I think it's important for people to know their roots and to know the roots of others. It helps us to know aboudy each other.
Welcome to when You're Invisible. My name is Maria Fernandavis, but I know not everyone can roll there are, so it's also fine to call me Maria. When You're Invisible is my love letter to the working class and others who are seemingly invisible in our society. I hope to build a community here that will inspire you to have generous conversations with others that are different from you, conversations that might help you see life in an entirely different way.
And I had just never heard of Alcatraz, so I started looking into it, and that's when the takeover was going on, so I went up there. It was the winter of nineteen seventy. I ended up going to Alcatraz Island for a night.
WHOA, this is Abby and yes he's talking about that. Alcatraz the infamous jail and cal The jail closed in nineteen sixty three, and Alcatraz Island was essentially just sitting there abandoned.
Alcatraz had been closed down for a number of years and was taken over by the American Indian Movement.
The Indian Pride movement was born in the summer of nineteen sixty eight. It actually began in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Go Minnesota, Hey, what's up? The Native American community activists came together to fight back against a history of genocide and to change the present where they were facing ongoing discrimination and issues
like high unemployment, slum housing, and racist treatment. Activists fought for treaty rights, the reclamation of tribal land, and advocated for Native folks in cities dealing with poverty.
The American Indian Movement they took it over in Alcatraz under a federal law that said any surplus US federal lands that are not being used shall be turned over to Native people in the United States, and the Indians took it over as a bargaining ship for better services, better healthcare, better education.
Abby is an Indigenous Chicano Well Plascala Yaki.
Our greeting is leos and chia maniawo get you malayas That means the Creator be with you and have a great day.
He was in college when he took part in this historic act of resistance with dozens of fellow Indigenous people.
I met Floyd Westerman. Everybody knew him as Red Crow, who was a singer, and he came and sang at my college.
Red Crow was a Sissiton, Dakota musician and actor. He was a vocal advocate for Native American rights and was involved in numerous protests.
Me and another friend introduce ourselves, and he told me that you got to go to Alcatraz. That's what's happening.
And that's how Abby ended up on Alcatraz one cold winter night.
At that moment in time, I felt bad that I didn't know more of my culture because everybody seems so at ease with their own.
It was the first time he and many others had experienced anything like this.
They had some music that night, some prayers. So I came back with all these stories, meeting all these tribal people from all over the country, and it just blew open my mind. My Indian pride came back really strong from there on ago. This is where it's happening. We're Native. Yeah, I had come home.
I love how he says that that he had come home. The ideas of homecoming and home building shined through my entire interview with Abby In this particular moment, Abby comes home to himself, especially in his identity as a native person. Finding a home for yourself in community isn't something that happens overnight. Abbie's story reminds me that this takes time, yet it is possible. It's one of the reasons I
wanted to talk to him in the first place. Understanding yourself and accepting things you know and don't know will lead you to a sense of ease and awareness. And it's not a point to be reached, but a constant exploration.
When I look at the world now, I see it from all my experiences, and I'm thinking, do I give this information too. I'm in a real retrospective kind of place looking back and I see the things that I've done.
What's the biggest or favorite thing that you've passed along?
I think the biggest thing I've passed along is awareness for your immediate surroundings. We've been ignoring ourselves, our own environment, but also the people that live in those environments that are not like us. Yeah, how do I become a good human being and also be good to the natural world? What's my relationship? That's awareness?
When we know who we are we can better understand that the world around us and how we relate to others. This is a nugget I've taken away from many conversations with Abby.
Is my destiny to be here today, even to be with you today, is my destiny to share some of the stories that I've had with you, share my knowledge, to share my stories.
I've been lucky to be on the receiving end of Abby's wisdom for a while. I met him for the first time when I was a recent grad freshly part of the New York theater world. Since then, we've done a couple plays together, including one where it was a cast of two just us. We became friends, and despite our more than forty year age difference, we've stayed in touch. Abby is now in his seventies. He lives in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, and he has four kids, seven grandkids, and one great grandkid.
