Cultural Worker Apprentice Program

Alexandria (she/hers) (Gabrieleno Tongva, Chumash and Xicana) is a student, former President of American Indian Student Association at CSUN, community organizer, and Indigenous artist who uses art mediums such as clay, fabrics, and other natural resources to advocate for cultural environmentalism and mental health.

Angel (they/she) is a Nicaraguan and Salvadoran artist who has worked on public art projects in many neighborhoods throughout LA. They are interested in how art serves as a tool for social change: community building, and inter-generational healing. Angel is passionate about art making outside of the confines of institutional spaces and increasing accessibility of the many mediums they have learned.

Beatriz Basurto is an indigenous migrant from Guerrero, Mexico. Their nation is Ñuu Savi and they pride themselves in being an interpreter and translator that focuses on language justice for indigenous migrant communities. As a former undocumented student organizer, she highlights the importance of storytelling of Indigenous communities from the Central Coast through her school studies.

Bii Gallardo (they/them) is a queer and nonbinary Apache/Yaqui youth born and raised in North East Los Angeles (Tongva Territory) and is a first-year student at Santa Monica College as a Biology Major. Bii has had experience working in Queer Indigenous Youth spaces and intergenerational spaces over the past 3 years as a core member of the Los Angeles Chapter of the International Indigenous Youth Council. They are passionate about the continued journey to listen, learn, and connect with the community.

Dani (they/them) is a queer neurodivergent multimedia artist who resides in El Monte, California better known as Tongva land. Dani was raised by matriarch women from Tampico Tamaulipas, Mexico, and their paternal side is from Jalpatagua, Guatemala. Dani supports youth with higher needs fulltime aims to uplift the work and wellbeing of underrepresented communities

Izzy (he/him) is a mixed-media artist that combines techniques from illustration, printmaking, and fiber arts.Through his work he often discusses themes of childhood, queer and trans identity, and Indigenous reverence for the land. Izzy uses art-making as a way to reconnect with his inner child as well as create worlds where queer people are venerated and celebrated.

Khayra (she/they) is a queer first generation community organizer. She has roots in Guatemala and Mexico, and is striving towards building relations with other Indigenous people and helping make positive contributions to the community.

Khayra is creating a resource for folks to learn about native plants and indigenous foods and tying this into the importance of nutrients & decolonial eating(wellness) and food sovereignty.

Noe (they/them) is a Mexican/Indigenous visual artist that specializes in analogue and digital photography. Their art consists of documenting the brown, queer, and first generation experience.

Paahavet Carmelo ( Gabrielino / Tongva, Diegueño, Nahua) has always enjoyed all forms of the Arts and was exposed to traditional Native American art forms from a very young age. She is presently a member of the Tongva Basketry collective Nohaaxre Miyii Pokuu’ “ Weaving As One'' where she is learning traditional basket weaving and traditional plant material harvesting. She is also a student of her tribal language committee. She hopes her studies help support her in becoming a culture bearer for her community.

Randy is a Zapotec student and community organizer, who encourages youth and others to use art as a method of resistance. Randy has created murals, banners, and paintings to bring an image to the advocacy and what community resistance looks like.

Randy's project

Textli Gallegos (she/her) is a Xicana Indigenous artists based in Los Angeles whos main focuses are photography and cinematography. In sharing her own experiences with being an Indigenous woman with different mental health realities, her goal is to shine a light on stories that are not often told in mainstream media.

Xikua is a Huichol artist who grew up around creatives and fell in love with photography/cinematography. He loves the process of bringing ideas to life. He likes to write, so he started creating music with the help of a few friends in the hope of sharing a positive message with the world. He is creating a studio album to inspire others as well as test his mental strength.

Born and raised in Northeast LA on Tongva territory, Arianna (nana) is a multi-medium artist of Huichol descent. She has been a participant with Meztli Projects since 2019. In continuing to develop her art practice, Arianna strives to cultivate space for collective healing through engagement with the arts. For her project through Meztli's Cultural Worker Apprenticeship, she focuses on needlework as a form of storytelling. In blending beadwork with illustration and hand-stitched embroidery, she strives to reincorporate these art forms as modes for Indigenous dreams and narratives to thrive and persist. It is critical for nana to make her community, loved ones, and ancestors proud by doing her best to be an honorable, loving and fearless ancestor in the making.

