- Yeah, so let's go back.

You were talking about current issues that are happening within the community today.

And Carlos, you started on that, and then we had to cut you off, so.

You can elaborate and tell us a little bit more about what's goin' on with the land disputes.

You know, 'cause there's some stuff that's happening on ancestral land that's been quite an issue lately, right?

- Endless, you know, (Lonzo laughs) it's not like, it's not, yeah, I mean.

Always look towards like this conversation when you have debates with people, white people in particular, academics a lot as well, that there's this conversation as you know, and you hear this a lot being an indigenous person is, "Why don't you get over it?"

- [Lonzo] Oh, we hear that!

We hear it all the time.

(Lonzo laughs) - Yeah, right, no, I know.

And it's like, because it's an ongoing process, right?

This is systemic happenings.

It's not like this happened in the past, this is, right now, at White Mesa in Utah, you know, with their water and uranium there.

It's right now with the hundreds of uranium tailing ponds across Navajo Nation and Hopi and Ute lands, you know, and it's- - Wow.

How can you get over something - It's the fight for Bears Ear that's happening right now?

Right?

(Danor laughs) - No, you can't.

It's like, it's endless.

And then to touch back on food with that, you know, like Reagan was saying earlier about not having places to go collect your foods and go collect your medicines.

A lot of those places are toxic.

- My god.

- Mm-hm.

- A lot of those places are poisoned and you can't, you know, and we stay in constant discussion, and we actually do a lot of this too, is, you know, when I talk about how we, in the Ute way, how we move plants and medicines, right?

Is to like actually get those things that are in danger and bring them into a place that they can heal.

And that's an important thing, you know.

And that's why another major reason why learning about, I mean, culturally in particular, learning your language behind your plants, your purposes, their ceremonial purposes, their food purposes, their utilitarian purposes, and how you can help protect them because we have dead zones across the reservations, and here in the Four Corners in particular, massive dead zones.

- Mm.

- Wow.

- So, you know, it's pretty big.

- What you're saying is actually interesting to me because, you know, even right now, in sort of like your standard American culture, there's a lot of refocus on food and on what you eat and how you consume it.

I mean, and now I would say like, this is like, you have the keto diet, you have the this diet, you have the, like the paleo diet, and I feel like there's a lot of this emphasis on the foods and the plants that people are consuming.

And it's like, that was in existence for, you know, all of these years.

- Thousands and thousands and.

- Thousands and thousands of years, you know, and then they, people talk about this concept of, oh, I am a intermittent fasting, and I talk to some people from Africa about that.

And they're like, well, you don't eat more than once or twice a day in Africa.

That's not intermittent fasting, that's just how you're supposed to eat.

(laughs) Right?

But they put, there's a nice title to it or a name for it.

So I wanna read this quote, and this kind of goes back to what you were saying, Carlos.

This is by Dr. Maria Yellowstone Horse Braveheart, and she's from the- - Yellow Horse.

- Yellow Horse?

- Yellow Horse.

- Yellow horse.

Yes.

Sorry, did I say something else?

(Danor and Lonzo laugh) - You said Yellowstone.

- Yellow Horse.

And this is from the- how do you pronounce that?

- That's Oglala, the Hunkpapa/Oglala Lakota tribe.

- Okay, great.

Thank you.

All right.

So she says historical trauma, right, is the cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over one's lifetime and from generation to generation following the loss of lives, land, and vital aspects of culture.

So, you know, you hear this idea of, well, just why aren't you just getting over it?

And it's because it doesn't (snaps finger) just go away at the snap of a finger.

What are your thoughts about that, Reagan?

- Well, you know, and an interesting side note to that, too, is that she was the one that came up with that term.

I didn't know that.

I thought that that term was originated from some, you know, black professor about slavery.

But it actually originated from the struggles that have happened with the Native American people.

So that's just an interesting side note there.

- Well, go ahead, Reagan.

I'm sorry.

- Yeah, so I mean, we briefly, just before we kind of started talking about this, just us as a people, we have a very natural spiritual connection to everything.

And we say that everything has a spirit with it, even a rock.

There's a purpose for it.

There's reasons for its being, why it's there.

There's a use for it.

Every plant that's out there, it could be a medicine, a food, it could be a dye for a textile.

You know, there's an endless amount of possibility in how we look and we connect to the land.

And understanding and growing that spirituality is one of the things that why we are supposed to be here on this earth, too.

It's not just understanding our five physical senses, which is what we can depict here in our hand here.

