Bill Childress, yes, I'm the only one that that teaches it.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_04: Shifting a little bit the conversation, uh I know just now you referenced several people that influenced you early on and were sort of like the foundation for the Shinashali project.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_04: Can you elaborate a little bit more on who these people were and what are some of the traditions that that they shared with you that you're willing to share with the public as well that sort of formed your outlook on life and what that meant for you in a place like El Paso?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_04: Like what did all these things mean to you now that were being filtered through this indigenous lens?
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what these people gave me was uh you say lens, is literally uh uh a new pair of glasses through which for me to view reality or to observe reality.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: And there were things that I knew that I couldn't just uh philosophize about or or sit at home and wonder about, but there were concrete things that these people said I I need to be doing if I was serious about the tradition.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: Señor Juarez particularly was uh Curandera tradition, going way back in her family.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: She would talk about how her grandmother would diagnose people's illnesses and and how her mother would travel from all the way from Zacatecas up to Zuni to uh with patients along along the way.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: And then Jesus Ventura, Maestro Ventura, you know, he would tell me uh about the philosophy and and the action behind the tradition.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that that uh I knew that I had to do was quote unquote rural Indians, when they move to a region, they find the center of life for that region.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what the ceremonies are organized around is that that center of life.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: And and for me, I looked around and discovered that it was Waco Tanks, State Park, but it's also a place where literally that's the center of water for this whole region.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh for about uh 200 miles around.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: All water that flows to the flows south, flows to the ocean, has a little vein that goes into the bottom of Waco tanks.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_02: And when we went there, we discovered uh all these, we didn't discover, but the the the state had documented all the petroglyphs that were there.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: But in going there, we had some very significant life-changing experiences, things that are, you know, uh psychic phenomena, if you want to call it, which clearly said that this is this is what you need to uh center your ceremonial life around.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why today uh our sun dance, uh two two of our sundances are on opposite sides of Waco tanks.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: Our ceremonial pyramid is also on the side there of uh Waco tanks.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: We hold many of our ceremonies there around Waco tanks, and and we conduct uh two pilgrimages a year to honor the the spirits there.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: And and so that's part of what I was taught to do.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: That uh, you know, you you're not an Indian just by saying, you know, wearing feathers and blowing smoke, but what is your relationship to the natural world where you live in?
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: What are your responsibilities to that natural world?
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: How are the forces, the invisible forces of the natural world, going to communicate to you what you need to do for your species if you want to continue living there?
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_04: So wicko tanks has become sort of a central component to a lot of the indigenity that takes place here in El Paso.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_04: The community that's here, yes.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_04: The community that that's here has been going to Waco tanks, what going on forty something years now, maybe quite a bit.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_04: Well, since uh since the nineties.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, since the nineties.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_04: So it doesn't date back to to the eighties when you first.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the first the first time that that that we went there that I went there was in 1980 um eighty-three.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that was my first search.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I just found somebody, some people who knew about about the area.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: And uh you went by yourself?
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you went with the I went with uh three other people.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: One of them was uh two of them were college uh professors at the college, one of them was a biologist, the other one was a uh sociologist, and and then another one was a friend of mine who whom I work with.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_02: And and I told him, you know, listen, uh this has you know become uh a question about the center of life and where the where the original ceremonies were done here.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so he says, Well, I know there's a special cave that nobody goes to because it's in uh anyway.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: We went and we did a ceremony there.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: That was awesome.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: That was awesome to see.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh it's a special cave that it's very hard to get to.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: You have to literally climb a little bit, mountain climb a little bit, and then you go down into it, and you can see that it's a was a ceremonial place where it's and is this in private property or is it in the state park at some court?
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_02: That this particular cave was in in federal property.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so the wicked tanks area, you know, part of it is the state, part of it is private, part of it is the military.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_04: And so um to get access to that space, you had to request permission of the state.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_04: We just went by we just went to the We just went.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: It was it, you know, it was before 9-11.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: So before nine, yeah, things were a lot different back then, obviously.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_04: So Wicko tanks, that's one part, well, that's one component to the indigenous tradition that that exists here in El Paso.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_04: Did you were you aware of any other indigenous traditions that were being uh carried out here uh in the area?