He's done a lot of incredible work in his life. I mean some crazy incredible things. He's been a newscaster, a firefighter, a professional musician, and he's worked for the government for a long time. He acts and writes plays. He also works with youth and indigenous youth, in particular to teach them traditional environmental knowledge. What do you feel like is at the core of everything you do.
But it's always working with people that make me to change. So all the things that I've done, I've been in a position to help make that direction happen and the changes.
I think of Abby's visit to Alcatraz as an awakening in his life. It was the impetus for the activism he went on to do, the adventures he's been on, and the wisdom he's gathered and shared with his family and his community. For Abby, it all started by rooting himself in his family history and his indigenous identity. That's where we are going to start to where are your parents from?
Mom and dad both born in San Diego and their parents are from Mexico.
What parts of Mexico?
My grandmother, my dad's mom was born in Wuinawato Gebardi. I have family. Thought, Oh wow, yeah, so that's my dad's side, and then my mom was up in Yaqui land in Sona.
That's incredible. Wait, so are you Yaqui on both sides? Just my mom's side, just your mom's side.
Okay.
Abby's grandparents are all from Mexico, but his mother's side is indigenous. They're part of the Yaqui tribe. Indigenous people in the Americas occupied the land for at least twenty thousand years before settlers arrived. For the Yaqui and many other tribes, it was the arrival of the Spanish that altered their way of life and threatened their survival.
We saw the Spanish come in the fifteen hundreds, and that's when it started. By the sixteen hundreds that they were being colonized. By the seventeen hundreds of the religious side, I think the Jesuits, I said die or be baptized, and so they took baptism, but they kept their language. And then the eighteen hundreds the Franciscans, who were a little bit more meaner, and so they said you will
stop doing this, you will stop doing that. But they managed to keep some of the Yaki traditions, spiritual traditions and webbed inside the Catholic mass it's the only tribe where indigenous spiritual activities are still part of the Catholic tradition.
Wow.
The Pascwa dancers, they're a very sacred group of men who trained from youngsters outer dance and the interpretations of the dance is what it means. That's still part of the Catholic tradition down in many of the Yachi churches. Wow.
The Yaki are known as the only unconquered Indians in America. Resistance runs deep in their history.
They never sent a contract or a peace treaty with the Mexican government, and to this day they're still fighting the Mexican government.
The effects of colonialism and poverty have, of course taken a great toll. It's one of the reasons that in the early nineteen hundreds many Yaki people decided to emigrate the southwest of the US, and Arizona in particular became a new home for the Yaki. And this was true of Abby's family.
I am originally born and raised in San Diego, California, and my family is from southern Tucson, Arizona. As a child, I went back and forth to both places. So I feel like Arizona is also home because it's a different environment from San Diego. But that's where everybody moved. I think during the depression they moved that way.
Those living in the States drew on their history of resistance and actually became an important political force. Over the course of decades, they rallied to have their presence recognized by the American government with a reservation. Eventually, the Yaki nation was established in Arizona in nineteen seventy eight. By the late twentieth century, the Yaki numbered about twenty five thousand in Mexico and three to five thousand in the US.
While he wasn't raised on the res Abby had relatives who were, and he fostered a close relationship with his grandparents, who imparted Yaki teachings.
I wish I could remember more stories from my grandparents. They were always talking to My grandfather spoke a lot and what I went out once in the County of San Diego and he was gathering. He was Atkurandero, So I mean he was a cure cured people, and he used a lot of herbs and stuff that he found and he knew where to go get them. And I know now that when you gather medicine from the earth, you give thanks, and so you have to pray before you take it, and you don't take it all. You
take what you need. So he was actually saying his prayers and talking and telling me that he was doing what he's doing. I didn't understand what he was doing. I was too young, So I watched him do that once, go out and get some herbs by a creek, and then I found out later on. It was called yedbade mansu. It's a plant that has spectacular healing powers it and my mom used it, my grandmother used it. I used to use it with my kids, and my daughter grew up, she's, dad,
do you have any of that voodoo plant? And I said, go to antialysis house. She has it in the backyard and tell her you want something. Yet it by that wants. He just boiled it and it heals cuts, wounds internal external. My favorite time was being out with my grandparents, just out in the natural world. I loved it. That's incredible.