But in between each finger is also as our way of spiritually connecting to, could be our environment, could be to our community, could be to, you know, how we connect to the creator, which a lot of our ceremonialism is based around.

And so as we start to grow and develop ourselves and try to understand what is our purpose for being here and who are we as the five finger people?

- Mm.

- You know.

We have to look at how we actually work with the land.

And so it's no longer of this is my land, but this is, this is the land that we live on.

- [Danor] Right, right, right.

And this is the land that cares for us, and this is how we care for the land.

So we have more of an understanding of how we give and take from the land.

We don't just take and take and take and take.

And so kind of going back to, you know, the thought of, sorry, what was, can you reset me on this train of thought where we're... - Oh, we were just talking about- - Just the historical trauma.

- The idea of historical trauma.

- Oh, historical trauma, yes.

So when, when we reset on like, this is our overall thought of who we are as a Native American people.

And so when we go back to the trauma and we start getting removed from this, we start getting things taken away.

We have sacred mountains, like the San Francisco Peaks is one of our sacred mountains.

- Wow.

- And when we think about, there's a ski resort right on top, where there's religious people that give ceremonies and prayers and offerings to pray for the moisture to come onto these specific mountains, so that way it can feed and nourish the lands at the foothills of it and beyond.

You know, now we have, it's a recreation site.

- Right?

So the whole, I mean, it's just like roadblock to pay essentially.

- The purpose behind it is now it's getting tainted.

It's no longer pure, it's no longer for giving to everything that is belonging in this world, but it's now being just taken and saying, this is ours and this is how we're going to use it.

And so there's- - I see Carlos nodding over here.

(Danor and Lonzo laugh) - I mean, when we start talking about the transition of how we think as a people, and then a new group of people have come in and told us, you have to start thinking, you have to assimilate, you have to live this way.

- [Lonzo] Yeah.

And it's completely different.

And you see, you still have these connections.

- I wanna, I just want to interject for just a second, and I'm, in my mind I'm thinking about the idea of this shared cultural experiences and how does that, how does what you are all talking about relate to me and to Lonzo as African Americans?

And honestly, I have to say that I'm really grateful and happy that you have the ability to reconnect to your own land.

You know what I mean?

Like, for me, I gotta go across the ocean to do that.

- [Reagan] Yeah.

- And I, when I went to Africa, that's what I felt.

I felt like, wow, I feel like I'm coming home.

I had no idea I was gonna feel like that.

So I'm interested, Carlos, what do you think about what she's saying?

I see you nodding your head.

I want to hear what you're thinking.

(Carlos laughs) - Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

When trauma existed at a cellular level, right?

For both our people pretty heavily.

And how, you know, how does that, like what does that healing look like?

- Right.

- Mm.

- Like, what parts of existence do we have in ourselves?

You know, for me it was plants, right?

Plants are my everything.

I always try, I always teach kids, you know, it's like, no, you should try this, try to eat this, right?

Because every trauma that your elders had faced, you know, through this process of colonization resides with inside of your cellular memory, but not just trauma, right?

It's not just trauma that resides there.

All the healing and all the resilience and all the medicine also resides there.

Your food ways reside there.

So try this, because when you eat that, you're unlocking a cellular memory that was passed down to you that was taken away.

- Oh my god.

- Which is a part of healing.

Right?

And so- - That is so powerful.

- Those are a reality.

And I know this for myself is the truth, right?

Because, you know, I grew up in split households, right?

My mom is white, and that was Hamburger Helper and Rice-A-Roni and whatever.

And then on the rez it was- ( Danor and Lonzo laugh) - You want a sandwich?

(Danor and Lonzo laugh) - Traditional, right?

And it was traditional foods.

So, you know, it was wild game.

And my grandfather was, you know, my people are farmers, so there's always, you know, a garden involved.

And then there was always wild game involved.

But it was also mixed with commodities.

You know, and so there's like this huge thing, and it wasn't until I, later in my life, where that I had this understanding that the more time that I spent on the land, and the more time I spend with these plants, and the more time that I actually interact within the space that my ancestors interacted with, the more whole I become.

- [Danor] Mm.

Yeah.

- You know, and so, and it's real.

- And I can tell you that is very real.

For example, you know, we eat collard greens in our culture, right?

Collard greens were fed to the hogs back in, you know, the old days, you know?

And so we got that, and our ancestors who were enslaved figured out how to make it good, and right?

And now it's kind of considered a delicacy.

