INDIGENOUS CONTINUITY
A Doctrine of Cultural Restoration, Land, and the Seven Generations
by Lt. Ximalli, Brown Beret Organization
The term Indigenous Continuity as used here was coined by our Lt. Ximalli
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THE CORE IDEA
Indigenous Continuity is the principle that colonization does not end a people's historical existence. A people may lose political power. They may lose control of their land. Their language may decline. Their traditional institutions may be destroyed. Their children may be taught another people's history. Their names may be changed. Their spirituality may be suppressed. Their communities may be scattered. Generations may eventually grow up knowing little about where they came from. But none of these things means that the people have ceased to exist.
If historical memory survives, if descendants remain, and if people consciously choose to reconnect with that inheritance, then continuity can be strengthened. The purpose of Indigenous Continuity is therefore not simply to "remember" Indigenous civilization. IT IS TO CONTINUE IT!
SURVIVAL IS NOT THE END OF THE STORY
Colonized peoples are often taught to think about their Indigenous ancestors in the past tense. We hear stuff like: They were a people. They had civilizations. They spoke these languages. They believed these things. They lived on these lands. This language quietly suggests that colonization successfully ended their civilization and that their descendants now belong entirely to something new. Indigenous Continuity rejects this conclusion.
We say: WE ARE STILL HERE!
The descendants of colonized peoples are not historical accidents disconnected from everything that existed before colonization. We are links in a chain. Our ancestors inherited something from those who came before them. We inherited something from them, and something will be inherited from us. The question is whether that inheritance will become weaker with every generation or stronger.
Indigenous Continuity understands history as an unbroken chain connecting:
Ancestors → Present Generation → Future Generations
Every generation becomes a temporary guardian of the inheritance. We did not create our entire culture; we inherited it. We did not create the land; we inherited responsibility toward it. We did not make our ancestors' sacrifices; we benefited from them. Therefore, what we possess does not belong entirely to us. We hold it temporarily for those who will come after us. This creates an obligation to Receive the inheritance, Restore what has been damaged, Add something worthy to it, and Pass it forward stronger than we received it. That is Indigenous Continuity.
Survival was necessary, but survival cannot remain our highest goal. There should be stages in the historical development of a colonized people:
Survival → Remembrance → Reconnection → Restoration → Institution Building → Self-Determination → Liberation → Continuity
Survival kept our people alive. Remembrance discovers what was nearly forgotten. Reconnection creates relationships between people and their heritage. Restoration brings language, traditions, knowledge, relationships with land, and community practices back into everyday life. Institution building gives those things permanent homes. Self-determination gives communities a greater ability to decide their own future. Continuity carries everything forward. The purpose is not simply to survive colonization. The purpose is to thrive in spite of it and outlive it!
INDIGENOUS IDENTITY MUST BECOME LIVING AGAIN
Culture cannot survive only inside museums, universities, history books, or ceremonies performed a few times each year. A living culture must exist in ordinary life. Children must encounter it. Families must practice it. Artists must reinterpret it. Teachers must teach it. Researchers must study it. Communities must debate it. Young people must transform it. Elders must pass on what they know. Some traditions will be recovered. Some will be adapted. Some things cannot be fully recovered and must be carefully reconstructed from surviving knowledge. New traditions will also emerge. That is not necessarily cultural corruption. Living cultures change because living people change. The objective is continuity, not historical reenactment.
Every community should undertake deliberate cultural restoration.
This includes recovering and teaching:
Indigenous and Mexican history
languages and Indigenous vocabulary
traditional ecological knowledge
music
dance
art
philosophy
spirituality
foods
agriculture
medicine and wellness traditions, alongside sound modern knowledge
family histories
oral histories
community stories
traditional concepts of responsibility
relationships with the natural world
Historical materials scattered throughout libraries, universities, museums, archives, churches, private collections, and government institutions should be studied and, where appropriate, digitally preserved and made accessible to descendant communities. Knowledge that was removed from the community should become available to the community again.
LANGUAGE RESTORATION
Language carries ways of understanding the world that translation cannot always preserve. The loss of an Indigenous language therefore means more than the loss of vocabulary. It can mean the loss of concepts, humor, philosophy, ecological knowledge, relationships, and ways of describing human experience. Indigenous Continuity supports language revitalization wherever communities desire it.