While he's always cherished his indigenous roots, his identity was also from As the child of immigrants. He was not only balancing his indigenous identity with his Mexican identity, but he was also navigating his American one. When your identities are at odds or in question, there's this feeling of being in constant ebb and flow. You can feel ungrounded
at times. I know this from personal experience. Home becomes something you yearn for, a sense of understanding or belonging physically, socially, and internally.
Early on, my parents identified us as Mexican Americans, and then my grandparents taught us our Indian ways, or taught me. Yeah, for sure. It was interesting because I've always had this duality in my mind. So when people ask you what you were, they automatically said, oh, you're a Mexican. I said no, I'm not, and so they yes, you are, and I said no, I'm not. I was just a kid. So then to stop the fighting and bickering about who I was, I would say, yeah, yeah.
While you may see yourself as one thing, you are very much influenced by your family and society. The outside world's oppression and perception can jeopardize your safety and your dignity. This affects people individually, but can also harm a whole population, leading to widespread erasure and invisibility assimilation.
In the fifties, in San Diego it was still a very kind of a backward town, and so if you are Indian, you were treated worse than a dog. If you're Mexican, not so bad, but still treated poorly. So you tried to say, oh, no, no, no, y'all from here we were, but people automatically assumed that you're from Mexico. And then we'd go to Mexico across the border and they would call us Boschos because we were from California. Yeah, so we couldn't take. We couldn't win.
There's no winning on both sides. Coming to terms with who you are in your full history and heritage at times comes with creating new terms in order to create your own agency and space.
So when I heard the word Chicano and I asked about it, my dad goes, that's who we are, and so then I took Chicano because it's something that we made up that has some historical documentation to it. So I grew up as a Chicano, knowing my Indian roots right in my Indian side, very strongly identified with that from a very young age.
I identify as Chicana to lots of Mexican Americans do, but not all. For a lot of us, it means the owning of this complex identity of accepting our mestizo or mixed roots and also our americanness. Chicano culture has taken on a life of its own. Oftentimes, the chicano esthetic is the long nails, the winged eyeliner, the cool, chunky jewelry, baggy clothes, and low rider culture and look this identity looks like and means different things depending on
where you are and who you are. It's awesome that it also has such a distinct and unique boy because there's so much pride that people take in it. But today, when you see Chicano's portrayed, you will often learn about these front facing parts of the culture, and you don't hear as much about the origins of the term and its connection to indigenous identity. Abby loved this word because
it drew on its roots. But even though most Mexican people are part indigenous, not everyone connects to that side of them. You know, in my own family, we've been slow to acknowledge that and to learn what our indigenous Mexican lineage is. When I do see Mexican indigenous practices make it into the mainstream, maybe it's using stage or bruchadia,
it's great, but it can also feel generalized. I love that people want to claim this, but it can feel one size fits all, rather than being rooted in specific histories, traditions or tribes, and I find myself craving that information. Miyah, it's no one's faults. I'm talking about this because I'm wondering for myself, how do I want to move forward with my identity and my practice. It's layered and complicated. It may sound like I'm an authority on this, but no,
this is a conversation. I love the idea of creating new traditions, but I also want to know what it means for the wider population and culture. A lot of this historical knowledge about our traditions has been lost over time and erased systemically.
People didn't really care about the elders and what they knew in the language. We lost our language tremendously. We lost our language through assimilation and through If you went to a boarding school, they beat it out.
Of you, and like quite literally too, not justmitally and mentally, but physically.
Yeah, there are adults my age who are still traumatized by that experience in the boarding schools, mostly run by religious organizations.
Yeah, for a period of almost one hundred years, US Native children were forcibly taken from their homes to quote unquote schools where they were punished for speaking their native language or showing signs of their culture in any way. Many were abused physically, sexually, emotionally. Also, many children never returned home and their fates have yet to be accounted for by the US government. The idea was to kill the Indian, save the man.
And it wasn't until I think the nineteen seventies that my family finally woke up again. Right because the seventies changed started the sixties. As we went into the seventies, that was a game changer.
