Palabra on Indigenous Fitness, Diet and Survivance from a Xicana Practicing Ancestral Responsibility for the Generations of Today and for the Next Seven Generations of Tomorrow
Many folks have asked, “Claudia, why do you work out all the time? You look great!” The answer is not simple just as the question. You see, as a consequence of colonization, as we are well aware of, many landscapes have been poisoned. This includes the landscapes or sacRed geographies of the Native body. With changes of governance, economy, ritual and ceremony, diet and the imposition of Western ideals of gender and sexuality, the Indigenous body of Turtle Island for the past 500 hundred years has undergone unnatural morphications that unlike a caterpillar turned butterfly, has turned the Indigenous sovereign butterfly into a cocoon, rotting in its shell of death. Death is a butterfly transition, do not get me wrong. I look forward to my death; The day that I release my body from it’s responsibility in housing and protecting my spirit from any further colonial trauma.
Why do I work out all the time? Bluntly, why should my spirit wait to be free until my death? “Ay que dramatica” my mom would say but truth being is this…
My elders in this day and age are in the worst physical and biological condition. They suffer from diabetes, high cholesterol, dementia, multiple sclerosis, heart disease and morbid obesity. Many of these colonial dis-eases are not so much hereditary but a result of past historical traumas passed down from generation to generation through adopted cultural practices of survivance, as seen in ceremonies and cultural gatherings, were Native foodways became infiltrated with the colonizers palate. Changes in daily physical tasks also occurred where heating ones home and the preparation of meals went from gathering wood, hunting, fishing, foraging, gardening, cooking for hours, and for some peoples migrating from one region to another in following the seasonal food ecology to a sedentary life, dependent on a capitalist market and labor, confined to ones home.
Why do I work out all the time? Cause I am determined, just like the resilient spirit of Turtle Island and the ancestors before me—to be a healthy future elder. I refuse to be in my 60’s, 70’s or 80’s telling the younger generations to eat better and to spend more time outdoors if I, myself, am incapable of doing so due to falling victim to what I now know better. I run, I hike, I walk, I lift weights, I eat mostly an Indigenous diet, I grow food, I forage, I cook every day, I do not eat processed or fast foods and have decolonized what and when I should eat throughout the day. #HealthyFutureElder
TO DEFEND THE LAND IS TO DEFEND MY BODY
Growing up in East LA and spending my teen years in barrio Bassett, I directly and indirectly experienced the wrath of the colonial spirit through domestic, street, relationship, and racialized violence. As a young adult, through building relationships of sisterhood, I was able to defeat and begin to punch back. Over and over again, I have heard and learned that physical violence is not the way and I completely agree however, what do you do when someone is physically punching at your spirit? Trying to beat you to death? Force their body unto yours? Slam you against the floor? Frantz Fanon has taught me along with other revolutionary groups such as NYM and the Zapatistas that sometimes, liberation, freedom, self-defense is a requirement. One must know how to defend one self. Too many peoples have been injured without justice and I refuse to be the next victim, again. Yes, we do need to address violence against the body in which unfortunately, heterosexistpatriarchy dominates the landscape of the mind in which many fall victim and become perpetrators without a cause. This alone is a community matter and I am for teaching our younger generations ways to have better relations with one another and mostly how to work through anger and those triggering emotions that may challenge the idea of ego. This post is not a manifesto on how to do that, so let me bring it back home.