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_04: I know that we have the the Tiwa people that that live not too far from here in the area, they have uh their own community.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_04: Uh were they connected to Waco tanks in any way?
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_04: The Tiwa, the PlayStation.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: The Tiwa uh they acknowledge a connection, a very significant connection to Waco tanks.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: However, they are very private about their their connection.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_04: What we found But there's no issues between uh between the Tiwa and and Mexicas, I guess for the lack of a better term.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_02: The tribe the tribe itself, yes, because it's very protective about who's an Indian.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: They they did not like Mexicans to call themselves Indian.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: I see.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: But people who were not connected to the formal tribal government, we have friends who are not only Tiwa, but we also find the tradition of the Piros.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the Piros were also another indigenous group that migrated from Socoro, New Mexico.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: They were the first ones to battle the the Spaniards before the Pueblo Revolt.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: They lost.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: And they migrated down here to what is now El Paso before the Tiwas, before the Spaniards ever came down.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: And and and they were given refuge by another uh the original group, which are called the Mansos.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: Mansos.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: Tampachoa.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_02: The this the Tampachoa descendants, they they're they're with us, they're in part of our community, and and so are the Pitot descendants and some of the Tiwa descendants, not part of the of the official tribal uh tribal structure.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and but the original ones were the Tampachoa or the the Manzus.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: They're the ones who actually embraced many of the uh other indigenous groups that were fighting the Spaniards and later the uh cavalry, and and would take refuge here.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: They would they would take them in.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: Take them in.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: For example, Tortugas in in near Las Cruces.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: They specifically were the Manzus lived on one area and and they were given that that region right there around the mountain to to settle.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: And these were the the Tiwas who didn't want to be here with the Spaniards in El Paso, but you know, somehow couldn't return back to Albuquerque.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so and then when the Piros, and then already when the Tibuas went to Tortugas, when they were founding Tortugas, there were already Piros there who were part with the Mansos.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: And and so today in Las Cruces we have uh the the Pirotiwa Manso tribe, they're called the PMT.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: And and they're they're trying to uh formalize their their identity through uh through a tribe, but instead of just choosing one heritage, because the heritage has always been together, the Piros and Mansos and the Tiwas, they call it the Pirotiwa Manso tribe.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they're they're very supportive of the Shinachri school that we are starting in Las Cruces.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_02: They've been with us all the way.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: They went to the hearings of the uh state the education commission of the state of New Mexico to say that they supported the school, that they thought that the the Shinachri school would be good for their own cultural development.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: So those are the traditions that that we found.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then the other tradition was um the uh what they call the humano.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: The humanos and and and uh the humano descendants they're also part of our our community.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_04: So your community is more of an intertribal coalition?
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_04: It's Mexican-based.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_04: But it's Mexican-based.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_02: But but but these other groups they they they feel very at home.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: We have uh uh we have some Navajos that that come from out of town to participate in our ceremonies, and and they feel very at home.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: We've had Wicholis stay with us long term here in our community and and and even participate in in the Sundance and no problem.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, all indigenous groups that come, because that's the way I was taught, that it's one tradition, many, many angles, many ways, but it's it's una tradition.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_04: Una cultura y un continente?
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: That was uh Domingo Paredes.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: Domingo Paredes?
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: Even his one of his students, Humbatsman.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh for many years would come and stay with us for extended periods of time and teach and share.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: He's the one that that got us started on the pyramid.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, really?
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, interesting.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: So when you say community, are you referring to Kalpuli Tlalteca?