Thank God for this game changing movement. The seventies is when Indian pride was thriving and when Abby made his way to Alcatraz. Even though Abby's grandparents planted a seat inside him by teaching him yacky ways as a young boy. There were so many factors preventing its growth, but eventually it bleomed. When you ground yourself in your identity and really embrace the world you come from culturally, racially, nationally, your roots can reach deep and help keep you solid
even when the tough moments come. A feeling of home and a strong sense of identity also become so important in the face of erasure. When the wider world doesn't want to see you. It becomes vital to create spaces to see yourself and look. Identity isn't everything, but I know for me it has helped to guide how I see the world and it brought me self worth when people threatened to make me feel otherwise. And that's what the Indian Pride movement did for Abby. It was a
homecoming for so many people. When Abby experienced this, he started thinking about the world in new ways. It encouraged his path as an activist. That's coming after the break an hour're back. Abby's trip to Alcatraz and his embrace of the Indian Pride movement awakened not only a sense of a warm, reliable home, it also offered a new understanding of how his people viewed their collective role in the world.
Our indigenous ways teaches to be a better person than that it can be. It's a respect that you have for yourself and other human beings, but also for the natural world too. Those are the things that reverberate in my soul all the time. I thought, that's where I could claim that came from. Yeah. Yeah.
His desire to make the world a better place also resonated with the values he was raised with. Abby's family is actually filled with genations of activists, which is what I found insanely cool and such a privilege to come from. He actually starts the story with his grandfather, my.
Grandfather, my mom's dad. He already had that sense of revolution. He was a young man from the Mexican Revolution, and he was a bugler. And if you know anything about the war, whether it was a drama or a bugle, the bugler sounded the decisions. Okay, certain sounds and go forward or back up or retreat. And so the buglers, just like in Vietnam, the radio guys for the first people,
they should try to shoot because you cut communication. So he got shot in the face and came to recuperate in the United States.
He moved to Arizona, where he met Abby's grandmother. They were farm workers, and Abby's grandfather was always trying to build power with others.
My grandmother would be carrying one child two in her cotton sack, and she's picking cotton and she turns around. And as my grandfather organizing people and talking politics and philosophical things.
It was hard to get work though. So the whole family moved from Arizona to California.
He was living in a town called Lemon Grove, which is a part of the city of San Diego. And in Lemon Grove they were picking lemons for ten cents an hour. And see he organized the union called Obrerosi Campesinos nineteen thirty five and they went on strike for ten cents more an hour, and they won the strike.
Abbi's grandfather used his revolutionary heart to be a part of the fight for the farm workers, but it wasn't the only thing he got involved in. While laborers were fighting for better wages and working conditions, Latinos and Natives were also fighting against segregation.
The governor of California at the time was trying to deal with education. They were building up the public schools, but they didn't want Mexicans or Indians in their school or Native people, so he deemed that we were a federal issue, so we didn't have to go to their school. So they put all the Mexicans and natives that in one building and they built a brand new school for the white kids. And my grandfather sent his kids. He said, no, you go to the new school.
The kids his grandfather is talking about are Abby's mom and her st blings. This is not far from Abbey or our recent history.
They turned them around. No, you're not coming to the school. You're brown. You're brown, your white come in. So they boycotted the school. They organized a boycott and shut down the school. And that case when they went to court in San Diego, my grandmother very had a lot of pride and she was not embarrassed. But they were poor and if I if you ever saw pictures of my uncles when they're in their childhood, they got these rough looking clothes. She made a lot of their own clothes,
but they had no shoes. So my grandfather went to court with the attorney that he knew, and he said, her son's gonna have to go testify how they treated them. And my grandmother didn't want her kids to go in court with their clothes that they had. And they knew a family called the Alvarez family, and the kid had shoes and a suit. So they put the Alpharez versus the Board of Education and they went to court and they won that it was unconstitutional for them to separate
these American citizens from going to school. And when the Brown versus the Board of Education the National Trial for segregation. They referenced that case, my grandfather's case into the Brown Versus Board of Education.
