Long before the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade brought African slaves to North America.

Europeans enslaved Indigenous people.

.

Christopher Columbus lands, and wreaks havoc on Indigenous communities.

and in those ships heading back to Europe he returns with 550 enslaved individuals.

captive Indigenous people.

Slavery is as old as human history itself.

At first, Native Americans were enslaved, but then, the crown and the church decided that you couldn't enslave, Native people.

This forgotten slavery thrived in the Southwest.

with the arrival of Spanish explorers.

The Kingdom of New Mexico, became the epicenter of conflict between Pueblo Warriors, Nomadic Indians, and Spanish Soldiers.

Young boys were forced to fight for their captors.

They were children of war.

First generation Genízaros, were actually... trained to be warriors.

If you captured them as children they could be integrated into the culture easily.

And they use those strategies to help... the Hispanic communities.

The word in different forms is actually Pre-Roman.

It comes from Janissary.

That is what the... Ottoman Turks had.

They would, take, little... Christian boys, and they would, raise them as soldiers.

They would put these Genízaro, soldiers in front.

Being native, they, they knew they were different than the regular population.

Tribal cultures and traditions destroyed.

It's always, traumatic, and difficult to have somebody, show up in a violent way and say: "we're going to change you!"

Women and children were taken capttive bought and sold at trade fairs, and enslaved in Spanish households.

We experience what's called Susto and Susto is, is a soul wound.

Genízaros, cannot, specifically identify a tribe because that was stolen when their ancestors were stolen.

Our... history is immensely diverse.

You know we grew up with a church, and we grew up in a Pueblo.

Hispanic, Native American culture.

It's our role, to bring our relatives, out of the shadows into the light.

After 300 years of living in the shadows of history descendants of forgotten slaves are stepping into the light to reclaim their rightful place as Indigenous people of New Mexico.

[MUSIC PLAYS] Why is the Genízaro Experience still just a shadow in light of history?

I wanted to find answers so I made this film.

[MUSIC PLAYS] Spirit has taken me across New Mexico to meet historians authors and everyday people that embrace their culture and tradition.

[MUSIC PLAYS] My own Genízaro Experience actually began in my grandmother's kitchen.

over warm tortillas and rich stories.

[MUSIC PLAYS] I'm headed to my Grandparents home near the Kiowa Trail in Northern New Mexico.

My uncle Manuel lives here.

He inspires me with amazing stories and old photographs.

Nephew!

How are you?

Good morning Uncle!

So who are these people?

These are my great great grandparents.

He was French, and she was Cautiva.

A captive.

She's beautiful!

My grandmother's kitchen was a portal to the past.

There's alot of memories in this kitchen.

My grandmother's final words to me were: "Remember who you are, and remember, where you come from" [MUSIC PLAYS] So now, I'm fueled with inspiration to continue on the journey to discover more about our unique history.

[COMANCHE MUSIC] One of the first questions of course is, What's a Genízaro?

To define Genízaro in the contemporary, is to, understand, the complexities of, New Mexico people.

We learn our culture from our grandparents, our grandmothers, our grandfathers.

They teach us, who we are.

They teach us... um, things that they learned from their ancestors on how to dance and, how to pray, how to, be a part of the community.

And keep that alive.

So when I think about my ancestors, I think they may have had really rough times and, they may have at one point, been forced to go from speaking Native to speaking Spanish, to speaking English.

But they made those changes, so that we could have better lives.

We do take pride in our head dresses 'cause it's alot of work.

This is getting passed down to my daughter.

I have a new one that I'm working on actually for myself.

I've had letters by the way, from Europeans, write to me and they, asking me, to... if I would allow them to become members of my tribe.

And... and I have, had, a very interesting response to that but...

But anyway... Needless to say, I told them I, I couldn't very well do that because, they were too white.

Ah... you're too, too heavy!

Conciencia Genízara it's what is the Genízaro consciousness?

Well the weather's been harsh and my bones are feeling the pain The land, um, is so important to our identity in who we are.

Looks like the colors of our grandmothers, The colors of our ancestors.

Who we are, is reflected in a complex beauty My thoughts are now kind of going towards a statement that was made by another Genízaro anthropologist, from the Pueblo de Abiquiu, whose name is, Doctor Gilberto Benito Cordova.