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's uh yeah, the Kalpuli Talteca is the community, and there's two two types of members.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: One are the actual card-carrying kalpuli members.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's uh it's traditional, and then there's societies that are affiliated to the Kalpuli.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_02: The societies that are affiliated to the Kalpuli are the Danza Omekoad, Dansa Atlanistica, uh the Moon Circle, the Peori Church, and the Shinashti Project.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_04: Just so that uh listeners understand what what you're saying here, and and I'm trying to also kind of relate it to my own community back home.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_04: So when you say the community, the Kalpuli itself is comprised of members who are also part of different societies.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_04: Some are, some are not, and some are not.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_04: So you can be a member of a specific society, but not necessarily be a member of the Kalpuli.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: But the society itself is affiliated to.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_04: Interesting.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_04: So it's like circles that are a confederation of different communities.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, a confederation with autonomy.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_04: With autonomy.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: Which is an indigenous concept.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: That concept is indigenous.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_04: So going back, I know I I interjected the word mexica in there as an identifier.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_04: Do you identify as a mexica personally?
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_04: Is that your your identifier of indigenous identity?
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: For ethnic purposes, I call myself a Mexican.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: Mexican?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I figure that covers everything.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: It covers my Nahuatl heritage, it covers my Mexica heritage, uh, it covers the part of history where there's a a blending and a mixing of European with indigenous culture.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: It it covers me all around.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I I really don't need to call myself as well.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_02: As far as culture, yeah.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think so.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_04: Then this relates to my next question in terms of the meaning of indigenity, um, indigenous identity.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_04: To you, what does that mean to be an indigenous person and and to have uh an indigenous identity for yourself?
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it initially, and it still does to some extent, is that if your heritage, meaning, you know, your family, some members of your family, uh, and certainly your culture, is a result of what has happened across uh millennia here in on this continent, then you're you're indigenous.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that that indigenity means that you have ancestors on this land.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: Ancestors that go back from the beginning.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: Even if you have ancestors from Europe, but you have that genetic connection to the to the land.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: Also, if you have that cultural connection to the land.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: When the tradition was revived, the Mexicayo tradition, when they they said anybody who is Mexican is an inheritor of this tradition.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: Todo Mexican, Nolaceón de Viva, Color de la Piel, Todo el que se llama Mexicano, all that call themselves Mexican are the inheritors of this tradition.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then for me that pretty much covers it.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_02: Later on, and this is one thing that all my teachers taught me is that our heritage, our culture.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: Heritage offers us models for not just us but for everybody, all human beings, to learn how to be natural again.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_02: Because part of the reason why in in the prophecies, why the this tradition was kept, is because they believe that when when the human race stops becoming natural, that we create our own destruction.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_02: Can you elaborate on that?
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_02: What does it mean to be natural?
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: To be natural means that we have a relationship to the natural world that is uh sustainable and all but also that that is interactive.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like a symbiotic relationship with the environment, with the ecology.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_02: Nature knows how to how to offer us that.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know how to reciprocate.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_02: That reciprocity is what the tradition is about, is how how can human beings give back to the mother earth that she gave us so much, but then we have a responsibility.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: But how do we exercise that responsibility?
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: Western civilization tells us, you know, that in the beginning that we really don't have that responsibility, that mother nature belongs to us, that there she's property.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: And and uh the tradition says no.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's uh self-destructive long-term decision.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, it's in the Hopi prophecies, which are you know the most well known.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so we we reached that point.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: And in in 19 in 1948, when the tradition was formally revived, it wasn't just revived in in Mexico.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: Many places around the world that are connected to a tradicion also made significant decisions.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_02: It was around the same time period.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: Around the same time period.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I could I could tell you about the history.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: Antonio Velasco Piña talks about that, the connection between indigenous tradition and Tibet.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_04: Is he the one that wrote the book on Regina?
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: Regina.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that book came out in 1987.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_02: In 1980, my servant had already told me that story.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_04: So it was already part of the oral tradition down there.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_04: He just happened to write a story around.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't know how he got it, but I'm sure that's how that's part of the way he got it.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but it's it was already part of not everybody knows uh knows it, but but it was already I already knew that, I already knew the the Regina process.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: What he wrote was fiction.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: Right, it was a fiction story.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_02: But it's it's but it's based on um supposedly a true person that has lived, right?