My project is an ongoing development of zines and the multitudes of significance they have within BIPOC communities. I've expanded my project to develop my own zines and explore other DIY practices for cultural storytelling such as weaving and creating embroidered zines. Community programs are forthcoming. I want to encourage access to the arts, and nourish the intersection of cultural narratives and personal creativity/self-expression.

Ernestina Zavala is a 26 year old Afro-Indigenous (Creole/Chichimeca) artist and community organizer from Hawthorne, in South Bay Los Angeles, and a firm believer of change. Ernestina’s passion for change came from learning about the perpetual cycles placed upon her community and other low income communities that continue to create unjust challenges for community members. Starting her journey, in 2013 she and her peers (ages 15-17) organized a community forum at the Hawthorne Memorial Center as an assignment in high school at ECHS in Lawndale, CA, which led to her and this team of peers to personally speak with the Hawthorne city council to demand to be heard regarding the problems and solutions we as a community felt were imperative to change. It was through these rich experiences with her peers she learned her true meaning in life, to create radical and equitable change without violence but with art. Ernestina’s mission is to help students gain confidence in practicing arts such as creative writing, sewing, singing and cooking through after school programs and performing at private events she will be curating for them and their communities of choice.

Ernestina is in the process of implementing creative writing workshops with ECHS, focusing on developing short stories and poetry as free forms of expression. With each project, students will present each piece they create in front of their peers leading up to an open mic event. Students will perform their creations at this celebration.

This project is created in an attempt to connect with Indigenous Peoples to discuss issues affecting targeted populations and regions. The intention is to highlight these issues in a manner accessible to many generations through a series of digital artworks. Images will then be transferred onto a digital download file and be screen printed onto a coloring book that can be available to the community to share. This provides accessibility and allows many to advocate through art and creativity.

To honor the caretaking of the land and to reduce wasteful material, this project will be made of as much reused and compossible material as possible. Coloring books will be made with handmade paper and printing/coloring ink will be made of natural dyes. All coloring book pages will also be accessible for download where one can digitally color in without the need for a printed copy.

Gicela Galvez is a proud Mixteca-Oaxaqueña, born and raised in Mid-City, Los Angeles (Tongva Land). GG’s artistic practice is deeply interwoven and informed by ancestral memory, cultural affinity, and familial bonds. Their cultural stewardship is a gift passed down from her parents, who believe in her emergence as a Mixtec-Yucuñutense language bearer, community gatherer, and elder-in-the-making. As a story keeper she pays homage to the countless stories of her community through the use of zines, film photography, collage, and printmaking. She is also a geographer, language learner, and cultural worker. Their creations serve as a way to preserve history, futurity, and placemaking of diasporic Mixtec-Oaxacans across California

Ñuu Yoo documents the ties between the central Los Angeles neighborhoods of Mid-City/Arlington Heights and the city of Madera in the Central Valley. Guided by their perspective as an Indigenous Mixteca born & raised in L.A., this is a project of GG's lived experience of neighborhood change, gentrification, Oaxacan diaspora, and Mixtec place-making.

Isaac Michael (Tongva, Chumash, and Xicano) is a poet, visual artist and storyteller raised between Montebello, East LA, and the SFV. Grounded in his ancestral cultivation, he utilizes film, photography, and poetry to amplify decolonization narratives and reclaim indigenous pedagogies. Through his art, Isaac seeks to challenge the dominance of the human experience and instead honors the interconnectedness of all beings. He embraces the values of Indigenous Futurism to retell the past and present, envisioning a future guided by his community's stories, visions, and desires.

Isaac's film Ooxono (From Here) juxtaposes visual themes of decolonial cultural preservation and urban/invasive infrastructure. It is a short poem pushing back against the use of the term Urban Native within the context of Tovaangar (Los Angeles) and the erasure it creates against First Peoples.

Ooxono (O'o-ha-ono) translates/refers to the english term "Land".