This can include immersion programs, children's books, digital courses, dictionaries, recordings of fluent speakers, community classes, songs, ceremonies, place names, and cooperation with Indigenous nations preserving related languages. Not every descendant will become fluent, so fluency cannot become a test of who is Indigenous enough. The objective is to reverse disappearance. Every word recovered is another thread reconnected.
LAND IS THE PHYSICAL FOUNDATION OF CONTINUITY
Culture and land cannot be completely separated. Our creation stories are here. We come from this land. The land holds our ancestral memory, and our genes carry the water, nutrients, and elements of the land. Mountains, rivers, plants, animals, burial places, migration routes, villages, agricultural systems, and sacred locations all hold parts of our people's history.
Therefore, Indigenous Continuity includes land restoration. But restoration must be understood as construction rather than revenge. The objective should not be to repeat displacement by indiscriminately displacing other ordinary families. Instead, communities should develop lasting ways to rebuild Indigenous relationships with land.
These can include:
Indigenous and community land trusts.
Return or transfer of appropriate public lands.
Restoration of culturally significant places.
Protection of sacred sites.
Dismantling large corporate land holdings.
Community acquisition of land.
Cooperative farms.
Cultural centers.
Community gardens.
Environmental restoration projects.
Housing cooperatives.
Conservation partnerships.
Recognition and enforcement of legitimate Indigenous land and treaty rights.
Rematriation and repatriation initiatives developed with the Indigenous nations concerned.
The objective is not simply possession. It is a relationship. Land should once again become a place where Indigenous culture lives.
One practical institution of Indigenous Continuity could be the creation of permanent community land trusts. Land placed into such institutions would not exist mainly for speculation. It would exist across generations. Depending on local circumstances, the land could support: community centers, cultural schools, housing, farms, ceremonial spaces, language programs, ecological restoration, youth camps, elder programs, and community enterprises.
Each generation would inherit responsibility for protecting and improving these places. This transforms the question from: "How much territory do we control?" into: "How much land have we permanently restored to Indigenous cultural life?" That creates a measurable and constructive objective.
The purpose of all this is to restore the sacred. Colonization often changes the meaning of geography. Older names disappear. Sacred places become commercial property. Communities forget what happened where they live. Indigenous Continuity seeks to restore memory to the landscape. Communities can research Indigenous place names, document historic villages and trails, protect archaeological and sacred locations, create historical markers, restore native ecosystems, develop cultural maps, and teach young people the Indigenous history of the places around them. People should be able to walk through their communities and understand: Our ancestors were here, this is sacred, and I will respect it.
INSTITUTIONS ARE THE VESSELS OF CONTINUITY
Memory alone is fragile. Institutions allow memory to outlive individuals. A serious movement committed to Indigenous continuity therefore needs permanent institutions.
These can possibly include:
Cultural Centers that serve as community gathering places.
Schools and Educational Programs teaching history, language, culture, leadership, and practical skills.
Archives preserving documents, photographs, oral histories, recordings, and organizational history.
Land Trusts acquiring and protecting land across generations.
Economic Cooperatives creating community wealth.
Youth Organizations developing the next generation.
Elder Councils preserving knowledge and providing guidance.
Arts Institutions supporting Indigenous and Chicano artistic expression.
Research Institutes studying history, economics, ecology, and community conditions.
Community Media allowing people to tell their own stories.
Community defense to create and hold spaces, protecting them from abuse, theft, or encroachment.
The strength of Indigenous Continuity can eventually be measured in part by the institutions passed from one generation to the next.
ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT
Culture cannot remain strong if communities have no economic foundation. People who constantly struggle just to survive have fewer resources for cultural restoration and institution building. Indigenous Continuity therefore requires economic development.
The objective should not be to create a wealthy revolutionary elite. The objective should be to develop a broad economic foundation capable of supporting families and institutions. This may include entrepreneurship, cooperatives, skilled trades, professional development, community investment, home ownership, responsible business development, financial education, scholarships, land acquisition, and institutions capable of holding assets across generations. A portion of the wealth created within the community should help finance the cultural and social institutions that preserve the community. Economic development thus becomes part of cultural survival.