He talks about it, through the lens of, Genízaro, being, an elite process of humanity.

"I will shout it from the mountaintops" "I am Genízaro!"

"I am Genízaro!"

"I am what I am" "I am from the past" "Heading for the future.

I am Genízaro!"

"I am a Genízaro" "And I ask you at this time to proclaim it along with me!"

"I am Genízaro!"

"I am a Genízaro!"

"And I will keep this beautiful secret" "A secret no more."

It's not exactly about what any of these other people say, ... it's who you are, and who you feel.

I've been discriminated against my whole life.

I'm not enough Spanish to be considered Spanish, I'm not enough Native American, to be considered Native American.

When I would tell people about, my grandfather was a captive.

They didn't know slavery existed here.

Whether you identify as a Genízaro or you, say, as I do, I have Genízaro ancestry.

We need to, talk about it.

In order to understand and embrace the Genízaro Experience.

We must look at its origins.

Slavery, is at the core of Genízaro identity.

After Columbus, and other Spanish explorers, wreaked havoc on indigenous people, Spanish law forbid slave practices.

Cortés arrived in Mexico in 1519, taking war and ransom captives whom he branded like cattle.

In Mexico, Spaniards were able to acquire slaves in two main ways.

They could either wage war on Indigenous communities.

In that case, they were called War Slaves And there was a particular brand with a "G" that they were branded with either on the cheek or on the forehead.

And there was a second way in which Europeans were able to acquire slaves in early Mexico, and that was through Ransom And the brand for that was an "R" Europeans did not introduce slavery to the Americas.

It was already here.

Ritual warfare and captive taking was already widespread.

Between the theocratic city states of what today we call Mexico.

The largest was Tenochtitlan, capital of the vast, Aztec empire.

They conquered other Náhuatl and Totonac groups around them.

Plus Mayans to the East and South.

Every year, the Aztecs collected tributes of food, cloth, ceremonial goods, and young people, for ritual sacrifice on their pyramids.

They were resented so deeply, that many groups allied themselves to Cortés.

Early on, one young noble woman, from a Náhuatl speaking town, walked right onto the stage of world history.

She grew up in fear and hatred of the Aztecs.

She was captured by Chontal Mayans and quickly learned their language.

When Cortés and his army defeated the Mayan city of Potonchán, She was in a group of twenty young women given as a peace offering to the Spanish.

Her talent for language and diplomacy, was recognized, and Cortés chose her as his consort and lengua or tongue.

She was baptized with the Christian name Marina.

Doña became her title of respect in Spanish, and the suffix -tzin in Nahuatl to become Doña Marina, or Malintzin, the most influential woman in the history of Mexico.

The first Christian, and the mother of all Mestizos.

La Malinché She was vilified and condemned by nationalists, historians and intellectuals.

But to the people, she became an angelic spiritual being a legendary guide through periods of conflict, political and spiritual transformation, and resistance.

In the ritual dances of conquest and reconciliation the Matachines, She is the Malinche who leads the people into a new era, a new dimension.

Five centuries later, she is still dancing between cultures in Pueblo, Hispano and Genízaro communities.

Slaving practices, that unfolded in central Mexico eventually moved up North, most especially in New Mexico, where Spaniards found a large sedentary population surrounded by other Indigenous peoples whose lifestyles were semi-nomadic or nomatic.

If you want to know what people are doing in the past, study the laws, because those laws that say don't do this means people were doing it.

So there were laws against selling and buying human beings.

They drew upon an ancient, ancient law.

The "Just War Clause" the Bellum Justum.

created by Saint Augustine, which... effectively allowed the Spanish to justify the slave trade.

As Spaniards colonized the Kingdom of New Mexico.

new Catholic missions were constructed.

One of the first, was San Miguel Chapel in Santa Fe.

I grew up about a mile away from Barrio Analco.

San Miguel Chapel has always amazed me.

Although San Miguel Church was built in the early 1600s by Mexican Indians, who aligned themselves with the Spanish.

After the Pueblo revolt, Barrio Analco became ground zero for Genízaro and other mixed blood people.

We should take a moment to remember the little plaza right in front of the Church of San Miguel de Analco in Santa Fe.

The little community across the river from San Francisco, of Santa Fe.