Honestly, I feel a little ashamed that I wasn't taught these stories early on. I only learned them from conversations like these, whether it was with my brother, my friend Sophie, who's a Builo was also involved Abby, and then eventually the books I picked up, like an African American and LATINX History of the United States. These moments root me. This is where we come from, from a tradition that fought to protect everyone. Knowing these stories can help give
us direction in our moral and societal compass. I'm always asking myself what do we want to leave behind for our loved ones and the generations after us. These are some of the questions at the heart of this podcast. And I think about the moments and the cases that led to big, momentous change, and that they were because of the bravery of everyday people. I especially love hearing about the Indigenous and LATINX people we don't always learn the names of who had an incredibly grounded sense of
fighting for what's right. I can't believe how lucky I am to know and sit down with someone from this incredible legacy.
It was a big deal back then. When you're part of it. It's a story that's handed down and handed and talked about, but you didn't think it was history at all, till now we look back and go, oh, my God, for this thing.
His parents grew up around that, and so did Abby, and they all wanted to be a part of making a better future too.
Having known that history. My dad was in the Union, my mom was in union, so I grew up around unionism. So when I was in high school and a guy came to talk about the Great Boycott, and I said wow, So I went to go find out more information about the grape boycott.
In nineteen sixty five, over eight hundred workers in Delano, California, took part in the grape strike for better wages and basic labor rights.
And I went to a meeting and they go, oh, we're looking for somebody with a station where I got to take some food to the strikers in Delano. I thought about it, and I said, I have a station wing, but I don't think my mom's going to let me drive it to Delano from San Diego. So they go, I ask her. So I asked my mom. She said no,
So I went. I was there. They didn't have wherewial that nobody had a truck or so, I said, literally in my car and we took off and I took off to Deleno early one morning, dropped the food off, came back, and my mom didn't know until she saw the credit card. I used her mobile credit card for gas. She wasn't mad. So then right away they weren't mad at me. They were just like surprise that I was getting political at such a young age. Mom is a
farm workers that though was a farm worker. I'm just helping our people.
Yeah, I think a lot of us can agree that immigrants, especially Latin migrants, do a lot of the intense manual labor in this country. Work that's long hours, severely underpaid, and often in dangerous conditions. They're often forgotten in our society. They are labors underappreciated, and the workers themselves are seen as very passive. Yes, the exploitation of these workers still exists, but Latinos have done a lot to fight for their rights.
There are many inspiring examples in history where these folks have taken action to change their circumstances.
And then I went back again with my brother and we're all in college in our first years of college, and we went up there to delaye or to check it out. We ran at Assessor Travis and we're just like, awe struck.
If you don't already know him, Cesar Chaois is someone I'd definitely recommend looking up. He was an incredible Latino activist and labor leader who co founded the National farm Workers Association now called United farm Workers. He emphasized non violent tactics. He was also involved with the Mourriento Istulenti Chicano the asset Lan, which translates to the Chicano student movement of Assetlan. It was all about Chicano unity and power.
Abby followed his lead and got more involved with these movements. He kept turning out to actions in support of farm workers.
We came back a couple months later for a rally in the Valley in Coachella and for me, Cochella people, oh, it's a party place. Now. Coachella was the hub of where the fight was in some of the first contracts for the United farm Workers. So it was just a combination of working people who sacrificed a lot. It was not easy work. And when we were striking in Coachella it was one hundred and fifteen hundred and twenty degrees and I can imagine the workers are working in that
we're standing out there. It was killing us.
But they won. The workers in Coachella got a new contract, and then Abby and other organizers moved on to the next farm, allowing the movement to ripple across the area.
The strike moved to Arvin Early Mark, closer to the Leno, and then we went to Arvin Lamont area and I got beat up on a picket line. What yeah, there was at the Giumara vineyards. They came out with sticks and all that, and they and we're non violent. That it was the true test of nonviolence in my part because I was I love to fight it in those days. I had a flag and I was blocking his He had a handle from a tool and he kept hitting me, trying to hit me, and I fell in the ditch.
I said, you're going to prison. He stopped, and when I got up there was a sheriff sitting there in his car watching the whole thing. And he was a famous sheriff dodge, white hair guy with a cowboy hat and cowboy boots from a current county, and he was waiting first see who got beat up first, and then he was going to come up.
