I identify as a queer Indigenous Chicana femme and descendant of European settlers and colonizers. My body carries the violence, resilience, and contradictions of colonialism, assimilation, and liberation. I was born on O’odham and Hohokam land in Phoenix, Arizona, and now live on Kumeyaay lands in Playas de Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico. My mother’s lineage reaches to the Pueblo Peoples of New Mexico, Jalisco, Zacatecas, Chihuahua, and Tepeyac, Mexico, and to Spain. My father’s ancestry traces to Irish, Scottish, English, and German settler colonists. These lineages converge as both wound and medicine, shaping an inheritance of survival, power, and reclamation. I live in Nepantla, the liminal space between identities, languages, and histories, where I move through tension, reflection, and transformation. My nopal en la frente glows as a living expression of memory, visibility, and survival. To carry the nopal is to walk with my ancestors, to see through their eyes, and to remember that what has been buried can still bloom.
My positionality is guided by Huitzilopochtli, the Mexica energy of will, direction, and action, grounding me in relational accountability to community, ancestors, and land. My journey through academia has been one of struggle, resistance, and reclamation, informed by the epistemologies of the Nahui Ollin and the reanimation of Chingonisma. I refuse the false neutrality of colonial frameworks, choosing to teach and write from within my story rather than about it. When I stand before Tezcatlipoca’s mirror, I see the ancestors who resisted, survived, and caused harm. Together they ask, “What will you do with what you know?” Through PayanMedicine and The Elsewheres, I continue to answer by re-animating ancestral wisdom, reclaiming voice, and creating Elsewheres rooted in accountability, healing, and collective liberation.
Prescott College PhD Graduation 2025
Prescott College, 2025
Panel and Graduation
I am a scholar, educator, and community gatherer working at the intersection of Indigenous Knowledges, sexuality education, and sustainability. Guided by the Nahui Ollin as a living cosmology, my work moves through ceremony, story, and embodied learning to create spaces of transformation that extend beyond Ivory Towers. I hold a PhD in Sustainability Education and a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies with an emphasis on Liberatory Praxis through Indigenous Knowledges, both from Prescott College. I am now pursuing a second master’s degree in Regenerative Design, applying this work on Kumeyaay land in Playas de Rosarito, Baja California, where I am learning to integrate water harvesting, soil regeneration, ecological building, and community gardening into collective models of sustainability and food sovereignty.
My academic journey has been one of resistance, ceremony, and reclamation. I earned my Doctor of Philosophy in Sustainability Education from Prescott College, where my dissertation, Re-Animating Chingonisma: Creating Indigenous Elsewheres Through Liberatory Praxis, reclaims Chingonisma as a living body of knowledge grounded in ceremony, memory, and ancestral resilience. Guided by the cosmology of the Nahui Ollin and the Table of Power, my research calls for spaces of learning and liberation beyond the colonial gaze, what I call The Elsewheres. The Elsewheres are both material and spiritual, places where ancestral knowledge, story, and body converge to create pathways toward liberation. {Request a copy of my Dissertation}
I earned a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies at Prescott College with an emphasis in Liberatory Praxis through Indigenous Knowledges. My capstone, The Table of Power: A Liberatory Praxis Through Indigenous Knowledges, used storywork to name and confront colonial systems through the metaphors of the Ivory Tower and the Table of Power. Through reflexive storytelling and decolonial methods, I explored how assimilation, hierarchy, and extraction function as mechanisms of epistemic violence within academia, and how Indigenous Knowledges can instead generate relational, circular, and liberatory practices of education.{Read Capstone Here}
My Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies at Prescott College centered on Religion, Gender and Sexuality, and Social Justice. My research examined yoga as a colonized and commodified practice that reflects the broader systems of white supremacy, capitalism, and ableism embedded within the wellness industry. Through my senior project, Liberation in Yoga: A 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training Program with a Social Justice Framework, I unsettled myself from the colonial framework of the lifestyle of yoga and examined how liberation could emerge through embodied accountability and truth-telling. This process transformed my understanding of yoga from a practice of performance to a praxis of remembrance, relationship, and responsibility. {read research}; {watch capstone video}.
My Associate of Arts in Religious Studies and Communication from Glendale Community College marked the true beginning of my academic journey. After collecting courses for twenty-five years, I finally had the capacity to return to school in 2017 as a non-traditional student. With my daughter grown, I had time to learn for myself. I faced the obstacles of starting over, often as the oldest person in the room, relearning subjects like math and navigating spaces not always built for returning students. Yet, in that process, I found extraordinary professors who valued my voice and encouraged me to bring my life experience into the classroom to share with a new generation of learners.
My favorite courses were my honors seminars Women in Religion and Sexuality and Religion with Dr. Julie Waskow, where I began connecting my past experiences as a former Catholic and Seventh-Day Adventist with my growing scholarship as a holistic sexuality educator. Having been introduced to decolonial theory through my certification in sexuality education, I used my time at Glendale Community College to intersect lived experience, decolonial thought, and traditional academia. Every class became an interdisciplinary exploration of culture, power, and embodiment, presenting on Two-Spirit Identity in public speaking and Labiaplasty and the Colonial Gaze in intercultural communication. Community college gave me not only an education but the courage to begin again with intention, integrity, and purpose.
My relationship with American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) has been a journey of learning, transformation, and accountability. Since 2016, I have worked within and beyond its structures to help move the field toward justice-centered, culturally responsible education. As an AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator, Organizational Provider, and Supervisor in Training, I root my work in community, embodiment, and liberation. Through The Elsewheres, I offer AASECT-approved Continuing Education and Supervision that bridge professional rigor with Indigenous and decolonial pedagogies. [Read more →]
In 2013, I received a scholarship to receive my 200-hour yoga teacher trainer certification. Through the years I earned certifications and experience in yin, restorative, partner yoga, vinyasa, chair yoga and yoga nidra. To read more about my yoga journey, please read my chapter in The People's Book of Human SexualityExpanding the Sexology Archive
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