San Miguel de Analco, was the... community founded by by the Indios Mexicanos by the Nahuatl... speaking population.

Total allies of the Spanish settlers on the other side of the river.

During the Pueblo revolt of 1680, when Popé in Taos gathered together the leaders of all the Pueblos and sent them out.

When they attacked on that last day, that that last knot was untied, they attacked this church first in Santa Fe.

Because this was seen as the seat of where those two cultures melded And they wanted to break that.

And most of the people in this community were in here and the roof was burned and it fell on the people inside and killed everyone inside.

Front of the church, is ground zero, for... the Genízaros.

That's where they left, to go take up their new lives as protectors of these valleys.

They laid their lives down to protect New Mexico.

And we must remember their sacrifice, their contribution, as well.

When Don Diego Devargas arrived in the late 1600s, one of his first Spanish settlements in Northern New Mexico was Santa Cruz de la Cañada.

My name is Miguel Tórrez.

I am, here today talking to you from the Santa Cruz de la Cañada land grant.

I'm a Nuevo Mexícano, Chícano, Mestízo, Genízaro.

Santa Cruz de la Cañada was established in 1695 by Don Diego de Vargas.

This land that we are standing on, was occupied prior to that by, Tano people, Pueblo people.

It's got a long, long history , and we are blessed to be within this space you know, and I give gratitude to being able to be here, where I feel, my place of belonging is.

Santa Cruz de la Cañada Parish was more than a Parish in those days in the 1600s and then in the rebuilding of the Parish Post-Pueblo revolt.

The Parish, which has a plaza, was town.

Outside this very church In that plaza, is where there would have been, a store, a school, a jail, a Sheriff.

Everything was part of the Parish.

And so this Parish, Santa Cruz de la Cañada, it encompassed the pueblos nearby.

The Camino Real comes in, crosses, the Rio Santa Cruz and goes right in front of this church.

In my book, there are photographs in here, that show... the church, this church in the late 1800s and it looks like an adobe fortress.

You see this massive adobe church surrounded by a massive adobe wall.

And it looks very medieval.

Devargas was determined to develop an army of Native Americans, to assist in a re-conquest and new order.

Many believe this was where the word Genízaro was first used to describe the "Children of War."

Genízaros were actually trained to be warriors.

That's interesting, 'cuz that's how Abiquiú came to be as well.

The word Genízaro first shows up in New Mexico in the early 1700s.

Diego Devargas uses the word to describe certain Native people.

The reason they're called Genízaros is after... that group in Turkey of Christian captives that were... actually... the fiercest defenders and the most loyal, to the Sultan.

They went to a kind of school in Istanbul and a kind of Taliban, if you will, and they were loyal to the state they were loyal to the person of the Sultan And they were the most fearsome of the warriors of the Ottoman Empire.

So there were some parallels there that people noticed, and that's where the name of this group came up.

We know, about the local population of native people in our communities because all you have to do is look at the church records, baptismal records, marriage records.

What you see, if you look at the first page of baptisms in Albuquerque in 1706, is that you'll see the first child a Español, a Spanish child.

And if you go down the page, it will list, a little, Spanish child, then a little, Indian child, then a couple of Spanish, then a couple of Indian.

So this is where you get this idea of Genízaros Non-pueblo Native peoples of Apache Navajo, Ute, Pawnee, different Native groupings.

They want their land a place where they can call their own a place where they can have, their families a place where they can practice their religion some way to choose.. .

their destiny.

By the middle 1700s First generation children of war were seeking land of their own to plant roots.

They petitioned the Governor of New Mexico to occupy the original Sandia Pueblo.

But the petition, was denied.

That shows that they had a sense of community and identity.

The document itself is quite fascinating.

It lists, the people who applied for the land grant, and it even shows the different tribal origins of each individual.

Governor Tomás Vélez Cachupín developed a plan to create buffer zones where Genízaros could live in exchange for protection, from raiding tribes like the Comanche.

These buffer zones existed in places like Belen, Abiquiu, Trampas, Carnué, San Miguel del Bado, Ranchos de Taos, Ojo Calienté, and other smaller villages throughout Northern New Mexico.

The Land Grants Mercedes, are a medieval idea that came about during the Reconquista in Spain.

