BEATA TSOSIE (SHE/HER)
(SANTA CLARA PUEBLO)
Mother, birthworker, farmer, poet and organizational director at Breath
of my Heart Birthplace
Kha’p’o Owingeh, New Mexico
We live next to nuclear weapons production, so we worry about the multitude of chemical combinations released on a daily basis. We’re dealing with some of the only toxins that can cross placental boundaries — tritium water, for example — and there’s proposed tritium venting coming up in our community. Breath of My Heart and Tewa Women United advocate for centering “Nava T’o i Yiya,” which translates in our Tewa language to “Land Worker Mother,” as the standard for protections. If we center Indigenous birthing people as the standard for protection, then everybody’s protected, right? Because for so long we’ve been conditioned to further that disconnection from our roots and the land. Traditional teachings show us that our first environment is those birth waters. So, really, we can think of them as an environmental landscape to integrate into environmental and reproductive justice.
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This article appeared in the February 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “#IAMTHEWEST.”
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