@Akira_Lightthatheals.
Akira is an Undocumented artist indigenous to Turtle Island. Using photography to write stories about futures for the purpose of creating new myths
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In 1994 the trade agreements between Mexico and the U.S forced Mexico’s economy to be exploited into the global free market that destroyed a lot of local economies in Mexico. Like in my village when it came to selling or bartering my grandfather’s Maiz to provide a fulfilling life for a family of 8. Unable to compete with American corn that was subsidize by the American government, a lot of young people like my mother left rural farming villages to make income through exploitative labor in the U.S. It wasn’t migration but forced displacement of a generation of youth that separated me from the lands of my grandmother. My mother, a single mother wanting a better life for me, at 22 crossed the desert through Tijuana with 3 years old me. Instead of staying in L.A, my mother decided to come to one of the coldest city in America, Chicago, far away from the warm ground i was born on, away from my elders that today I still continue to feel their absence in my life. My family’s journey is a continuation of one started by my ancestors long ago. This path of life with land continues to be written with my relationship to land. My mother did give me a better life but not because I’m able to choose the American dream, but because I am continuing the relationship my ancestors were having with different lands and the people of those lands.
While a lot of harm has been felt by the youth of my family by being separated from land and our elders, I understand now that my ancestors who resisted white supremacy have send me here to undertake the responsibility of protecting land and liberated from the power of coloniality.
Being undocumented has always asked me since I was a child where is home? What traditions and indigenous philosophies continue with me on the lands I live on? While the reason was forced displacement, I continue to repair my relationship to land and realize that I am continuing the legacy of my ancestors. I believe my ancestors want me to continue to having relationship to different lands and the people who belong to it to continue this responsibility to maintaining the kinship to land and to others.
I feel the pull between my present life and my roots when I continue to see the violence done to people like me for being indigenous. How I continue to see Custom Border Patrol agents kill people without accountability. When the hurt becomes deep and embedded in my psyche, I ask myself, “Why do I continue to be in a country who’s policies are to enslave me for my labor and keep me out from having any self determination to live the way ancestors would have wanted me? I want to continue migrating like they did for the purpose of building relationship with lands and its people. I truly want to go back to a country that would accept me in society instead of hunting me down to make profits from my enslavement.
My hope is centered around creating environments where kids can continue to have a relationship to land. Show them how to grow food, how to build fires, and remind them how much their ancestors loved them. I want to create stories for kids about our future with land without white supremacy. I want to create new myths for them. The new myth that we came to United states for a purpose, to protect it and liberate it, not to become like the settler colonizer who say they are not their ancestors. My ancestors are watching.
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Below: A series of my journey continuing to farm in the rural part of Wisconsin despite being Trump country and my devotion to protecting land there and Chicago.
Black And Indigenous Futures 4: Black Mesa, Rite of Passage.
13×19, 2024
Untitled 1
13×19, 2024
Untitled 2
13×19, 2024
Untitled 3
13×19 each, 2025
Untitled 4
13×19, 2025