It was a way of populating the Frontera, the moving border or frontier.

They had a whole ritual of... looking around and marking off the land.

Back then they had a very different way of doing it.

They would say: You, your land will be from that tree over there, to that rock over there, to this river over here.

And then they'd pick up some rocks and grass, and they throw it in the air and say, In the name of the King, and they throw it in the air and say, "In the name of the King, ...I take possession of this land."

Governor Tomas Vélez Cachupín at the time, creates... several Genízaro settlements.

Belen, and nearby Tomé are two of the earliest Genízaro communities documented in the historic record.

Belen was established in 1746 alongside the Camino Real, the trading route that connected New Mexico to Mexico City.

Many first generation children of war came to the Belen area to settle, as they reached middle age.

My family roots, are in Tomé, New Mexico on my mom's side.

They grew up right by the three crosses.

Most of my family was on the community border line from... Isleta Reservation.

The land, is right by the Rio Grande.

So it's very fertile.

The Isleta District was home to early generation Coyote, Mestizo and Genízaro communities Migration patterns existed within Belen, Tomé, Valencia, Pajarito Los Lentes, and other surrounding communities.

Famous rock drummer Randy Castillo and his family are one example of the descendants of these early generation Genízaros such as Salvador Baca Apache Rosa Gurulé Indian servant of Antonio Gurulé Juan Jaramillo and his wife Rosa Gutierrez Coyotes, to name a few.

In New Mexico and particularly in Belen the Coyote racial label was usually synonomous with Genízaro and suggested that a person was born into an Indian servant family.

Close to my land in La Jolla, they're excavating, and they found a Piro Indian site.

And they also found two Conquistadors fully armored, and one of them with an arrow through his... abdomen area.

Las Trampas... was the second buffer zone community settled by Genízaro families who originated from Barrio Analco in 1751.

Among these Trampas families, we find descendants of Mexican Indians as well as Spanish and Black slaves from Africa.

One of the most important families, Sebastian Rodriguez, who settled here was from Angola.

He had two sons and a daughter.

The primary settlers of the Trampas Land Grant.

They married Indigenous Mexican slaves and some of their grandchildren would... marry Genízaros.

The Pueblo de Abiquiú embodies Genízaro and Indigenous consciousness in the contemporary with its continued culture and tradition including feast days and a variety of tribal dances.

My name is Virgilio Trujillo from the Genízaro Pueblo of Abiquiú.

I'm also known as Virgil and I'm here to talk about the Genízaro.

I'm not surprised when many people don't have an idea of who the Genízaro is.

Interestingly enough I've known that my whole life.

Abiquiú is a Genízaro Pueblo.

The Abiquiú name, So, you know, it's a Spanish corruption of the Tewa word Abishu.

If you look around, you still see all the rows of houses in the big defensive square.

Here in Abiquiú, we have both a feast day and a Fiesta to celebrate both our Spanish heritage and our Native heritage.

Feast day is always really fun because the whole community gets together, joins in on the dancing.

We eat together we celebrate together, we pray together.

I really love the fact that we got to grow up knowing our Spanish side, which is participating in Fiesta and learning Spanish and going to our Catholic Church.

But we also grew up knowing our Genízaro side Where... we do our Inditas dances.

and we honor the fact that our ancestors were Native.

Our Native American feast days of the Genízarol, where we dance and well, not every community did that except the Pueblos, the Native American communities.

Here in Abiquiú, we have our own library in the Pueblo, it's the Abiquiú Library and Cultural Center.

This is a journal, written by Padre Martinez.

The first book In New Mexico.

He also had the first printing press.

It's written in Spanish, and it is about the ABCs.

This is also another author from Abiquiú, Francis Grant of the Grant family, and she, talks in this book.

gives you a lot of feel about what it was like to live here.

Ah!!!

That is a very good book!

I loved it!

It took the United States sixty years to ratify our land claim for the... Genízaro land grant of Abiquiú Here I have the patent President Taft wrote out to us.

This is 1909 ... ... and it says up here "to the converted, half-breed Indians of the Pueblo of Abiquiú."

We have had several nations come through, including Hopi, Tewa, Ute, and that's where we become Genízaro, from a mixture of these different nations.

Were not... Tewas.

Tiwas, Towas.

We're Genízaro.