It's hard to swallow the fact that so many nonviolent movements are met with violence. It's such an act of bravery to show up again and again knowing this. So many people lost their homes and were blackballed from working at other farms. But in the end, the workers got forty big growers to sign a new contract. This was a huge win.
When the strike was over, Caesar was asking us, so what do you want to do, And I said, I want to work for the union, but I want to go back and I want to finish college. He says, no, got to make up your mind. I said, well, Caesar, I want to stay with the union. He was okay, but I want to finish college. You got to pick one. You can't serve two masters, you have to pick one. I go, oh wow, okay. So then my brother had already talked to Caesar, so what are you going to do?
And he goes, I'm staying. So I went home and my brother stayed with the un And that's where he met Caesar's daughter Anna and then and then they got married.
Not only was Abby present, but he's family with these labor activist giants. I think a huge takeaway for me is really understanding this concept of coming home to your community and your purpose in life. We build community and home all the time locally. The pride we gain from these stories can ground us further in what we love
and need to be strong together. Part of this legacy still carries some erasure, even without meaning to today when we look back, sometimes we celebrate the Latino community and forget the fact that this was also a coalition of Native people, or that a lot of the principles we use when organizing are rooted in our indigenous traditions and views of the world. We are indeed interconnected. There's so many shades of our community and Chicano Native and everything
in between. Well hear the ways that Abbi has worked to cultivate, preserve, and share Native history with the next generation. After this break, welcome back to when You're Invisible. Since that night at Alcatraz, Abbi has been on this lifelong journey to reconnect with his native roots. Not only has he undertaken a constant exploration of where he comes from, but he's also become a steward of this information. He's
learned about indigenous language, food, and history. He participates in sweat lodges and ceremonies, convenes with Native folks from across the Americas to exchange ideas and write together, and he keeps close ties with family. He even teaches traditional environmental knowledge to kids and educators across the US, integrating math and science curriculm alongside an appreciation for plants and animals.
Over the years, the Yacky Reservation in Arizona has remained a home base for him, a place where he can go to reflect and deepen his knowledge.
I know when I go to Arizona, there's something happens to me. I went to the church that I used to go to with my grandmother. It's on the tahonah Autham Reservation. It's called Santabier the Mission. And as soon as I went in there, I felt all the generations of people that have been going there for hundreds of years, and I started to cry. It was just it just it was overwhelming, that that sense of remembering it was good and bad, but it just I started to cry.
I started to feel like, wow, this is It was just overwhelming, the feeling I got. I've had homes in California and now I have a home in other states. It's just a place of mind in my heart that's still there. So that's what the residts do more than more of the people know, because at one time, you can imagine this whole country, there was no fences here, there was no maps, there was no roads.
It was just.
Territory that people knew. I go here for winter, I go here for the spring, I go hunting here. We grow here. It's the last of the seed that we had.
This is a beautiful reminder of what the land we all live on once was. Abby's experience also reminds me that we can always be growing and learning, that we can be the ones who heal or change the trajectory not just of our own lives, but of the ones of the generations to come. Do your kids identify as native?
Oh yeah? Oh yeah. Now they wish we had more reds connection because I've had a semi connection and they don't have that at all to work off of.
What traditions do you guys feel like you carry most gosh.
I think it would be I tell my sound songs. He goes with me more to advance that I'm aster go pray or do a land of acknowledgement or an opening prayer or bless uh. There's a lot of environmental things that go on here that they ask me to come. He'll go with me, and since he was a kid, he's my entourage. He'll hold a when we're Bernie Sage while I'm talking and he'll keep it lit and I'll do my prayers and he's there to help. So he's learned that kind of thing of sharing prayer.
Are you passing on your stories to your kids? Have you passed them on?
I do every time I try to think, here's another story, Dad, we know that one five times? Okay, good, un least you know it. Yeah. So I tried to share those stories and I share it with my grandkids. They're old enough now to remember a lot of stuff.
We've all rolled our eyes out, our parents, our grandparents before. But these stories are a form of oral history. With how much has been lost from previous generations, there's an added sense of urgency to share and listen. Because Abby struggled with his identity growing up, he wanted to cultivate a sense of home for his kids that they would always be able to access inside themselves.