And when I taste any of those traditional foods, when when I go back home or my mom sends me a, even a cake, when I get collard greens, I literally feel like I am, I feel healed.

I feel safe, I feel love.

You know, it's not just what it tastes like, it's what it, what my spirit feels when it hits my palate.

And I, that sounds to me like what you're describing, this idea of those ancient family recipes and foods and plants will help you.

(laughs) - Well, and on another topic- (Carlos speaking indistinctly) - Let's do it with that.

- What's that?

Because there's a thing that our cultures also share, is that even in the midst of all the terrorism and all the destruction of our people's ways, our food keepers, our seed keepers, our women had the knowledge and the wherewithal and the understanding that in both of our cultures, we have stories of our women braiding their seeds in their hair and sewing them into their clothing.

- Mm.

- Wow.

So those memories and those knowledges would come with us wherever we went.

- Mm.

- Nice.

- You know, and we have that as a shared happening in our enslavement, you know?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Thank you.

That's beautiful.

- And what I was gonna say was that, you know, a lot of people think that a cycle's, you know, as far as historical trauma, that cycles of abuse and cycles of poverty, which originated through, you know, what happened with you all, and then what happened with us was slavery, that those cycles just stop all of a sudden.

That you can just say, oh, you know what, get over it, it's over with.

Well, you know, it created a cycle of abuse.

It created a cycle of poverty.

And cycles of abuse and cycle of poverty, you can't just knock it out.

You know, I was talking to Reagan before this, my family, my mother came from a family of abuse, you know, four of her, all the kids were abused.

She was the only one that is relatively normal today.

You know, and that's usually how it works with cycles of poverty, abuse.

Some people make it out, some people don't.

But when that cycle is started, it's hard to just disrupt it overnight by saying, get over it.

You know?

And I think that's what's happened, especially with Native American people and with African Americans.

Over the course of 400 years, there's been a lot of abuse and cycles of poverty that have been created.

- Well, and you can see it in our lives, you know, and you can see it in our communities and this, and it takes this knowledge of where our, how our ancestors survived and thrived and how they adapted.

We have to bring that into- You're teaching younger people as well.

Right?

I heard Carlos talk about teaching some younger people.

Are you doing that as well to help with, with healing?

- Absolutely.

I mean that's a big part of my job working with Extension.

Extension, just a real quick nutshell of what it is, is the land grant universities, like Utah State University, or you could go to Colorado State University, those are land grant universities.

So they're the established colleges that started for agriculture education and research.

To help farmers within their states.

Right?

- [Danor] Okay.

And so in Extension, I get to teach what's being researched or teach what's being discovered.

And so our component is like 4H, is our youth education.

A specific focus in Extension.

And so my job, a big part of it working with youth.

Yes.

A passion that I have, I mean, just even with my own kids, is to teach them a lot of who we are and where we come from.

And that's for any culture.

Because when we talk about trauma, just on on the upper side is how do people actually start to recover from this trauma?

Those that are fortunate to make it out.

There's an identification process that has to occur in order for healing to start happening.

And so when we look at ourselves, and that's a big foundation of what our elders taught us, is you have to identify yourself.

And so, that's part of what they're there for is this is who you are, this is where things, you know, you identify everything else as well, so you know where your place is.

- Yeah.

Knowing who you are is the foundation of everything.

- If you don't discover who you are, you don't know the foundation of where you can start healing, right?

And so I think that's the big gap of why there's only a few that make it out, is because those few that did make it out are the ones that did eventually find a place where they could identify themselves, and they could grow and then expand into their life the way that every person is supposed to.

- Yeah.

And then, it's hard if you don't find that, then you get caught in the cycle, right?

And it's a cyclone, you know?

- So when we talk about the youth education, you know, that's a big foundation.

- Help them identify with their culture more.

- Yes.

They're the ones that are starting to go through those traumatic events that are going to set their foundation of whether they're going to make it out or succumb to a mental illness or something.

- Yeah.

- You know.

- Is there, before we even go any further, where can people find out more about what you guys are doing?

Is there a website?

Is there any kind of contact information if they want to help or if they want their kids to come and get some education or to come down there and be taught by you, Carlos?

Can you give us some information of how to reach you guys?

- Yeah.

- Or of at least of how to find, like where your programs are?

Is that even available?

I'm sure some people would be excited to join.

- Yeah.

So for me specifically, I'm easy to find, 'cause I'm a faculty member at Utah State University.