There's so much more to Abiquiú than Georgia O'Keeffe.

A decade after Abiquiú in 1763, Cañon de Carnué was established by 18 families who were a mix of Spanish and Indian.

Greetings my relatives!

I am Apache and Comanche.

Moises Gonzales of Cañon de Carnué This landscape has been the crossroads of various Indigenous people from Pueblo, Tiwa, various other pueblo communities The Farahone Apaches, early on Jicarilla later, Mescalero Comanche and then, now, Genízaro.

We hunted the buffalo, we hunted deer.

You know, we have a number of traditional herbs we gather, traditional plants.

The Cota... the use of prickly pear, the use of Bear Berry Manzanita, which is used by the Lakotas, that's actually their tobacco.

We have a layering of the different of the different people that have occupied from the Pit-house days to, you know, some of this older Tiwa corrugated pottery.

you know, some of this older Tiwa corrugated pottery.

It connects us to the original Tiwa descendants that abandoned this place.

We've always known who we are.

Every year we dance our traditional dances of the Matachines in our feast day.

It's our ancient Pueblo grandmother.

Right.

So we we kind of honored that through the dance with the grandmother of all of us.

Carnué It's my Querencia It's my love of place.

San Miguel del Bado buffer zone was established in 1794 by Lorenzo Marquez, who led a group that petitioned the Governor of New Mexico for lands east of Pecos Pueblo.

My name is Claresse Romero.

I'm from the San Miguel del Bado Land Grant.

Our families have been in the area since 1794, but some of them much earlier time closer to the Pecos Pueblo.

The Santa Fe Trail went through San Miguel here, and it was an area where wagons would pay their taxes for the items they were bringing across for trade.

In the late 1780s, there was a kind of an agency city still going on in Pecos to where people had a slave trade but an outpost to where they could check for arable.

You know, lands for people to live on.

And they had scouted this place out early in the 1790s.

The plains area was was fraught with a lot of raids, of course.

so the Spanish did put people in place to serve as buffers between you know, the the plains territory and the territory of the Spanish settlements and the sedentary Native Americans.

A culture develops from trading with the Comanche here.

They dressed like them.

Long hair was in style for both genders.

People here all wore moccasins and the women wore, you know, blanket shawls.

They had already incorporated Comanche ways into their own sense of identity.

Genízaros from Ranchos de Taos still celebrate their Native ancestry through traditional Comanche song and dance.

My name is Francisco "El Comanche" Gonzales I'm a resident of the Cristobal de la Serna Land Grant in Ranchos de Taos.

I was born and raised here.

My ancestors come back in the 1700s.

And if we look at the county clerk's office and look for the beginning of the people who settled this area, they were known as Genízaros.

Thanks to Manual Garcia, our Mortician who used to live here.

We used to we used to party with him and we were at sitting at a bar one time.

And and the guys came in Hey Frank Indio, and he says, Wait a minute, wait a minute.

The Indians they're at the Pueblo This is a Comanche, and I'm a Comanche he told them.

And I would say in respect to him, they started calling me Comanche and it stuck... like glue.

You know!

This is my drum.

And I acquired this over 30 years ago.

I've had the honor of having people like the President Obama, give me his autograph.

Ted Kennedy and also Robert Kennedy Jr. Jesse Jackson and many other political figures that that are part of our history.

I'm Corina Gonzales I'm from Ranchos de Taos, New Me I'm the daughter of ... Mister El Comanche Francisco Gonzales I am Genízara.

My nephews and my nieces and and my own kids have been raised doing this.

And so... ... they take part in it every year.

I'm sure that they will be continuing this on.

We dance today, the Comanche songs and we do that on New Year's Day.

You never know what you're gonna get that day.

You know, it can be a very nice day.

It can be a very rough day.

But we do our best to be out there as much as we can.

And we dance at the homes where there's people with the name of Manuel, Manuelita.

Let's listen to the Manuelas Because the first captive, is... the Manuela.

There's a story of this clan Chieftain came into Ranchos and says that he wanted to take this young lady and the man named Vialpando says, no, now she's too young.

Wait till another year.

Give us a chance.

So the Comanche Cheiftan gave so many horses for her.

Mr. Vialpando probably said by next year, these guys are always raiding and they might get killed by next year.

and he won't come for my daughter.

