Kelly & Gabe with Téo Montoya on the Colorado Trail: indigenous futurism, finding sacredness in all places

Episode #48 of the Ground Shots Podcast is the last recording Gabe and I conducted on our 2020 Colorado Trail Plant-a-go walk. This episode documents a few conversations Gabe and I had with our friend Téo Montoya who came to hike with us for a brief stint on the west side of the Collegiate Loop section of the trail.   Téo Montoya is a Lipan Apache(Ndé) Writer, Indigenous futurist, Electronic Music Producer, Human Design Analyst, Traditional Ecological Knowledge Student, and Educator. After completing his BA in Food and Medical Anthropology, with a focus on Indigenous diets and health disparities in Native American communities, Teo spent 5 years exploring the worlds of plant medicine, Ancestral Health Coaching, Djing and Producing music, Information Technology, working with a Native-Led Non-profits, and completing his Human Design Training. As a writer and creator he has begun the long process of writing a speculative fiction series and media project imagining future worlds and societies built upon indigenous values, ideals, and cultures. Teo believes imaging the future, specifically a future grounded in indigenous knowledge and technology, will provide us with the solutions to meet the largest challenges to the Earth and our Humanity. Today, Teo lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, writing, producing music, and supporting people on their personal and spiritual health journeys.

 

Teo and I met at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in the Spring of 2019 during a multi-week permaculture training.

This episode of the podcast isn’t a formal interview or formal conversation with Teo, though I would like to do that with Teo in the future.

This episode features snippets of the conversation between Teo, Gabe and I during dinner and then again for breakfast.

 

In this episode, we touch on:

 

Teo’s thoughts on ‘transcommunality’ and moving forward into the future by learning from indigenous wisdom but also not romanticizing it

a place for modern technology in new visions of the future

re-thinking the ‘anti-sacredness’ of the urban and complex technologies

some more Russian Olive rants (again I know) and talk more about how our culture uses invasive plants as scapegoats for our mistakes

the need for indigenous wisdom in the Green New Deal talks

Teo’s perspective on white folks or settlers wild harvesting food and medicine and the complexity of this practice

problems that arise with the ‘white-hands off’ perspective on land tending

indigenous peoples are innovative: in the past, present and will be in the future

questioning how we define ‘wild’ and ‘wildcraft’ and within the colonialist concept of private land ownership

Teo tells us a little bit about an indigenous futurism media project he’s working on and got funding for with a grant in California 

 

 

I know some of the topics we dip into here will be controversial, and I personally am open to multiple sometimes contradictory perspectives at once. It is necessary in a time of such political and social polarization. Some topics require consistent critical conversation and hearing from multiple perspectives, looking at deep time and into the future, and all of the socio-economic-cultural factors at play. I think we need to be able to have different beliefs and try to understand where the other is coming from, even if you know they are totally wrong (or believe they are). 

Teo offers a unique perspective as an indigenous person that doesn’t mean all other indigenous people agree. As humans, culturally, we are just as diverse as the plant life that shift and morph from one mountain, forest or meadow to another. 

 

  Links: ‘Rekindling Native California Ecologies Part 1” with Redbird (Edward Willie) from the Native Seed Pod Podcast, a teaching we mention a few times Metapod music, Teo’s project featured as interstitial music for this episode Teo’s Instagram accounts:

@Teomontoya.nde

@humandesignreadings

 

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Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Interstitial Music: ‘Willow Call’ by Metapod

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative