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Ancestors and Origin Story
El Centro Indígena de Sanación (IHC), se lanzó oficialmente en Julio del 2021 con fondos iniciales del Departamento de Equidad en Salud de California y la Fundación de San Francisco. El IHC es una organización indigena que se está desarrollando por y para los pueblos indígenas. El centro se dedica a promover la prosperidad material y espiritual de las comunidades indígenas en el norte de California a través de: la revitalización de nuestras formas de vida, medicinas, ceremonias, idiomas y culturas indígenas; Servicios de salud comunitarios indígenas arraigados en la salud y la curación tradicionales; desarrollo de capacidades comunitarias culturalmente arraigado e intergeneracional; y la convocatoria de expertos en Medicina Indígena para abogar por el fortalecimiento de nuestras identidades, sistemas de conocimiento y prácticas.
Los sistemas actuales por sí solos, incluidos los sistemas de salud convencionales, no están diseñados para satisfacer las necesidades de las poblaciones indígenas, lo que da como resultado mayores disparidades de salud, por ejemplo, tasas más altas de covid en áreas densamente pobladas por familias indígenas. Estas poblaciones a menudo necesitan buscar servicios fuera del condado debido a la falta de visibilidad, atención culturalmente receptiva y acceso equitativo a servicios de atención médica de calidad. Sin embargo, las luchas de las poblaciones indígenas de Marin reflejan fallas sistémicas que tienen sus raíces en el colonialismo en curso y requerirán nuevos sistemas para crear cambios generacionales. El IHC busca abordar las desigualdades subyacentes a través del resurgimiento y la recuperación de nuestras culturas y formas de vida indígenas, que creemos que es la fuente de nuestra medicina y sanación.
As an indigenous-owned and operated organization, we are a part of the collective grassroots global movement that is advancing the re-establishment our indigenous livelihood systems, governance structures, political thought, land-based practices and worldviews.
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Our spiritual leaders, elders, and traditional culture bearers, teach us that we must take up the collective responsibility to revive our ancestral knowledge and wisdom.
This means we commit to bring order and balance to our lives, which includes not just the work we do in our communities, but the work we do in our own homes within our families, in our relationships, and internally.
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This commitment also requires that we tend to our traditional food ways, our land ways, our kinship systems, our spiritual, mental, physical, and emotional health. As our elders say “we have to come back home to who we truly are (versus who we’ve been taught to be).” We have to reclaim our humanity, to heal our hurts and pains, to understand our spirituality, to live what we say we do, and to stand strong in the cultural identities that have sustained us since time immemorial.
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And only when we begin to prioritize our indigenous ways of being over colonial ways of being, can this be achieved, as our livelihood systems are just, reciprocal and equitable by design.
Our work matters because we are contributing to nurturing healthy, resilient, creative, flexible, powerful, individuals and families, which have always been the building blocks of some of the most incredible societies and ecosystems that have ever existed in the history of humans. Our Ancestors understood the strength of natural systems and used the teachings from Mother Earth to build nations that thrived for thousands of years, so we can do it too…and we must do it.
"As a young person, I like to learn from our elders, being part of this organization and in alignment with its ideas. To be someone stable so I can support others to be stable.
Sometimes I get lost in my thoughts and ideas, but what I learn here with you all, my culture and my spirituality, helps me re-ground myself. I know that there will always be a home that I can return to."
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Xila bocel, collective youth member
(Maya Kaqchike
Our Origin Story
Countless studies provide detailed statistical evidence of Indigenous Peoples experiencing a disproportionate level of poorer health outcomes when compared to non-Indigenous populations. This is due to disparities in social and environmental determinants of health (e.g. lack of access to clean food, air, and water; racism; economic insecurity; industrial pollution; etc.), all of which is caused by systems.​
Both historical and current evidence shows why these unjust disparities exist, all of which are deeply rooted in ongoing systemic violence including federal and local policies that govern(ed) the quality-of-life, for over 600 years. In addition, the cultural genocide, assimilation practices, and the forced removal of: Indigenous Peoples from their ancestral lands; and Indigenous children from their families and communities. Furthermore, the profound injustices reproduced by systems at-large, are inevitability also replicated on a micro-scale, even manifesting in our physical bodies (e.g. cancer; heart disease; autoimmune diseases; obesity; and more), mental state (e.g. depression; suicide; low self-esteem; anxiety; and more) and spiritual despair. It is within this ancestral, historical and current context that the IHC emerged in 2021.
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Early on in its creation, the IHC survived through a very difficult experience which included: the mismanagement of funds from the center’s previous fiscal sponsor leading to a loss of over $80,000 in funding; and lateral violence which targeted the now IHC co-founders and co-executive directors/CEOs. Unfortunately this type of corruption and injustice is common in the nonprofit sector, and for the center it served as a reminder of the harsh reality that Indigenous Peoples continue to face: we are at a major disadvantage when it comes to creating solutions for our communities because of the continued lack of access, lack of knowledge, lack of resources, and violence and injustice created and replicated by systems on both a macro-level (i.e institutional racism) and also on micro-level (i.e. dysfunction in communal and interpersonal relationships). All of which began since European colonial invasion, which then led to loss of traditional land rights, genocide, assimilation, forced displacement from ancestral lands, and violation of human rights (Deloria, 1969; Madley, 2016; Stannard, 1992; Trask, 2004; Tuck & Yang, 1992).
And through all of this, Indigenous-led efforts, like the IHC collective, continue to resist, to heal, to innovate. With the incredible support of its first funders, the California Department of Health Equity and the San Francisco Foundation, community partner organizations, the outpour of support from the families that the center had served, our elders, spiritual leaders, and Ancestors, the IHC was able to transition to a healthy environment.
We remain, with an even stronger commitment to its traditional values and philosophies, including truth and justice, and is already leaving a lasting impact on the families and communities that we are bringing together. With a strong vision and fortified energy, the center looks forward to the ongoing support of our families, communities, funders and allies, because we are here for the long run.
"All of you in this space are being who you are. The teachings that you give, the words that you give, the gift that was left to you, you give it back to the people, you bring that truth, and the people see that, and every time you bring that truth, you’ll reach the people that forgot what they didn’t know. For all of us here at this table, and whoever might come, we have the same goal, to give the old information back to the young, to give the old information back to the old. We can’t do it alone, we’ve been doing it alone, but now we do it together."
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JR Laiwa, Indigenous Healing Center Cultural and Spiritual Advisor (Kashaya Wailaki, Round Valley Reservation)
"If we can understand the spirituality of ALL life, we can realize that what we are surrounded by makes us feel good. It makes us feel good to know you are a part of ALL life.
I am Indigenous of the Land.
We all are.
We learn about each other, all of us, not just the humans, but ALL life.
We’re all the same, no one is better than another.
We have to be open to that."
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-JR Laiwa, IhC Cultural and spiritual Advisor
(Kashaya Wailaki, Round Valley Reservation)
"As a traditional healer, I am reviving my connection to our ancestral medicine, like I once was in Guatemala, and now I get to do it here. I sometimes have to pinch myself and ask ‘wow, am I really doing this?’ It is not like a job for me, but instead like a therapy space where I am reconnecting with our medicines while supporting our communities with their healing."
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Efrain Sajbin, IHC Traditional healer and collective member
(Maya K’iche)
"Feel grateful for your life. do something productive for your life today.
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Siéntete agradecidA por tu vida.
haga algo productivo por Su vida hoy."
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An indigenous grandmother midwife
-Una Abuela Comadrona Indígena