Isidro “ISHI” Sesmas II (They/Them) is an interdisciplinary artist: A Cultural Worker, Teacher, Model, Organizer, Musician, and creative of several art forms. Through their work, Ishi intertwines entrepreneurship with community, art, and culture. They are currently building an Indigenous Model of Commerce (IMC) to promote an environmentally conscious, self-sustaining, and community-oriented line of clothing.

For this project, they created a new collection consisting of repurposed clothing/fabrics using natural dyes for their small business. They intend to have this be a first step in young entrepreneurship, independent contracting, and creative directing “for the people by the people.”

liana (they/she) is a brown Yoeme (Yaqui) and Quechua gender non-conforming caretaker, community gatherer, reconnecter, moon worshipping brujx. Liana's practice involves remembering ancestral stories, ways of grieving and cultivating joy.

They developed an open space for Indigenous folks to destigmatize, re-indigenize and remember rituals, customs, and experiences of birth and death through oral history. Bring together community members to co-design agreements and ways of building trust to share stories in talking circles.

Miguelaxel is an artist and musician from Los Angeles. Through school he performed at the M.L.K. Parade and Grammy Museum where he played piano and clarinet. Miguelaxel has done contract work for Meztli Projects since high school where he has been exposed to different forms of art such as printmaking, beading and aerosol graffiti, and continues to learn how art is a form of healing. Being from Los Angeles, Miguelaxel has further developed his creative practice using a more grounded approach that is reciprocal and in-relationship with the efforts of First Peoples as well as other local Indigenous communities.

Miguelaxel's project “Depth” is an exploration of 2D/3D digitally born creative projects. New creative technologies like Blender and Substance offer young BIPOC artists an even more creative playing field.

Olivia Espericueta is an experienced beader from La Jolla Band of Luiseño Tribe eager to learn more about her native culture alongside the indigenous community through art.

Her project will document her journey to strengthen her knowledge of a critical part of Native traditions, the art of basketry. Through research, connecting to other Indigenous artists, Elders, and personal reflections, this project will deepen her relationship to her Indigenous culture and self-identification and track the development of her skills in basket weaving and development of her own designs.

Samantha Morales-Johnson (Tongva, she/her) is a science illustrator and ethnobotanist with a BA in Marine Biology from CSU Puvungna as well as a certificate in Science Illustration from Cal State Monterey during which she started the Protect White Sage digital campaign, alongside her mom, Kimberly. At the moment Samantha is the Land Return Coordinator of the Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy where she has been adapting her ecological knowledge to work with Tongva ethnobotany she grew up with to handle advanced ecological problems that come with land return from non-native species to native species in the midst of climate change.

Her project "Protect White Sage" spread awareness about poached sage through targeted social media content creation. Three videos keyed for TikTok and Instagram discussed 3 key topics while watching a timelapse of the artist (Samantha) working:

• Saging as a practice (open or closed, different than smudging, how the practice works, etc.)

• How and where to grow white sage

• Large Organizations that sell poached white sage

Stephanie Barboza is a first-generation Xicana, born and raised on unceded Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians lands (San Fernando Valley) with a B.A. in Chicanx Studies & a minor in American Indian Studies from CalState Northridge whose ancestral lands are Pueblo Coca territory in Jalisco, Mexico.

“Reconnecting to Miccailhuitl” centers around my lived experience and reflections creating my first public ofrenda as a cultural worker fellow. Through a zine, I will share my personal history in creating altars, ofrendas, and sacred spaces. I feel it is important to share the experiences and Knowledges that have been shared with me in the hope that other Indigenous youth are able to see themselves in this project. This zine would be targeted toward Indigenous youth who practice altar-making.

As a part of this project, I would explore the creation of a Dia De Los Muertos (DDLM) Ofrenda Etiquette Zine that gives brief information, history, and protocol surrounding DDLM and ofrendas. The goal would be for these zines to be available at ofrenda installations where community members are interested in learning more about the history and practice. This zine would be targeted toward the community at large who may not be familiar with DDLM.

This project plans to reconnect POC youth to the earth by using clay and using ancient techniques like hand building.

The vessel we will be creating is a smudge bowl, a medium to send our prayers, worries, and wants out into creation. Attached we will create a naualli/nahual a spirit anima an extension of self.

Sharing my ability to tap into our ancestral spirituality and create meaningful items. Creating relationships with the earth in both a physical and spiritual way.