As I grew older and I became grounded in knowing who I am. That mean me a stronger person because of the wealth of knowledge that I've gathered through my own life and plus what I know from what my grandparents and my uncles and aunts told us. Yeah, that makes me understand a little bit more about life in the history of our people. If you don't know your history, you're going to be lost.
When you feel like you don't belong somewhere or anywhere, it can be isolating. Or if you feel like your people weren't good people, you can feel like why should I try? Or I have nothing to be proud of. But I think stories like Abby's are part of American history, Chicano history, Native history that anyone can choose to be proud of. We can be proud of those in our lineage, familiarly or socially that made things happen, and we can
drust from them no matter what your history is. I think this is a lesson we can all take away, and it's never too late. What would you say to someone who's still going through the process of finding themselves and grounding themselves.
It's not overnight. I think it's important to keep learning as much as you can about your past, talk to people, talk to relatives and see what their perspective is on it, and then make up your own mind who you want to be because you are who you are.
Do you feel like people have this knowledge? Do you feel like my generation has this information?
I think this generation there's more of an empathy for all people, not so much the history of it, and then once they find out the history of it, it strengthens their result.
Slowly but surely, though, knowledge is becoming more accessible, and among Native people it's giving way to a sense of discovery, reclamation, and homecoming on a whole new scale.
Everybody's going back heavily into their language, so more and more speakers are happening. My younger brother takes classes and know what. You can take classes online, you can take classes in the schools. In Pasquayaki, there's classrooms to get back the language. Because without the language, you lose who you are, you lose your culture, and that's the European method. You take away the language and culture and that's how you disseminated people.
Like my family has both European and indigenous roots and thinking about it, Oh, the tongue that we think is our native tongue, Spanish is not actually our mother tongue. Like there's a step further and how much that has been assimulated or taken away.
That's what happened in the seventies as well. A lot of the Chicano and Mexican Americans realize that we're indigenous, our colonizers' language is Spanish, and so a lot of people went back into the dance, to the foods, to the language. They sing it in the songs and our ceremonies when we do sweat lodge, make you us sing songs that are what So we are trying to get our culture, our language back.
Growing up, one of the ways I learned about my culture roots was through food at home or on trips to Mexico. We'd learn why each part of the country has its unique cuisine. For instance, there's deep agricultural traditions of eating venison in the Yucatan or eating steak in Chihuahua. We also learned about the different mayisas we used and so much more. When we connect back to our culture like this, we can also gain something really fundamental and intuitive in our bodies.
The foods that we eat, our European style that retavic and has retavioc with Indigenous people for decades and decades. A lot of us don't know what we're allergic to wheat because our indigenous we didn't have that. We had corn, and we had beans and tomato. You know, we had our indigenous language, which happens to be gluten free.
This return to listening to native ways was some thing Abby's ancestors could only imagine.
My grandfather talked about that jesuys people don't listen to us. They listen to us, but not enough. And someday that will change. And we see that happening now at the federal level, at the state levels, at local levels, more and more efforts to communicate and bring all the people to the table.
Not only are Native folks empowering themselves with knowledge, they're trying to share it with the world. Native people have an understanding and a sense of home on the planet, but I think many people lack today after so many centuries of erasure and oppression. I think more people are starting to look towards Indigenous folks for ways to cope with issues like capitalism and climate change.
It's sad, and it's also happy that we're still here, though. See everything the government designed was to eliminate us, but we're still here. It's twenty twenty four and we're still here and resilient as ever.
Ever since I met Abby almost ten years ago, he's always seen. I'm so sure of what he believes and who he is, and that was reinforced by what I learned when I interviewed him. But in having this longer conversation, I also understood that, of course there are still times where he feels dismissed or unseen. It's part of the reason he cultivates such result. When do you feel invisible?
I feel invisible in this community many times, because I think people are very judgmental. In the community I live in, it's very I think it's not in ninety percent white, And so when I go places and do things, if I'm standing someplace and people walk through me, I have to I remind I'm standing here. Yeah, oh I didn't see you. So I have to remind people I'm standing here, and now if you're in a suit, people will not bother you that way if you're dressed casual. I feel
invisible at time. I have to go out of my way to where I had do something. So I feel invisible times in this community that I live in, but not everywhere I go. I'm out a visits.