Well, unfortunately for Mister Vialpando The Chieftan came back.

The Comanche ripped away thousands of women and children from their homes, kept some as slaves for manual labor and traded most for supplies, guns and horses.

The Spanish wanted protection.

They wanted them to be there first.

when these raiding warriors would come.

The Governor of New Mexico at the time is challenged by nomadic tribes raiding the Spanish colonies and also warring with the Pueblos.

Comanche people had what they called the Comancheria.

This was their own movable empire.

They were nomads.

And they came out of the North and from the East.

And they came into New Mexico in a ferocious way because they were amazing fighters and warriors.

And they took horses and took to horse riding really fast and became some of the most formidable enemies of the colonial people of New Mexico.

Before they found the horse they were called Hyatsiata the, the, the Wanderers were the Hyatsia is like walking They were carrying everything they had on foot.

They became a horse culture overnight and they were ghost.

And they became very very powerful.

When the horses came in, this empowered them to hunt the Buffalo, number one.

And number two, since the horse was now the most important creature in their culture the main goal was not to kill the other people.

it was to get their horses.

We have Comanche identity here that is tied strongly to Genízaros because they've been a part of our story since the early 1700s, and they're part of us.

They were really the Lords of the Plains.

New Mexico was a very dangerous and brutal place to live in the 1700s.

But every year everyone would put their weapons down and come together to trade goods But they were also trading bodies!

We're talking basically about buying slaves.

Slave markets, also known as trade fairs, took place at Taos, Pueblo, Pecos Pueblo and the Pueblo of Abiquiu.

This was an enormous Pueblo that was a central part of the Galisteo basin, through which many people would be brought in to trade.

There was another Trade Fair that took place near Abiquiú.

And then the one that's the most storied is the one that took place at Taos.

They were bringing in goods, blankets and trade that had been brought along the Camino Real up from Mexico.

And in all of these fairs it was mostly children and women.

The women were sold for you know, two blankets and a horse something like that usually more expensive than than their male counterparts.

Native Americans are taken from Native Americans and I heard the cases where some Native American families were even... somewhat selling their own!

Sometimes freed Genízaros also purchased Genízaros!

The way it's applied here, is... you're going to go to one of the trade fairs and you're actually going to pay a ransom.

A ransom is paid for you.

You come to my household.

and there, you of course take on a job.

If you're one of the girls, you help cook, wash.

If it's outdoor, you're gonna watch livestock.

You're gonna grade.

You're gonna to plant.

You're gonna to hoe.

Whatever all the house may entail.

I am Tewa.

Family originates from this land in Santa Fe's Galisteo Basin.

Our family is missing a huge chunk of history.

Some of them made it back to the Tewa village, others were taken as servants, that, Native thought and identity is no longer there.

The 1800s are quite amazing in the history of slavery.

We know that Mexico abolished slavery in 1829.

It took us a little longer, the United States.

And it took a Civil War, sadly, to put an end to slavery.

13th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War, prohibits slavery in the United States.

It was obviously aimed at African-Americans, but it applies across the board.

It's not limited to African-Americans.

Well, slavery continued in New Mexico.

It had morphed.

People were no longer referred to as Genízaros they were called Peons, or they weren't called anything they were just enslaved The United States government finally stepped in because they were trying to recruit New Mexican men for the military and the owners wouldn't let them go saying "no they haven't served out their term of peonage."

So the United States government passed a seperate statute, directed specifically at New Mexicans restoring the rights of people in New Mexico to be free from slavery.

A man by the name of Lafayette Head an agent of Imperialism If we've ever known one, who had come with the Army of the West.

Marched into Santa Fe , eventually moved into Abiquiú.

became an agent for the Tabuguase Utes.

When this edict came in from Andrew Johnson, he responded in a way that produced one of the most powerful documents of all slave regimes across time.

The Lafayette Head List.

He identified 149 individuals and listed them in a census like list.

But the list includes their names, the names of the individual enslaved, the name of the owner as he would list the column.

Their ages, when they were purchased, where they were purchased, of whom they were purchased, and whether or not they wish to return to their tribe.

There were a number of Americans that owned slaves in New Mexico even after the Head List was written including Lafayette Head himself.