- [Danor] Okay.

So if you go Utah State University and Google "Extension", and then we have several county offices.

Every county has an Extension department.

And I'm in San Juan County.

So (laughs) I do that.

We're working on developing website and I'm very new as a faculty member.

I'm four years as a faculty member through the Extension department.

So I'm- - Four years is new?

(Danor and Lonzo laugh) - For us, yes.

And so, but I'm working on developing education materials.

I mean, since I'm very new, I mean, nothing's very widely available, but I'm discovering and learning myself.

And so as I've been doing that over the last, I mean since I started my education, so we're talking more like 11 years now - [Lonzo] Got it.

of gaining experience as a horticulturalist and then starting to dive into traditional practices of farming, traditional practices of us as a foundation, as a people, as a culture, and growing my spirituality personally.

- So this is all still in - This is new for me, - the early stages- - it's very new.

I'm starting to develop curriculum for education.

So none of it's published, but it's all growing and developing.

- Oh, we are so excited for you to get this information out.

- It's going, I'm trying to push as fast as I can.

There's a lot of people coming to help, people that I have to ask, and elders in the community.

You know, what information do I need to know?

Is this okay?

Going back and asking for advice and, you know, learning as I go basically is what's going on.

- Well there's a lot there to unpack, so.

Carlos, do you have any way for people to find that, the website or anything that you guys are creating?

- Yeah, for sure.

You can go to icollectiveinc.org.

That's I, the letter I, collective, inc.org.

You can learn about the work that we've been doing there.

You know, like I said, we have members from Oaxaca to Frog Lake Cree, and all across the states.

So.

- Is it just for- - We do tons of work there.

- Is it just for indigenous people?

Can other cultures learn and join?

Or do they have to be a part of a tribe?

It's strictly, you know, it's strictly indigenous, but with the Gathering Basket project, which, you know, you can purchase single issues, or you can get a subscription to the entire body of work.

Later this year will be coming out with the publication of the cookbook itself.

And that really is a tool, right.

Like, it's based in traditional indigenous food ways, but it's really a conversation about colonialism.

Right?

It's a conversation about, you know, like I said, I'm the lead writer on it, but in the last 13 issues that we've put out, we've had input from over 60 people from different tribes.

- Wow!

- And that goes from El Salvador to Guatemala to Alaska.

- This is international!

- to across the US.

Yes.

You know, and it's people telling their stories.

And that was the main thing.

We have this massive platform.

We have some of the biggest names in the indigenous food realm that are part of the I-collective and the platform, you know, the standard platform is like, is patriarchy, you know?

The standard platform is the men have the voices.

And with the I-collective, what we attempted to set out to do was hand all that stuff over to indigenous women, to our two-spirit relatives, you know, and just kind of, and go into that realm.

And so, you know, the founders of it, you know, like Neftali Duran, myself, Liz, and Erica, the four of us have stepped back.

And now this whole new generation behind us has already taken over and is doing some really amazing things, you know, but that project in particular is a learning tool for everybody, right.

Because you get to hear the history of the people, not the history that the white man wrote.

- Mm, yeah.

You know, which is a completely different conversation.

- Yeah, well (Danor laughs) and I wanna piggyback off that real quick.

Is there, what are Utahans doing, you know, to exacerbate the problems?

Like what are they doing to make things worse?

And what can we do to make things a little bit better for this struggle?

Let's start with you Reagan.

- I think it goes back to just understanding who we are as a people and giving credit to us that it's not just them that exists, it's not just their beliefs, their practices.

I mean I wanna put this as delicately as possible just because it's just- Living in San Juan County, I've seen a very huge divide in our community.

And it's probably, there's somebody that's moved in from the southern states and they say it's an even worse divide that they would say that they see in the southern states now with the history that you might see from the Civil War and slavery.

- It's a very strict division where, you know, our tribal communities have our own political governance.

There's, if we get into tribal politics, I think this sets a lot of the divide between our communities and the rest of civilization.

Because we are allowed to govern ourselves, in a sense.

So we're a nation within a nation, but the land isn't necessarily ours.

- Wow.

But we're allowed to say how we wanna utilize our lands, you know, that was something that was a benefit to us, but that we had to establish a formal body of government.

And though our people had a formal body of government prior to saying, you need to establish a governing system, you know, and that was explained by our elders, by the chiefs, that were signing these treaties.

We already have a way that we govern ourselves.

Why are you telling us to change into basically a method of governing that's similar to how the United States is set up.