Why do I work out all the time? Cause I am determined, just like the resilient spirit of Turtle Island and the ancestors before me—to fight for my life. I refuse to be the next missing mujer, the next battered wife, the next rape victim, the next queer body left dead. So, I run, I hike, I walk, I lift weights, I box, I kick, I scream, I do not allow myself to go fragile. #NotOneMore
OFF GRID HOMESTEAD LIVING
As a young adult, I, like most young LA Xicana/o adults, wanted to get out of the ‘belly of the beast’ out of the ‘concrete jungle’ and so I did. I moved to Humboldt County in Northern Cali and for the first time, I really understood what off grid/living off the land really meant. I mean, I would visit my familia in Mexico and their way of living would definitely fall under this definition, however, it was not exactly how I experienced it then. In Mexico, yes, we had to carry five gallon water jugs into the cemented showers, use porta potties, flag down the fresh water truck in the mornings, refill the gas tanks, and go get fresh milk and cheese from la señora down the carretera, and walk across the canal to la tortilleria for fresh tortillas. This was liberatory living for me, as I knew it as a child and growing up, however, in Humboldt, life was still a little different. People in Wichipec near where the Klamath and Trinity Rivers cross, where I would visit, had no on-grid electricity but generators that would store sun energy, cultivated most foods from wild gardens, hunted, received their fresh water from the river down the acreage, had a composting porta potty, and heated their home from wood chopped and gathered from the land. Years and years later, I would again come across a few other peoples living off grid, some more hardcore than others. One friend stewards the land his home is built on by using non-fuel technologies, that is, human energy and handwork. Serious stuff, serious work. Off grid living involves clearing land, pumping water from water aquifers or building trenches for water to flow from nearby rivers forming ponds and/or floating gardens, chopping, lifting, and carrying wood, digging holes, clearing pathways especially in areas that snow builds up, filtering water buckets from portable sinks, hunting, growing food, preserving food, clearing trees, foraging mushrooms…this list can go on and on…
Why do I work out all the time? Cause I am determined, just like the resilient spirit of Turtle Island and the ancestors before me—to rebuild and strengthen my direct land body relation, to reunite us, so that I may receive permission to steward the land again and it steward mine. As a youth and young adult, living off the land has always been an end goal and after experiencing and witnessing what it takes, there is no way that I would be able to do all the work involved if I am not fit (body, heart, mind, and spirit). So, I run, I hike, I walk, I lift weights, I grow food, I forage, I am learning to hunt and trap, I am learning to preserve/can food, I am learning how to survive off the land, off grid, cause that takes drive, discipline, desire, and strength. #SelfDetermination
“WHEN THA SHIT GOES DOOOOWWWWNNNN, YA BETTER BE READY!!” —CYPRESS HILL
In my mid-teens, I became conscious enough to understand systems of power and bodily control, not like I do now (biopower, biopolitics, necropolitics, the ‘bare life’), but enough to know that the ‘man’ can hunt us down at anytime. Friends and I would sit around bonfires, playing drums and just being young adults having conversations that would sometimes lead to flows, spoken word, and elevated talks. We always made sure to remind each other that we needed to be ready for when ‘tha shit goes down.’ US History has taught me that this truly can happen at anytime and according to theory, ‘only the strong will survive.’ I am a survivor. My body thrives. My culture thrives. My ancestral foodways thrive. I thrive.
Why do I work out all the time? Cause I am determined, just like the resilient spirit of Turtle Island and the ancestors before me—to be able to survive the system shutting down, whether today or tomorrow, my body will be physically capable to walk miles and miles from one water spot to another, to one mountain foodscape to another. Urban survival skills is not just about living in the trenches and being able to move in and out of spaces without being caught slipping. It is about recognizing food along the cracks, knowing where to find food, and how to get there by foot. So, I run, I hike, I walk, I lift weights, I forage, I challenge myself and walk anywhere from 4, 7, 10, 12, even 15 miles a day. Why? Cause I am in a state of #Survivance
WHY DO I WORK OUT ALL THE TIME?
A long time ago, I made a commitment by accepting a gift from my ancestors. This gift has been the gift of sharing knowledge by living as ancestral memory made flesh. I am done with the preaching and telling that one should live this way or that. NO!! Not anymore. No more theory, only practice. As a memory carrier, it is my responsibility to share my purpose and finally answer the question I have been asked so many times before, Why do you work out all the time?
It is my responsibility to stay healthy so that I may provide and assist in future road map making…if I do not do this, then the generations to come will not have any elders to guide them. I refuse to not fulfill my responsibility as a healthy future elder. I refuse to ever be a victim of violence again, I refuse to not be self-determined, and I refuse to die in the trenches of Babylon.
I refuse to be a statistic.
Same time, I get to look and feel good.