Another well-known example is Kit Carson who had Indian servants in his household.

Merchant and politician Henry Connelly had over 100 Peons at his hacienda South of Albuquerque in 1840s but he freed these slaves in the 1850s and became Abraham Lincoln's appointee as territorial Governor of New Mexico during the Civil War.

The blood of slavery is stained on the hands of many Spanish, Mexican, American, Native American, Aztecan, Mayan, White European, the church.

There's enough injustice to go around.

The questions are: Where do we go from here?

Will we learn from history?

Not as different races or tribes But as human beings.

One people that live, and breathe the same air.

Genízaro perspectives were not just historical artifacts but very much living and breathing as you and I.

One individual that I'm writing about Rosario Romero She was captured as an adult.

She had her young child with her.

They were brought into Taos, and they were baptized.

She became Rosario Romero.

She was eventually sold into the hands of one of the most famous of New Mexicans, Padre Antonio Jóse Martinez.

Rosario, did remember her name: Ated-bah-Hozhoni Her Diné name meant "Happy Girl" Ironic for someone who would be captured and live her entire life as an enslaved woman.

She would die well into her one hundreds as her gravestone tells us to this day.

But she's unique among the many Indigenous people who were captured who would remember her name because most were taken as children [MUSIC PLAYS] Indigenous women and children in New Mexico suffered a great deal of trauma and not just generational trauma, historical trauma.

It covered the masses of Indigenous people throughout the nation.

They were taken into these communities that were vastly different than their own, with, without any relatives or any concern for their person.

We're essentially talking about human trafficking early, early on.

And that experience is so traumatic that even in the case of my grandmother, for example, she stopped speaking when she was moved to this land and when she was forced to become a slave, wife and mother.

They use women as a bartering tool They use women to secure alliances.

They use women to feed their colonies.

They use women for various reasons.

But it seems more often they were used sexually by the European powers, and mostly for allegiances and alliances.

Well, right off the bat Right.

Captivity.

I mean, most of us probably are descendants of of um... a woman who was, who was captured and um... or a slave that was raped or, you know, um... um...

I have to stop just for a second If our grandmothers if our Genízaro grandmothers, we're bearing children.

And that means that the trauma of the captured, the captive experience, was passed through the sacred umbilical, through their to their blood, to their children, and to that child's child.

And that is why we feel it so deeply because of the sacred connection that we have with our grandmothers and the trauma that they endured and that we still have not ever healed from.

We experience what's called Susto And Susto is a soul wound.

Susto is something that shocks you.

It's like your own, as a child or just as a human being.

It's too much, and so it makes you sick.

So trauma will impact every part of your life if it has not been addressed if it has not been healed in any way.

And for Indigenous people, it has not been addressed.

It's a real wound.

When you have Susto, it's not just your emotions because your emotions go up and down.

It's the spirit that is wounded.

Because our grandmothers were stripped of their of their identities.

We have the hardest time finding out who they were, What was their birth name?

My grandmother is identified as Maria.

We don't know if she was Maria.

We don't know what she was traded for.

We don't know if she was traded for two blankets for a horse.

We have no idea.

And that's part of the trauma.

If you know someone has Susto or if you have Susto the cure is a very abrupt, unexpected splash of water.

For us methods of healing may not be found in a psychotropic medication It may not be found in a Western style type of counseling.

It can be found in healing methods such as Cuandarismo and going to your Shaman and connecting with your ancestors and asking the four directions to guide your ways of healing and bringing remedies, and herbs and teas into your body to heal it and to ask your grandmas and your ancestors to help you heal that.

When I really need to feel healed and nurtured.

I remember opening my grandmas cabinet.

She had what's called a Trevique, it's an old-timey cabinet that was built into her dining room wall.

And even at this moment I can smell the herbs that she would keep in there and it's just like a wonderful blanket of healing and goodness that comes over me.

I bet every home in Santa Cruz has Osha in it just like every home would have Yerba Buena for the tummy.

Memory and smell are so closely related.

If you keep these herbs near you, you will keep the memory of where they come from with you.

Agriculture has been an important part of Genízaro traditions and culture.

We carry seeds we plant lands.

We practice a land based way of life that has deep relations and roots with the land.

And we all from an Indigenous heritage.

