…lisa. Esperanza, Elizabeth Marie, Lisa, Burqueña, lisa, late bloomer but always blooming, lisa nevada. passed through 12 hands, 12 hands that helped me land, Land, feet body spirit organs substance with the Land. imperfectly perfect coming into this Earth Mama, not calibrated for the world but for the Earth…

created, birthed, and passed on by four hands, unknown.

onto four more hands who gave us Esperanza Gomez for a time thanks to Adelita & Alex Gomez, unknown to me but their love, care, and teaching me how to sleep run deep through my body. four more hands still, Ernest Raymond Nevada & Theresa Rosalita (Gutierrez) Nevada. my beloved, complicated, adoring parents. they gave us Elizabeth Marie Nevada for when we were in trouble and official paperwork. we were always known as Lisa. something to do with Lisa Presley? who knows?

a self-proclaimed Burqueña, our teachers were and still are the Land, Mountains, Bosque & River, Volcanoes, and the massive Sky.

no time for regular school, religion (no thanks! although the rituals are intriguing), we lived for life and family and pleasure and a good time. things move slow in Nuevoméxico, especially when i was a kid. no tech or advances, unless you were gifted and in those classes, does special ed count?! but when tech did come, they gave us access. access to information we’d been holding in our body since birth – where are my ancestors from? where did they live? are my parents and their families alive? how am i alive?

everyone always told you i was an Indian, Native, “hey! you’re an Indian, right?!” so original. but i always knew i was a bastard! a bastard Indian Native American?? well, the DNA is in and there’s proof that I am indeed… a Bastard. and also happen to be, according to those tests, Indigena Méxicana/Hispanic, or as we say in Nuevoméxico, “Indo-Hispano”. Nothing is pure.