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, my uh our teacher, Jesus Ben Tura, his grandfather was one of those people that was called, that was contacted by Tibetans to go to and went to Tibet to make that connection.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then his my uh my teacher's father went to Tibet and Jesus Ventura went to Tibet.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_04: Can you I don't know if you know this, uh um maybe it wasn't imparted to you, but perhaps it was.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_04: What is the the fascination and the connection between indigenous leaders and indigenous spiritual people in Mexico and Tibet?
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_04: Because I hear this come up a lot, and um I've been curious about that for a while.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe you might impart some knowledge on the internet.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and uh the Regina story, though, the story that that Jesus Ben Tura told me was that the 13th Dalai Lama, they had a ceremony and they foresaw some of the things that were coming.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, China taking over Tibet.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_02: But they what they also saw was that the the main vibration of the earth was shifting from the Himalayas to the Andes, and that this part of the continent would now receive that that responsibility of having the main vibration, uh electromagnetic vibration of the earth flow through here.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so and so the 13th Ayalama said we need to make contact with the the people that practice tradition over there.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_02: The Tibet tradition is is two things.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's Buddhism, but before it was Buddhist, it was called the Bond.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: The Bon tradition is native tradition.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_02: They use the medicine wheel, the four directions, the four elements, the everything is the same.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so what Buddhism did with the Bond with the native tradition is kind of like what the Catholic Church did originally with with our traditions.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_02: They just made it into a Catholic format.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_04: They made it a like a syncretized version of their indigenous tradition.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: And and so and so Tibetan Buddhism is based on native tradition, it's native ceremony.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, when they were the masks and the dances, you know, all those are kachinas, you know.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_04: So that's why there's a distinction between Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah because it's more indigenous based to Tibet.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_04: So you've made references a few times to this idea of the medicine wheel.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_04: Do you care to share what that is?
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh or the the medicine wheel is called many things.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh some call it the original instructions that humanity received so they could be get along in nature.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's called Tloken Awoke, Nawiolin, Hunapku.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: There's different names, but it it's all the same symbol.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_02: But it's it's more than a symbol.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_02: For example, in in the Shinashi school, the geometry that we teach is Tlokenawake.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's a whole geometric system.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_02: And again, it comes out of the number zero.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the Aztec calendar, the geometry Aztec calendar is based on the original medicine wheel.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's what's the commonality.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you go to Peru, you go to Alaska, you go to China, you go to you know Tibet, and you'll find the same symbol.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_02: And and when you talk to people about that symbol, they'll tell you the same things.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh you they begin with the four directions, they begin with infinity taking form and becoming a circle, the circle dividing, you know, and then and then having to divide again when as human beings emerge.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the the first division is life, the the second division is human life, which is what why it's called the original instructions.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_04: Another thing that I've been curious about is uh how the original circles formed here in El Paso.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_04: I know that there's two really old ones that go back to the very beginning.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_04: There's uh Kalpuli called Tanaltocali, there's another one called Kalpuli Tlalteca, which is the one that you are currently a part of.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_04: Can you explain a little bit uh of on how those groups first came about?
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, the first uh uh attempt at at an organizational uh effort at the tradition was actually uh a summer camp for youth called Campamento Luciano Fresque.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_02: And Luciano Fresque was a Piro Indian.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_02: He's one of the leaders of the Salt War here in El Paso.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_02: Oh really?
