West across Texas, the flat, open country continued, hour after hour. Then, just outside Amarillo, as dusk was settling, the land suddenly dropped into a canyon formed by the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River. In that canyon, near the river, I camped for the night, watching the sunset light up the sky. Later, the brightest stars I’d seen during the trip came out. And in the morning, I hiked along a sandy path next to the river, along crumbly cliff faces, crossing dry washes, encountering a flock of quail browsing unafraid in the underbrush.
Hours later, as I approached Santa Fe, New Mexico, I saw a man walking along the highway, carrying a big duffle bag.
So many people are on the move, disconnected from place, with no one who can support them. Sometimes we call them homeless, or refugees, or the displaced, as though a label protects us from being one of them. Any of us could become homeless, especially in a country where an illness can result in bankruptcy, or a home can be lost due to a layoff or speculation in mortgage-backed securities. Over time, if climate change makes portions of our coastlines and the Southwest uninhabitable, millions of us may find ourselves on the move.
Many religious traditions tell us to treat strangers with kindness and to feed, clothe, and shelter them. There’s a moral rightness about that advice, but there’s also the reality that none of us is secure unless other people will care for us in times of need.
After these months on the road, I was acutely aware of how much it meant to me to know I would find a friendly face at my next stop.
SAN ILDEFONSO PUEBLO, NEW MEXICO—Migration in some form has probably always been part of human existence, but it hasn’t always been a lonely venture.
In the Southwest, I visited several pueblos of the Tewa people, whose ancestors migrated south hundreds of miles from Mesa Verde, in what is now Colorado, to northern New Mexico, probably because of changes in climate patterns.
Thomas Gonzales, a member of the San Ildefonso Pueblo, north of Santa Fe, told me stories about how his Tewa ancestors migrated to places where rivers converged, where water supplies would be more reliable. He said that villages would send out small groups to set up the next village, and over the course of generations, the Tewa people would move across the high desert.
Thomas and Nicolle Gonzales invited me to visit their home in San Ildefonso Pueblo, where many of the Tewa people still live in one- and two-story adobe homes that surround a central plaza. The interior shade keeps the homes cool during the hot, sunny days. At night, the warmed walls radiate the heat, maintaining a comfortable temperature inside.
Outside of town, on two sides, are small hills. Those used to be the goals when people played ball in the plaza, Tom told me. It could take all day for a team to get the ball up to the top of one hill while the other team battled to get it back and take it up the opposite slope.
Thomas and Nicolle Gonzales.
These desert people learned, over many years, how and when to plant crops; what to plant on top of the high mesas and what to plant in the valleys; how to make the best use of the moisture; and how to best combine crops.
And they knew when and where to hunt. “Right after it snowed a few days back, my dad said, ‘Let’s go,’ ” Gonzales explained. Tracks in the fresh snow would reveal where the deer or elk had passed.
I had come to this part of New Mexico to meet Nicolle Gonzales, a Navajo nurse-midwife who is bringing back traditional Native American birthing practices. Gonzales is planning a birthing center where mothers can feel the full support of their families and communities and reconnect to the traditions that offer them strength, healing, and sureness.
Gonzales suggested that I visit during one of her days off from the Los Alamos clinic where she currently practices as a midwife. We met at the home she shares with her husband and three children, on a quiet back street.
Gonzales has the strength of a runner, which she is, and the confidence and authority that comes with calming nervous moms-to-be and guiding them through difficult labors. As her children played in the next room, Nicolle and I talked at the kitchen table, with Tom occasionally adding comments.
The confidence I saw in Nicolle was hard won. She gave birth to her first child, Charlotte, at age 20, and the experience left her feeling disconnected and lost. She recalled her labor in a noisy, crowded hospital room with relatives talking to each other and on their phones, a doctor who wouldn’t answer her questions, and, in the end, so much blood loss that she nearly lost consciousness.
“That birth was very traumatic and loud,” she said.
The feeling of being out of control carried over into her early mothering. “I just didn’t feel connected to being a mom for the first couple years. When we look at some photos of me as a young mom, Tom always says I look so checked out. I didn’t know how to be a mother. I was very impressionable and wanted to please everybody, like these young girls do,” she said.“So I want to support women when they’re in that vulnerable state.”
Nicolle was raised within Navajo traditions. Her mother had attended one of the residential schools where many Native children were taken from their families and traditions, sometimes by force or coercion, and many were abused. Her mother married into a large family, and her mother-in-law taught her to cook and sew. She loved it. Still, Nicolle’s grandparents were alcoholics, and they got divorced because her grandfather was abusive. “Nobody really taught my mom how to be a mom,” Nicolle said.
Nicolle wants her birthing center to help women heal from the trauma that is so common in Indian country. And, by reconnecting them to their culture and community, she wants to help prepare them psychologically and spiritually to be good mothers.
“I want women to have that connection and be happy and proud of their accomplishment,” she explained. “I want to create a space where they feel confident and can give birth in a way that feels good to them, so they can experience their power.” This is especially important for women who have experienced sexual abuse, which, Nicolle told me, had also been part of her past.