Even though we are detribalized, we still have deeply woven within our ways of living and being an Indigenous practice.

Give thanks to the creator number one for life and number two for the gift of intelligence.

It's there for us to heal.

It's there for us to walk that spirit road.

It's there for us to find peace.

We do have power.

It's in how we recognize it and choose to direct it and use it.

The most amazing thing is the musical expressions of cultural hybridity, of Genízaro musical culture in New Mexico.

[MUSIC PLAYS] Mr. Randy Castillo [MUSIC PLAYS] When Steven Adler got kicked out of Guns n Roses Randy would have been the first person I would have got if he wasn't touring around with Ozzy!

[MUSIC PLAYS] He was a rock star!

He inspired millions.

But he never forgot his Indigenous roots.

Randy always felt a deep connectioin to the land.

From the Isleta District all the way to Taos Pueblo.

When you're born into and you realize that you are part of the... Genízaro Experience then you realize... that you are here because of the resiliency of all your ancestors.

Remembering everything else, though, is just an unfolding that ultimately, and in my case allowed me to become an artist so I could investigate this sort of historical legacy of my DNA and my bloodlines to tell interesting stories.

You inhabit these characters that are all part of your your your memory, your blood memory, but they're also part of the human experience.

And this is what informs you as an actor.

That's what informs me the way that someone speaks the cadence, the way they move as a dancer, the imagery that comes with creating a Moorish ceremony of Las Tinieblas I mean, there's just so much information out there.

It's like this database that you tap into and it's yours and of course, anyone that's connected to that same DNA, That's...

The Genízaro Experience.

What we do with the things that we elicit through our bodies, through our voices for our minds through our breath is what impacts and directs the nature of the world.

We do need to look at difficult aspects of colonialism.

It's not like we can turn the switch and be de-colonial in an instant.

A statue that is a painful symbol of oppression to Native Americans is no longer in place in Rio Arriba County.

Crews remove the Juan de Oñate statue this afternoon.

But it is not clear if that statue is gone for good.

In 1901 in Las Vegas, New Mexico Eusebio Chacon gets up onto a platform to discuss identity, and he says there's no other blood that flows through my veins but the blood of Juan de Oñate.

But that's not who we are.

[MUSIC PLAYS] If we're any... indication as to what... that principal creator is that made all of us... WOW!

How profound.

We're part of the Earth, we're shapes of the Earth like everything.

Our DNA, we're literally made up of the metals, minerals, and liquids of the earth.

My work as the administrator for the New Mexico Genealogical Society's DNA Project focuses on genetic genealogy related to yDNA and mtDNA.

YDNA is showing us that about 15% of all New Mexican paternal lines are of Native American origin.

On the mitochondrial side, this means our ancestral foremothers, we've got about 85 to 90% of all of our ancestral grandmothers were Native American.

If we're not careful, we're going to create a modern day Caste system where we start emphasizing percentages.

In a very important way like that diversity of perspective is absolutely essential.

We either sustain balance, or we disrupt the balance.

But out of chaos comes balance And out of balance comes chaos.

So it's an ongoing thing.

Which is why we do the ceremonies on an annual basis sometimes on a quarterly basis.

That celebration, that ceremony, that ritual is nothing more than performance to recreate balance and to re-establish ourselves.

It's just part of our blood, and it's just got that hold on you that... nothing else in the universe is important other than what you're doing at that time.

And it just feels your heart with alot of joy and pride in your tradition.

GENÍZARO Children of War [MUSIC PLAYS] So what does it mean to be Genízaro?

There's no nation or tribe.

Who decides?

The government?

The Catholic Church?

DNA?

Family?

Tradition?

Does anyone have the right to be the identity police?

The government can't tell us who we are.

We're a land based people with shared history.

FREEDOM is the greatest gift from our creator.

In 2007, the New Mexico State Legislature passed Senate Memorial 59 sponsored by Senator Richard Martinez which recognizes Genízaros as being Indigenous New Mexicans.

The trauma of history is there... if we're brave enough to look for it.

A modern Genízaro identity is a good thing.

Not only have they been here all along in some communities they remember who they are and they celebrate who they are.

The numbers of the enslaved Indigenous people in this landscape... from who we descend... ... are... ... in the millions!

Learn about it, Share it... ... live it!