EDUCATION AS CULTURAL TRANSMISSION
Children cannot inherit what nobody teaches them. Every generation must therefore deliberately educate the next. A young person growing within Indigenous Continuity should eventually understand:
Who were the people before me?
Where did they come from?
What happened to them?
What survived?
What was lost?
What has been recovered?
What responsibilities do I inherit?
What skills can I develop?
What can I contribute?
What will I leave behind?
Education should produce neither shame nor fantasies of superiority. It should produce responsibility. Knowing that your ancestors survived extraordinary circumstances should not teach you that you are better than another people. It should teach you that you have an obligation not to waste their survival.
UNITING THE EAGLE AND THE CONDOR
Colonization affected peoples throughout the world in different ways, but many communities face related challenges: language loss, land dispossession, environmental destruction, cultural assimilation, poverty, loss of historical memory, and the disappearance of traditional knowledge. Indigenous Continuity should encourage relationships among Indigenous peoples across borders.
Communities can exchange knowledge about language revitalization, cultural education, ecological restoration, community economics, youth development, archives, land trusts, and cultural institutions. The purpose is not to create one universal Indigenous ideology. Each people must remain itself. Solidarity should strengthen distinct peoples rather than dissolve them.
CONTINUITY WITHOUT CHAUVINISM
A doctrine centered on cultural survival must contain an important safeguard. Love for one's people must never require hatred of another. Historical suffering does not give anyone permission to inflict injustice on innocent people. Indigenous restoration should therefore reject racial supremacy, collective punishment, indiscriminate displacement, and the idea that ancestry determines someone's human worth. We seek restoration rather than revenge. We seek dignity rather than domination. We seek enough cultural confidence that another person's identity no longer threatens our own. A people secure in itself does not need another people beneath it.
Indigenous Continuity does not require people to withdraw from the societies in which they currently live. A person can participate in modern society while maintaining an Indigenous identity. We can become teachers, scientists, tradespeople, artists, entrepreneurs, attorneys, engineers, farmers, public servants, organizers, physicians, historians, and professionals while remaining connected to our people.
Indeed, these skills can strengthen Indigenous Continuity. The question becomes: How can the knowledge we gain in the larger society strengthen the community from which we came? Success should not always mean escaping the community. Sometimes success should mean returning with knowledge.
THE RETURN (reconnecting)
Indigenous Continuity introduces the principle of The Return. Not everyone can physically return to an ancestral village or homeland. The Return therefore has several dimensions.
Cultural Return: recovering identity.
Historical Return: recovering memory.
Spiritual Return: rebuilding relationships with ancestral teachings where individuals choose to do so.
Linguistic Return: recovering language.
Ecological Return: rebuilding relationships with land.
Institutional Return: creating organizations controlled by and accountable to the community.
Physical Return: reacquiring, protecting, stewarding, or restoring land to Indigenous community life.
A person living hundreds of miles from an ancestral homeland can still begin the Return. The Return begins when forgetting ends.
THE SEVEN-GENERATION COVENANT
Every generation should make a covenant with the generations that follow it. We should attempt to leave them:
More land protected than we inherited.
More language speakers than we inherited.
More historical knowledge than we inherited.
More institutions than we inherited.
More community wealth than we inherited.
Healthier ecosystems than we inherited.
Stronger families than we inherited.
Better leadership than we inherited.
Greater cultural confidence than we inherited.
Greater ability to determine their own future than we inherited.
That becomes the measurement of progress.
Not simply:
What did we protest?
But:
What did we leave behind?
FROM ACTIVISM TO RESTORING OUR CIVILIZATIONS
Political movements often think in years. Civilizations think in generations. An organization may ask: What will we accomplish this year? Indigenous Continuity asks another question: What are we building that people will still possess one hundred years from now?
That change in perspective transforms revolutionary strategy. A demonstration may last hours. A campaign may last months. An organization may survive decades. But land, schools, archives, traditions, institutions, languages, families, and cultural memory can survive for centuries. Therefore, Indigenous revolutionary thought should develop two clocks. The political clock measures immediate struggles. The civilizational clock measures generations. Both matter. But the second must never be sacrificed entirely for the first.
The final stage of Indigenous Continuity should not be isolation. A people who have survived colonization possess experiences that can contribute something to humanity. We know what happens when cultures are treated as obstacles to progress. We know the consequences of separating people from land. We know what happens when children are taught to become ashamed of their ancestry. We know that economic development without ecological responsibility can destroy the foundations of life.