“I had one woman who was so traumatized, she came into the office shaking,” Nicolle said. “She was pregnant purposefully, but when she came in, there was sweat on her lip, and she was like, ‘What are you going to do to me?’ ” The birth process can retrigger abuse trauma, Nicolle noted, because the women feel, once again, out of control.
Nicolle’s approach is to give these survivors as much control as possible over the birth process. “I sat down lower than her and we talked, and I explained what would happen, and I asked permission all the time: ‘What do you want to do? Can I touch you?’ . . . It feels like a victory for them, and for me, when they’ve had their baby and it’s not traumatizing to them, and they feel in control. You see the shift through the whole pregnancy as that confidence sets in and it’s like, hey, I can do this. I’ve done it!”
Nicolle, Tom, and their children took me with them to see the annual Buffalo Dance at the plaza of the nearby Tesuque Pueblo. In the icy cold of a short December day, the men and women drummed and danced to the four directions in a celebration that lasted for hours.
Later, we returned to the Gonzaleses’ home for fry bread and Indian tacos, and to talk more about the birthing center.
“When you think about birth, it’s like a ceremony,” Nicolle said. “There’s sacrifice, there’s pain, and there’s healing.”
During the long pueblo dances, women learn to draw on their inner strengths, Nicolle said, and that can help them get through a difficult childbirth.
“The Corn Dance is in August. You dance nonstop, usually without shoes on, and it’s hot and you’re exhausted,” she said. “You’re listening to that drum to lead you through.
“I use that example. I tell them, this is like the Corn Dance. You’re tired, but you’re listening to that drum. You’re almost done. The baby’s gonna be here.”
Nicolle wants her birth center to incorporate that sense of ceremony. She imagines a place that feels like home and is dimly lit, with cedar burning. There is drumming if the mom wants it, with people in the community there to welcome the baby. She envisions a place where pregnant women can bring photos of their grandmothers, where traditional herbs and teas are part of the healing. She wants the young moms to be able to choose to have the first words spoken to their baby be in their native language.
To be the sort of caregiver the women can count on, Nicolle does her own spiritual work. For her, participating in the dances is “kind of a rebirth, a recentering.
“In our Navajo culture, teaching our mind is very powerful, so we talk about hozho, which is walking in beauty, or being positive, and we understand that what we say can manifest into reality.”
She urges the women to prepare spiritually for birth and motherhood by praying and participating in ceremonies. “We remind them that it is important to take care of themselves and their baby and family. That you are connected to something larger than what is just happening to you right now.”
Research on adverse childhood experiences shows how critical the first months of life are.1. Abuse, neglect, or violence in the home can increase the likelihood of poor emotional and cognitive development, risky behavior in adolescence, diseases in adulthood, and an early death. Native people are survivors of multiple generations of trauma, making these early interactions between mother and child all the more critical. When a mother has strong relationships with other adults, she is best able to provide the safe and loving upbringing the child requires to thrive, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. For women in abusive relationships, or women who are smoking or using drugs or alcohol, pregnancy is a time they are especially open to turning their lives around, Nicolle said. Connecting to their traditions and to family and community can make the difference. The sort of support the mother receives isn’t the only factor that determines whether the child will feel fully connected, fully loved, but it is an important one. “It’s not just work, as my mom said. It’s enjoying being a mom, which I’m just now getting a handle on,” Nicolle said. “I want women to have that connection and be happy and proud of their accomplishments.” I left the pueblo that night with the sound of the drumming still in my ears, imagining what it will mean for young mothers to give birth with all this support, and for the children born to these mothers. This birth center could serve as a powerful source of healing from intergenerational trauma.
The weather was turning cold, and the first snow of my travels arrived. I camped at Los Ojos Hot Springs, soaking in the pools and hiking in the nearby hills. An old village site still contained shards of ancient pottery, hinting at the artistry of previous inhabitants.
I thought about healing and the sorts of connection we need to be fully whole, including the connection to our own sense of self. We can get distracted by what advertisers tell us we should want, or by peer pressure. But when we achieve clarity about what’s important, we become more focused.
I thought back to what my friend and host in Detroit, Ma Teresa Lomeli Penman, told me when I asked her where she thinks power comes from. Penman is an immigrant from Mexico and a community organizer in Detroit’s Latino community. She said, “It’s when your head, and your heart, and your hands are aligned. Then you know what you are doing, and your clarity makes you powerful.”
It was time to head north, but I was worried about snow. I pored over weather maps and road conditions reports and then drove on.
Shards of ancient pottery near Los Ojos Hot Springs, New Mexico.
Snow outlined each layer of geological rocks and the up-swell of hills. The contours of the adobe houses, junk trucks, and birdbaths in the yards were also delineated by snow. I could see dark clouds touching down on the hilltops to the east; the weather service was reporting blizzard-like conditions there. I felt fortunate to be skirting just to the west of the storm.
The road north was through dry, open country. I drove past the turnoff of Mesa Verde, stopped at another ancient village site off the main road, and then marveled as the craggy landscape turned to red rock, with the high cliffs and stunning rock formations of the Utah desert.
