Indigenous Peoples: Resistance, Advocacy, & Allyship - 10/16/2024

Conversation Overview

Please join us this Monday, October 16th at 4pm PST/7pm EST: Indigenous Peoples: Resistance, Advocacy, and Allyship for a rich and informative Messy Conversation on indigenous people and allyship with David Mix and Rosa Garza Mourino.

Rosa Garza-Mourino is a trans-disciplinary scholar, educator and academic administrator driven by curiosity and difference. Rosa earned her MA in Media and Cultural Studies in Mexico City. Before moving to the U.S., Rosa had extensive professional experience with Mexican think-tanks focused on media analysis and field study methods, as well as with adult education programs. She currently serves the AULA UGS Division as both part time faculty, and Director of External Academic Partnerships in charge of the Internship Program, local engagement initiatives, and articulation liaison with 2 year local colleges. Rosa is the volunteer chair of the AULA Diversity Inclusion committee.

David Mix- At 19 years old, I found myself at Rough Rock School on the Dine Reservation in Arizona, standing in front of a room full of students who had been watching the movie Passenger 57 for a week.  There were no books, no supplies.  I hustled and was able to make a way.  That experience changed me; a day’s drive from my hometown- a boarding school with few resources.  I was searching for the country I’d been told to salute; I knew there was more.  I was searching for my identity, and researching our rumors of American Indian Ancestry.  More than 30 years have passed since I loaded my truck to try and escape the suburban consciousness. I live on Tongva-Gabrielino Land, and I’m a husband and a father of two.  I identify ethnically as Eastern European-Irish-Creek; my race is white.

For some folks it’s simple, but for me it was complicated.  Being told we had Creek blood was a validation as a kid, because I couldn't identify with the Wonder Bread world of success and individualism.  In my 20’s, I drove the triangle between LA, Santa Fe, and Rapid City more times than I can recall.  The road and the company of my adopted dad was where I processed.  Ceremony was my classroom. Eventually I was thrown into leadership roles as a culture bearer that I really didn’t want or feel prepared for, but I made the best of it and I made a difference in the lives of many.

I’ve always been a jack of all trades.  I try to avoid boredom, which to me is death; some would call this behavior ADHD… maybe dyslexia; likely both.  At 50, I’m finally learning how to rest.  In my 20’s, I was working as an organizer on multiple community based campaigns and projects,  sparked by my rage at the killing of Irvin Landrum Jr.  This is before BLM got its name.  Spending winters in the Angeles Forest, I became the youngest committee chair appointed by the San Antonio Canyon Town Hall to develop a plan to assess and re-establish an improved human-wild interface where bears were being killed in record numbers as a result of a failed waste management system.  Traveling from spring through fall, I worked on campaigns at Bear Butte and with the Bigfoot Ride in South Dakota in the winter.  I learned how to build community groups and win environmental battles, but ceremony was the foundation for everything; I organized an event to sing and grieve for the land at Chicken Creek in Claremont where a luxury housing tract destroyed endless acres of sensitive Chaparral.  All this time, becoming a man, I was feeding my need to learn as much as I could about Lakota Culture.  I eventually became an accomplished singer-songwriter, Sundance and Powwow Singer.  Eventually I returned to school at Antioch, a story in and of itself.

My seasonal work at Mt Baldy Ski Lifts not only indulged my love of the outdoors, but gave me the opportunity to learn the skills required to function effectively as a leader, a role I did not embrace.  As a first-responder, I faced many many life and death situations and I was eventually awarded the National Ski Patrol’s highest honor for “Saving Human Life”.  It was through these endless hours in the mountains, through extreme adversities and stress, that I developed the “Person-Place-Time-Event” (a first responder’s assessment tool for injured persons) facilitation method based on the medicine-wheel- a tool to investigate relationship and conflict.  

In my mid-thirties, through an internship, I started work at  Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation on the Pine-Ridge Rez.  This was a project launched by a community, a family, of prayer.  In a ceremony, a powerful message was shared that woke us all up:  “How long are you going to let other people decide the future for your children? Are you not warriors? It’s time to stop talking and start doing. Don’t come from a place of fear; come from a place of hope.”  The work showed me that I didn’t have to be a recluse to resist colonialism.   I learned non-profit Program Development and Advancement, where the Thunder Valley  “Ecosystem of Opportunity” empowers people to transform the economy where they live, and envision a more inclusive and sustainable future for all. 

Today, I’m working for an organization that serves people with developmental disabilities.  Since Thunder Valley, I’ve worked at various human services organizations, including downtown at Skid-Row, and to start a Tribal College.  Ceremony will always be who I am, but It can't always be what I do.  The world doesn’t seem to need what I’ve made great sacrifices to learn, and that is humbling.  

We’re in a tough place today as human beings.  It’s a paradox to resist the colonial and individualistic mindset, be a warrior ready to take on oppression, yet be a loving and generous person, guided by culture and values, connected with the land.  It can be done, and it has to be done, to prepare (not preserve) our children for survival with reverence.  We have to run fast, and travel slow.  We must acquire, and give-away. Most of all we need to know our story, and we must be brave enough to connect our past to the future.  But how?  There’s no guidebook, and if there was one, I would recommend avoiding it.  The answers are within us and all around us.  Elusive and obvious. 

Indigenous People

Abenaky in Keene -- which include Algonquians and the Iroquoians
Chumash in Santa Barbara
Duwamish and Squamish in Seattle
Shawnee in Yellow Springs