10/13/2025
Today isn’t about celebration.
It’s about honoring.
Honoring the grandmothers who whispered our stories in the dark. The children who were taken and never forgotten. The ancestors who held the dream of us alive, dancing, and finally being seen.
I recently found out I have six war chiefs in my lineage.
Six warriors whose blood runs through mine.
I carry their memory, their prayers, and their unshakable strength.
And even with all that… sometimes I still feel fear.
Like the other day when I was standing in broad daylight in downtown Pismo, smudging myself and my husband with my bald eagle feather fan, right before we went to get sacred tattoos to honor our ancestors.
I felt nervous… exposed.
But I did it anyway.
Because this is who I am.
Because they deserve to be remembered.
Because our healing deserves to be visible.
My roots are Cheyenne River Sioux, and my family lives on the Quechan reservation. I know what it means to grow up sovereign, but sanctioned. To carry both grief and beauty in the same breath.
Indigenous people were some of the last to be given basic rights in this country. And even now, so many still live in silence, survival, and invisibility.
But hear this clearly:
We are not relics of the past.
We are the heartbeat of the land.
We are the ceremony.
We are the story.
We are still here.
And we are rising.
📣 If this moved you, don’t just scroll past.
Witness. Learn. Support. Uplift Indigenous voices.
And most of all, remember.
Honoring Indigenous Peoples Today and Every Day.