Therefore, the restoration of Indigenous peoples will inevitably produce something larger than cultural survival. Indigenous peoples can contribute ancient and modern knowledge about stewardship, community responsibility, ecological balance, intergenerational thinking, cultural pluralism, and relationships between humanity and the natural world. Our historical wounds need not become our permanent identity. Eventually, survival should produce wisdom, and wisdom should produce responsibility.
HOW INDIGENOU CONTINUITY AFFECTS THE CHICANO MOVEMENT
Indigenous Continuity can change how we Chicanos organize because it changes the reason we organize in the first place. When people know who they are, where they come from, and what their ancestors endured, the community stops feeling like just another place where they happen to live. It becomes something they inherited and something they are responsible for. That creates a sense of urgency, belonging, and ownership. The barrio is no longer somebody else's problem. The struggling family down the street is not somebody else's problem. The condition of our parks, schools, streets, young people, elders, and families becomes our responsibility because these are our communities and our future generations will inherit whatever we leave behind.
This changes organizing from simply reacting to problems into rebuilding a people. We can still confront injustice, but protest alone is not enough. Indigenous Continuity asks us what we are building after the protest is over? Are we strengthening families? Are we teaching our history? Are we protecting our neighborhoods? Are we creating institutions? Are we helping young people develop discipline, purpose, and skills? Are we buying land, building businesses, cleaning our streets, restoring our culture, and preparing the next generation to lead? When organizing is rooted in continuity, every action becomes connected to something larger than the immediate political struggle.
Restoring the sacredness of our lives, our culture, and our relationship with the land can also give people something that politics alone often cannot give them: hope and purpose. A person who believes that their life belongs to a chain stretching from their ancestors to generations not yet born begins to see themselves differently. Our bodies matter. Our families matter. Our barrios matter. Our knowledge matters. Our land matters. Our future matters. Self-destructive behavior then comes into conflict with a larger responsibility. Healing ourselves is no longer only personal. Becoming stronger, overcoming addictions, caring for our families, educating ourselves, and helping others become acts of responsibility toward the entire community.
This perspective can also push Chicano organizing away from depending on foreign political ideologies to explain who we are or what our struggle should become. Marxism, for example, places class and economic conflict at the center of its analysis. Indigenous Continuity begins somewhere different: with our people, our history, our culture, our relationship to land, and our responsibility to future generations. Economic and class struggles still matters, but neither one can explain the whole experience of a colonized people. We do not have to force ourselves into someone else's political framework when our own historical experience can help us develop principles rooted in the conditions, memory, and needs of our communities.
The result is a different kind of organizing. Instead of measuring commitment only by how loudly someone protests or how revolutionary their language sounds, we can measure it by what they help restore. Did we clean up the neighborhood? Did we help a family become stronger? Did we teach a child their history? Did we help someone overcome destructive behavior? Did we create a garden, cultural center, business, school, cooperative, or organization? Did we protect land? Did we leave behind something that will still serve our people after we are gone? Indigenous Continuity turns organizing toward construction. It tells us that liberation is not only about what we oppose, it is also about what we love enough to rebuild, protect, and pass forward.
THE DOCTRINE OF INDIGENOUS CONTINUITY
We are descendants, and one day we will be ancestors. We inherit unfinished work from those who came before us. We accept responsibility for repairing what colonization damaged. We will recover what can be recovered. We will protect what survived. We will rebuild what can be rebuilt. We will create what our ancestors could not have anticipated. We will seek restoration of Indigenous relationships with ancestral lands. We will build institutions capable of surviving our individual lifetimes. We will teach our children who they are without teaching them to hate who others are. We will cooperate with other peoples without surrendering ourselves. We will participate in the modern world without believing that modernization requires cultural disappearance. We will measure success not merely through political victories but through what remains after we are gone.
Lastly, we will remember that every generation occupies only one place in an ancient chain:
Those who came before us.
Those living today.
Those who have not yet been born.
Our ancestors preserved enough for us to remember. Our responsibility is to ensure that our descendants inherit even more. Colonization attempted to make Indigenous civilization something that belonged to the past. Indigenous Continuity declares that it belongs to the future.
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