[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
[GREETS AUDIENCE IN O'ODHAM] My name means "warm cloud"
in the O'odham language, which is pretty cool,
considering the name of the project.
I wouldn't have known about this project
if it wasn't for a friend of mine, Rachel Espinoza, who's
actually a local Tucson artist.
She's also O'odham as well.
And she told me about this a while back
and I submitted and happened to be here today.
So I'm really thankful.
I'm here with my family, my kids.
I think two of my daughters are in the back.
Just want to follow up with what you
were saying about the church and just
my experience as an O'odham, as a Native.
Like, we are living in two worlds
and it's kind of hard to figure out who you are sometimes.
And a lot of our youth are trying
to hold on to themselves, their identity, and their souls.
Like, there's a lot going on in our communities.
We have young people committing suicide and dying.
And a lot of us grew up like that.
That's kind of how I grew up, was just always going
to funerals all the time.
And it's just a constant in our communities.
So that's how I started writing, you know,
was just basically writing my feelings out.
And, you know, I look back at my poems,
because I do have some of my poems from way back then.
A lot of them are real dark and, you know, kind of,
like, really depressing and stuff.
But if you don't get it out you don't get it off your chest,
it's going to eat away at you so that's what I try to do.
And as far as, like, what you're saying about the church,
you know, I grew up traditional with my father,
just being taught the O'odham himdag, our way of life
and our culture and it was always like,
I guess, conflicting to me because, you know,
a lot of our relatives, even my grandparents grew up
in the church, were married in the church.
And I was taught the opposite.
We don't go to church and stuff like that.
And I lost my son last year.
Actually, it was 2022, October 30th, 2022.
He committed suicide.
His name was Joaquin Suniga.
But you know, losing him and having
so many people send prayers for our family,
you know, not everybody was traditional.
A lot of people went to church and they
prayed to who they pray to, you know,
and when you're receiving prayers,
it's, like, it's kind of hard to be like, oh, no, don't pray
for me, because you're praying to Jesus or whatever, you know.
But I appreciated that, you know,
that people actually took the time to,
like, pray for our family and try to uplift us
and bring us food to make sure that we had something to eat.
And we had a lot of singers come and sing and dance
and, you know, it meant a lot to our family.
And when our family is going through some stuff,
we had to meet up with some medicine people,
and they're O'odham, also from Tohono.
And as they're praying, you know, they're doing traditional,
and they have, you know, their ways in.
But they also were praying, you know, to Jesus Christ and stuff
like that, which was kind of weird but at the same time,
it's like, it was coming from a good place,
and it was really needed.
So I guess it's conflicting for us as Native people
living basically in two worlds and going through what
we go through every day.
So I think that's one of the things that kind of divides
our people is that you go to this church,
or you're going traditional or, like, we can't come together.
But in the end, we always do come together, you know.
Somebody passes away or somebody getting married or whatever.
We always have to put all that stuff aside.
And right now, I feel like it's more important than ever
to unite no matter what our differences are.
So I just wanted to thank you for sharing what you shared
and just going off of that.