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, there was uh there was a uh$20,000 uh reward for his head, but he was never captured.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_02: His descendants still live here today.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: One of his descendants is uh was one of the founders of Calpoli Talteca.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_02: I see.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_02: So that was the first attempt, that was in the in the 80s.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then and then uh uh later on is when we formed Tonalto Kali, which means Sun Church, okay to give ourselves some kind of religious protection because uh tradition is ceremonial, it's considered religious.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_02: So Tonalto Kali was was organized.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the first uh Calpuli or formal traditional organization involving having a council, having members, and we were helped out by well the uh our teachers, but señora Juarez was part of it, Jesus Ventura was part of it, Roberto Santana was part of it, Tlaca L from Mexico, there he was he was part of it.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_02: And then and then that that organization grew.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: In the 1990s, when I wanted to start the Shinashli project, I decided to that if I was gonna be a teacher and and do the Shinashli project, I needed to separate a little bit from Donaldo Kali and not be so involved.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I said, you know, guys, I'm gonna be busy with something else for a while.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_02: And during that time, while I was doing the Shinashli and going to you know, I was going to school to get my certification, I was working full-time.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was doing all these things that not didn't allow me to be full participant in Donaldo Kali.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_02: And during the time that I was away, there was a change of leadership.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_02: That leadership said we're gonna be a formal Kalpuli, even though we already are Kalpuli, and they added the name Kalpuli Donalto Kali.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then when when I when I came back to fully participate in the ceremonies, I ran across a friend of mine, Ramon Arroyos, who comes from the Luciano Fresquez family, and he wanted to start something, you know, he wanted he was interested in the tradition.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we're talking 1993.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_02: And and and I said, sure.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_02: So him and I started getting together, and and another guy started getting together, and pretty soon there were, you know, about four of us.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, well, listen guys, there's already a kalpuli here.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_02: Because I said, let's form a group.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: There's already a kalpuli.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_02: They said, but we want to be a separate organization.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we we can ask them to be confederated with them, that's part of the tradition.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: So we asked Donald Cali that if we could be part uh confederated, and they said they said no.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_02: They said that uh if we wanted to start another group, to go ahead and start it independently.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't feel comfortable being confederated.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_02: So we started Kalpuli Talteca and and we became fraternal Kalpuli's, you know, supporting each other.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_02: But when we because from the beginning they said no, if you're gonna, and I don't know why they said it, but they said rather than be affiliated, we'd rather that you be separate.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so we became separate.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_02: They became the there were two kalpulies fully, you know, we had uh our own ceremonies and and and some of us would go from once you know switch back and forth switch back and forth, and then uh uh Tonlatokali became uh the leader was Acasio Akateca.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_02: He was he became ill, started becoming very ill, and it and as his health went down, uh kind of the kalpuli went down, and after his death, the kalpuli really kind of disappeared.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: The only member is his wife, uh Mona.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so for whatever reasons, organizationally, I don't know what happened within the organization, they were not they they didn't grow, they just they shrunk.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_02: They shrunk.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_04: So here in El Paso, the the only, as far as you know, the only surviving or working member of the Kalpuli is is Mona.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and all the members that were in Tonatakali are now with us.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_02: Are not with the Kalpuli Kalka.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_02: And they have different reasons why why they left.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_02: Some said most of them is that there wasn't enough going on.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_02: There wasn't enough opportunity to participate.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_02: I guess because of the you know, as Acasio went went down in health, yeah, you know, he carried personally he carried a lot of that activity forward.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_04: So I guess I'm curious how you you met your first two teachers, Señora Juarez and and the other generation.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_04: Jesus Ventura.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_04: Jesus Ventura.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_04: And then how did Tlacael come into the picture?
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, because uh Ruperto Santana, I remember, had told me about what had happened in Midpalta.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_02: And in Tlacael, his first tour in the United States was in uh uh 1975, right after Wounded when uh uh Samirokoy organized a speaking tour called White Roots of Peace.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the White Roots of Peace, right.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_02: So he was part of the White Roots of Peace.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_02: He was part of the White Roots of Peace.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I and he came to El Paso, but I didn't go see him.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_02: Through the White Roots of Peace?
