How many times have you questioned whether or not your life was in alignment with your purpose for being here? With the ever common phenomenon of burnout, fatigue, and drain, it’s becoming increasingly common for us to have these never-ending thoughts. This week on the podcast, we take a moment for some deep heart salve with Niria Alicia who guides us to think about ancestral instruction, precious purpose, rituals for liberation, and what it means to be human in this time. This warm and rich conversation looks at spiritual crisis in tandem with climate crisis, the allure of self-sabotage, and the problem with the many “solutions” we are offered to the problems our world faces in this epoch.

Niria Alicia is a Xicana Indigena community organizer, human rights advocate, educator and storyteller dedicated to protecting the sacredness of Mother Earth and the dignity of historically oppressed peoples and the more-than-human world. Born 500 years after Columbus’ invasion in a migrant farmworker community, her struggle for love and liberation exists at the intersections of migrant justice, climate justice and indigenous rights. 

In 2020 she was given the highest honor the UN awards young people by being named the Young Champion of the Earth for North America. Niria’s proudest accomplishments and honors have been learning how to make tortillas in the traditional way for her abuelita, growing her first milpa from her family’s heirloom corn seeds and inheriting her great-great grandmother’s metate, a culturally significant ancestral tool made from lava rock that has the hand imprints of the strong women she is proud to descend from.

♫ The music featured in this episode is "Uno" by Santiago Cordoba, "Mujer Torbellino" by Palo-Mah, and “Jasmine Vines” by The Range of Light Wilderness.

NIRIA’S Recommendations

Warrior of the Light: A Manuel by Paulo Coelho

Lifting Hearts Off the Ground: Declaring Indigenous Rights in Poetry by Lyla June Johnston and Joy De Vito

Dancing Salmon Home & One Word Sawalmen (films from Run4Salmon)

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