Unbroken: Indigenous Peoples Today
Rayna Valdez of the Aztec and Mescalero Apache Nations
"My name is Reyna Valdez. I'm a product of my ancestors, the Aztec and the Mescalero Apache, and my journey with my cultures has been pretty recent. Since 2019 I started delving a little bit deeper and exploring and embracing my culture more, and that also has a lot to do with my journey in sobriety. I stopped drinking and the entire trajectory of my life shifted in that I was doing self discovery as a new person who didn't need a substance, who didn't need anything just to be myself. I made a commitment to never stop growing. To always learn.
"So I connected with some family members and it was interesting because I don't have any elders. I don't have any grandparents, never have growing up, and I know that's just a great source of knowledge. I lacked that, so then I talked more closely with the next step down, which were my aunts and uncles and cousins.
"It's exciting now because I'm also doing it for my daughter. I don't have any gifts to pass down, any heirlooms to give to her, but when I think about it, I am the heirloom. My wish is for my daughter to be at least proud of her culture, because I know when I was growing up I couldn't be proud because I didn't know what I was. So I'm not gonna have a household where we don't talk about it.
"It feels like I'm making up for lost time and honestly there's some of it where I struggle and I feel like there's this disconnect, but I'm always learning. I think of myself as a cycle breaker. And that originally had to do with breaking the cycles of abuse, trauma and addiction."
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