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_02: I I went to some of the events, but I didn't go to see him specifically.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I already heard of him.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_02: So then uh some friends of mine in Phoenix said that he was starting a tour of his own through to the United States, I guess because of what he had learned in White Roosevelt Peace.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that I should contact him so if he could, you know, make a stop here.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's how I got in touch with La Cael because of my interest in what Roberto Santana had told me.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_02: He had he had known Runa Cardenas and all he knew all those people.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_04: Right, because he was connected with uh movimiento confederado restaurador de la cultura de Náhuac.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_02: Right in Mexico City.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_02: Which those people we met later on.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, later on, after after we had met La Cael.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that's a story in itself.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's kind of psychic.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of story here.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_02: So that's how I met La Caelel, and and and because he was interested in touring the United States on a regular basis, every year, this would be his first stop.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so yeah, he did that for maybe about five years.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_04: So between like 1975 to 1980 or something like that, 76?
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, he he didn't start his first tour was in in 80.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: So after the White Roots of Peace years, the road, yeah.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_02: I see.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, the first tour he did was with Concheros with Andrés Segura.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's a real one.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_04: Because they went to uh Austin as well.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_02: They did a performance at a UT.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and after that tour, that's when when he was gonna come back again, that's when uh Likos in in in Phoenix, my friend of mine, said, Hey, get a maestri, blah blah blah blah.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I contacted him.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then I wrote him a letter and said that you know on his next tour if he wanted to stop here.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: And this is before the formation of the first Kalpuli.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_01: Before the formation of the first calpuli.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_04: So just to be correct on this, the first Kalpuli was organized in 1984.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the name of it was Donalto Cali.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then after that it was Calpuli Talteca.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that was organized in 1992, 93.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_04: So as far as you know, before these Calpulies were formed, were there any other Calpuli's in the state of Texas that you were were aware of, or any sort of similar group of Chicanos, Mexicanos who were claiming indigenity, uh forming such groups at that time in the 70s, 80s?
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_04: Here in El Paso, the whole Juarez family had that.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_04: But it was a family affair for the family.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_04: It was a family affair.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_04: It wasn't open to m no membership from for anyone.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_04: So you had some of that going on.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_04: But as far as like a formal group that anyone can join, as far as you can tell.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_04: And you hadn't heard of any others around the state.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_04: I've always been curious about whether or not Donautecali and Tlateca were the first Gantulis in Texas.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_04: Well, Tonautecali was probably definitely the first.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_02: But actually, in the uh before that, there was the Toltecas in Aslan in San Diego.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_04: Well that was San Diego, but I'm talking about specifically here in Texas.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_04: So we are at about an hour mark here.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_04: Is there anything that you want to add?
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_04: Any final thoughts, comments that you want to share that you think the public might want to know about you, that you want to share with the world?
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the the tradition, La Tradicion, Mexicair, has an importance beyond just the indigenity of Mexican Americans.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_02: It has models that can be used, models of agriculture, models of economics, models of political organization, models of education, all of which we use here in our community, that can teach human beings to be natural again.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_02: Personally, I and I think many people follow this, that the human species is in trouble, mainly because we have stopped knowing how to be natural.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we're not machines.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: Somos a carni hueso.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_02: We need to eat, we need to breathe.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: We are dependent on nature totally.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_02: And that dependency is a responsibility.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the the air just doesn't get produced, uh it will get produced without us, but we also have the capacity to be to interfere with the production of that air, that water, that food for us.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_02: And honestly, most of humanity no longer knows how to reconnect to nature.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_02: We have no idea.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_02: The Tibetans do, uh many natural people around the world do, and the people de la tradicion still do.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that's to me is is is the urgency of the day.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you heard it here, folks.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_04: You have to reconnect with the land.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_04: It's urgent, and it is for our survival.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you, Carlos, for being here on the podcast.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_04: And thank you for listening.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_04: We'll see you next time.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_04: That was my interview with uh Carlos Aceves Yolowitz Kalod back in 2019 in El Paso Tejas.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_04: I hope that the episode was insightful.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_04: And like we always say here, the truth is like medicine.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_04: It doesn't always taste good, but it's always good for you.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_04: Until next time, folks.