- [Danor] Right?

So we have, like, what you would see is like legislators.

We have council delegates set up, We have boundaries and regions broken up.

And so, it established the mindset of this is our land instead of this is the land we live on.

Again, going back to that.

And so in San Juan County, we have, because we have half of our county and the community is their own governing body.

We have political divide of the upper half of the county governs themselves, but they don't feel any obligation to oversee and support us, the southern half, because they have their own governing body.

But again, it's that nurturing and caring system where we should be helping and supporting each other.

It's like a city and a state, and then the country, you know, we have several districts, but how do these come together to eventually have a positive outcome that can benefit everybody living within all of those different boundaries and districts.

Right?

- Mm.

It's just even more amplified when we get to tribal communities because of all the additional boundaries that have been set for us, in addition to saying, you know, this is our land, but we don't own this land.

We don't have claims.

At any time, the federal government can take the land away from us.

And they've already done that with the San Carlos Apache Nation a few years ago.

They literally swapped lands and took a sacred area to their community so that way they could use it for mining.

- So you think people should be a little bit more understanding and... - Of the purposes and the meaning behind this and you know, how we actually share because we're all living on this land.

You know, boundaries are actually invisible.

They're, it's just made up as a way to bring order to a system.

And so if we start to understand, well, what's the actual order of this system, if we take away these invisible boundaries, and we actually look at the real boundaries of what nature created, how do we actually live with it?

- Natural boundaries.

- Yes.

Yes.

So we look at the natural boundaries and I mean, we could go to Cash Valley and I've kind of looked at some of the history of like the natural waterways of Cash Valley and learned that there's so much redirecting of waterways, so that way the water could be contained into a certain area in Cash Valley, and that's the same thing that's being done here in Utah Valley.

It's been done in California.

How do we, you know... Colonization.

When white man came in, it was, let's control the water, let's control how everything goes, so it's to our liking.

And instead it's, we need to, if we could work to transition the mindset to.

- Everybody!

- Everybody!

- Not just y'all.

Right?

(Danor laughs) - Yes.

- Hey, Carlos, we're gonna give you the last word and we're gonna wrap this up here.

What are your thoughts on that?

- Yeah.

- I wouldn't touch on that.

I think that the term like apex predator, right?

This is like, you're the top of the food chain, therefore you control it, right?

That's the western mind state.

And that's ingrained in you from the time you hit the education system on.

And if you look at that terminology through an indigenous lens, that shifts from, okay, maybe you're at the top of the food chain, but that means you have an obligation to the entire rest of the system, right?

You're not sitting there looking at how you can control things and how you can hold dominion over them.

You're looking at your space in there, and the fact that you hold all of this power puts you in an obligation to all of our relatives, whether that's the water or, you know, or four-legged or winged, you know, it doesn't matter.

Those that live in the water, so our trees are rocks, you know, everything that exists.

- [Danor] Respect.

We have a responsibility too, because we hold so much power.

and as long as we are taught and we're looking at it as a top down as instead of the circular truth, you know, we're gonna have a long battle ahead of us.

You know, you can see in the governmental system here, in this country, what are they, what's the the fight about?

- Yeah.

It's about who's gonna speak, who's gonna be the speaker for the Republicans, right?

- Right, right.

- As opposed to the world is burning.

(all laugh) Right?

Like the world is literally burning.

We're in our 22nd consecutive year of drought here in the Four Corners.

And all our water goes to Phoenix, Arizona, and Las Vegas.

Two cities that exist in the desert for no reason in particular, you know, like the world is dying and, and this pettiness is happening because of the need for control.

And so, you know, where does that look?

That goes back to what I was speaking on earlier, like, what's your part?

Where do we play?

Where do you sit in this?

So.

- Yeah, there's a whole- It gives a whole new meaning- - That's my final words, - Sorry.

I didn't mean to cut you off.

Go ahead.

- No, you're good.

I was just saying that was it.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

I think it gives a whole new meaning to the concept of sovereignty.

You know what I mean?

There's a lot more layers to that when you start looking at your holistic perspective.

So thank you guys for being here.

- Guys, this has been a great conversation.

We really enjoyed having you on.

I've learned so much and just really appreciated having you.

And congratulations, Reagan.

She just had a baby December 8th, so that's why, - Yeah.

Thank you.

- One of the reasons we had to push the show off.

(all speakers laugh) - Thank you.

- So thank you guys so much.

- Yes, thank you.