Abby has taught me about being open to and aware of the world around us, and it's an unpleasant truth that as much as you work at that, it won't always be reciprocated. But he's never been one to wait around for external validation. His energy is better spent and reciprocated when he creates meaningful bonds and community.
Here in Maryland, there's one tribe left, but there's because it's DC. I've met people from twenty different tribes here right because DC brings people to work here in the governments. So we have a vibrant community and it's in pockets everywhere, but it's functioning and even bringing in the Native Indigenous
people from South America. We have a loose group called the Blended Water and it represents artists want to be writers, aspiring actors, playwrights, and we get together every couple of months and we read each other's place, and we give talkbacks and stuff, and we have pot lucks, we'll have some prayer. Sometimes there's a sweat, So we're trying to incorporate and keep the Native community strong and vibrant.
These gatherings are fulfilling on a personal level, a communal level, but also professionally. Meeting like this with other writers and actors inspires his own work as an artist. His work often centers around Indigenous stories and experiences. When do you feel most seen.
When I have the stage, when I have the mic, I think being able to have something to say and so people are focused on you. And it's not an ego thing. I don't need that to survive. But I feel most listened to when I'm on a stage, whether I'm singing or acting or talking.
Aby and I relate on this point. I mean the stage is where we first got to know each other. We both found theater to be a beautiful way to create connection and visibility, the space where we can breathe together and where people can be seen in their full selves. Of course, there are different ways to cultivate that feeling and wherever you find it, then creating a space for others to feel full and seen is an honor and one of the most beautiful and important parts of our
human experience. What's something that you think would make the world a better place that you would like to share with us.
I think we're in a hurry. If we just slow down and think it out, maybe we won't be so impetuous with each other. I think being cognizant of other people's feelings, other people's thinking, we all don't think the same. We have to also give space for that, those communication gaps that we have. And I think sharing our humanity with each other and being human with each other, we're not enemies when we look at it. The same thing we breathe air, we need food, we need water. We
all need the same things that live. What is it that we can't agree on?
Abby is a fountain of information, and despite the immense knowledge and experience he carries with him, something I noticed is that he's never judgmental, and he never acts like he's bubby when you talk to him, and as you're learning, he's always willing to share and be curious, and he has this gentle disposition to correct me when my own bias shows. For instance, at one point I was asking him about Yaki history, and I said, can you tell me about how they were? And he said, you mean
are we are here? And I was looking right at him and had not acknowledged them. It's heartbreaking to feel how invisibilizing people can be so ingrained, even when they're your own people. One of the first steps of resistance is working through the micro ways we hurt ourselves and each other. I think of how resistance and resilience exist in the acts we choose every day, whether it's to research, to say a prayer asking permission from the earth, to
take something really seeing the people around us. There are so many ways to be present and to be actively connected. So many of us feel lost, especially in a seemingly ever tumultuous time, and Abbi's story is an example of how we can move through our lives with grace and curiosity. Abbi has taught me how coming home to ourselves, our history, and our sense of connection and community can really help root our lives in a sense of purpose, action, and kindness.
Next week, we'll be listening to young Latina in New York City who feels like she has a lot to give the world, but hasn't always been seen.
The hardest thing for me was for people to understand that I want to grow and they don't give you the opportunity to grow or to show what you're truly capable of, because they set such limitations to you.
Yahira was a team mom who has been underestimated time and time again. But whether at school, at home, or today at work in the service industry, she's determined to prove how far her skill and ambition can take her. Thank you so much for listening to When You're Invisible. Please leave us a rating and a review to let us know what you think. You can find this episode and future ones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When You're Invisible is a
production of iHeart Podcasts and my Pudura podcast Network. I'm your creator and host Maria Fernanda Viev. Our story editor is Dylan Hoyer. This season was produced by ME with additional production from Dylan. Sound designed by Dylan Hoyer with additional support from ME. Mixing and mastering by Laurence Stuff. Original theme music by Tony Bruno. Our executive producers are Anna Stump, Antisell Bante and special thanks to our Lean Santana