Notes on Ancestral Reconnection

Sharing my own journey

Holaaa it’s Marisól 🌞

With the ongoing attack on our immigrant communities, many of us who come from Latin America are beginning to open our hearts towards ancestral reconnection. Despite the violence against our communities, it is inspiring and beautiful to see that many of us are answering our ancestors’ call! 🤲🏽

Today, I want to offer my own personal opinions and values regarding this path:

It is vital for many of us to remember where we come from. To return to our culturas is a form of active resistance to the violence of assimilation and forced forgetting.

Governments and colonial mindsets will present you with requirements and checkboxes to claim indigeneity. These are all rules made by colonial systems with the intention to steal land and enact genocide.

In my opinion, reconnection is a process that does not have written mandates, guidelines, or regulations. There is no actual handbook you can pick up and follow for your reconnection journey.

Therefore, it is going to require a strong sense of humility and self-confidence to find an ethnic identity that resonates with you and that, simultaneously, does not perpetuate colonization’s legacy of indigenous erasure. This looks like engaging in constant self-reflection to ground your genuine intentions towards reconnection and your ability to learn from mistakes (whether intentional or not).

I cannot tell you how to reconnect. I really cannot. But I will share with you my process. It is not perfect. You may approve of it, you also may not. I’m simply following what feels right to me. And I also trust I will learn and always grow throughout my journey.

My Journey

Currently, I resonate with identifying myself as a detribalized indigenous woman. This means I have indigenous DNA running through my veins, but I am not affiliated nor claimed by an indigenous tribe.

My reconnection process began when I started to meditate and pray to my ancestors. Although I was born in the USA, I grew up going to a ranchito near Rosarito in México with my family. It was a family owned land. Desert terrain with large rocks and tall trees. I still go there often in my spiritual astral travels and commune with my ancestors’ spirits. In my prayers, I see deer. I see medicinal gardens and maíz and frijoles. I see fire gatherings. These visions are not romanticizations. They are inspired by real-life childhood experiences at my family’s rancho.

One ancestor that is especially important to me is a matriarchal spirit. She morphs and changes from being an ancestor to becoming Pachamama herself. I began to call her Great Mother. She taught me how to heal myself. And she urged me to enter the world of Curanderismo, a traditional folk medicine practice that is common in Mesoamerica and Latin America.

So I did. And as I began to research through books, I also began to interview my family. I found out we carry Yaqui indigenous lineages.

But my family had turned away from their indigenous culture and adopted Christianity entirely. Becoming pastors and leaders, they saw their ancestral ways in opposition to their newfound salvation. My family still believes this way. There is, to this day, anti-indigenous sentiment in their words and attitudes towards themselves and others.

Now, I am left here, in the context of Settler America. In this moment, I do not feel it responsible to claim to be Yaqui. To survive, my family drank the colonizer’s kool-aid and closed those doors. I now face the consequences of forced forgetting and colonization.

Left with a shattered ethnic identity, I realize I could not accept completely forgetting my ancestral roots. Even if I cannot fully reconnect and claim to be Yaqui, I knew that the way of life taught here in the USA was going to eat me alive and continue to poison my descendants. I began to trust my intuition and for it to lead me towards practices that are open, welcoming, and available for me to adopt and to forge into my own affinity.

I found teachers and practices within Curanderismo that feel so true to me. I adopt these cultural practices as part of reconnecting and re-creating my ethnic identity after migration and assimilation. And I do this with patience, honor, and respect.

Advice and Considerations

Again, I cannot tell you how to reconnect. But I do want to advise that it is important to be careful of not getting discouraged. On your journey, there will be many points of challenge and self-questioning. If you are constantly questioning yourself, then that’s actually a great sign that you are humble and willing to learn. You will hear many opinions, both very loud and very quiet. Listen to all of them. Consider them all. And then, with great respect and carefulness, move forward in your journey.

You do not have to assimilate. You do not have to forget who you are and where you come from. Your ancestors want you to return. Not just for your benefit, but for the earth’s wellbeing. The culture and customs of our ancestors hold meaning and they forged a relationship with our planet and our ecosystem that fostered harmony and peace. There is a way to reconnect that respects and preserves both past and current indigenous communities while also allowing you to establish an ethnic identity that feels true to you.

Remember that who you are is actually so formless. The spirit that resides within is constantly changing, evolving, and re-creating itself. Be open to learning and failing. An ethnic identity is an ever growing aspect of the self because culture is also always morphing and transforming. Who you are is more than what any label could ever dictate.

Questions that I ask myself

• How does assimilation harm me?

• Why do I wish to reconnect to my ancestry?

• How can I do my part to heal myself, my family, my community, and the planet?

• Putting labels aside, what practices feel safe, welcoming, and open to me?

• How can I show my respect and appreciation for existing indigenous communities that continue to preserve and protect their culture and customs?