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Interview with Inés Talamantez

Author(s): Natalie Avalos
Source: Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion , Vol. 32, No. 1 (Spring 2016), pp. 153-169
Published by: Indiana University Press on behalf of FSR, Inc
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 Across Generations

INTERVIEW WITH INÉS TALAMANTEZ

Natalie Avalos

Inés Talamantez Natalie Avalos

Inés Talamantez is an associate professor of religious studies at the

University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and has taught courses there
on Native American and Indigenous religious traditions for almost forty years.
She was born in Old Mesilla, New Mexico, and is Mescalero/Lipan Apache
and Chicana. Her forthcoming book, Becoming: Introducing Apache Girls to
the World of Spiritual and Cultural Values, examines present-day Mescalero
Apache female rites of passage. Dr. Talamantez developed the concentration
in Native American religious traditions in the Department of Religious Studies
and was instrumental in creating the Native American and Indigenous Studies
minor at UCSB. Dr. Talamantez is often referred to as the mother of the field of
Native American religious traditions, as she was instrumental in defining its epis-
temological boundaries during its inchoate stages and then populating it with
her own students. Her exploration of gender as an ongoing process of becoming
contributes valuable insights on Native ontology to the fields of Native American

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.1 (2016), 153–169

Copyright © 2016 The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Inc., • doi: 10.2979/jfemistudreli.32.1.18

-153-

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154 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.1

religion and philosophy as well as feminist, gender, and women’s studies. She has
served as my graduate adviser and mentor for the last eight years. During that
time, she has become more than a mentor—she has become family—a dynamic
to which many of her other students can also attest.
Like Dr. Talamantez, I am also of Apache and Chicana descent—an expe-
rience that has profoundly shaped my own research questions. Dr. Talamantez’s
work on sacred power has inspired me to explore the relationship between spir-
itual empowerment, healing, and movements of decolonization among trans-
national Native American and Indigenous communities. Some aspects of her
forthcoming book Becoming, such as Talamantez’s emphasis on “exemplary
womanhood,” may appear to reflect normative (patriarchal) articulations of
gender, wherein women are held to asymmetrical standards of behavior and
expectations of “purity” not exacted for men. This would be a misreading of
the text. For Apaches, women are sacred. Their transition to womanhood not
only demarcates a critical time in every young woman’s life but also honors
the sacred power with which she becomes endowed at that time and carries
with her into her life. And so, I chose to discuss this process explicitly with Dr.
Talamantez, among other related topics, as it reflects a Native ontological order
that is distinct from what may be assumed in a “Western” worldview and reveals
the fundamental role each person plays in the cycle of life of such intercon-
nected communities.

Natalie: Did your research interests change after being in the field of reli-
gious studies for a few years?
Inés: The short answer is no. I was hired in the Department of Religious
Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the 1970s to develop
the field of Native American religious traditions. My research interests have
been in the continuous effort to expand this new field of study, which by nature
is interdisciplinary. Over the decades, I have done extensive research, traveled to
a variety of archives, and have done in situ research in the American Southwest
and Mexico. I have also done work on three indigenous languages: Apache,
Navajo, and classical Nahuatl, in which I have translated and published. During
this time, I trained fifteen doctoral students studying the Indigenous religious
traditions of the Americas. My pedagogy has always been focused on issues of
authenticity: religious, historical, linguistic, and political, both in the past and
present. I am open to and excited about the theme of reimagining communi-
cation and cooperation. What is it that inspires us in terms of the uniqueness
of our cultures? It’s time to recognize each other in a new way that we never
thought of before. I’m amazed by what we know and curious about learning
more about each other with sincere respect—dropping our fear of each other
and learning the true definitions of power.
Natalie: How would you describe your current field of study?

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 Avalos: Interview with Inés Talamantez 155

Inés: I describe my current field of study as Native American and

Indigenous religious traditions. I think it has grown immensely. We are now
visible at the American Academy of Religion (AAR), which has been very
supportive over the years. Many of the young religious studies scholars that
I’ve trained at UCSB are now tenure-track professors and three are associate
professors. Other universities are also in the process of developing the field.
Most of my graduate students have been hired at universities in many parts
of the country. Most are upending older preconceptions, learning Native lan-
guages and new ways of thinking based on ancient wisdom. We are going
forward in many directions. The oral, philosophical, and religious roots of
the Indigenous peoples of this land have been proliferating through film and
the arts, unearthing our humanity, influencing non-Native culture, and setting
ethical standards. I encourage my students to be aware of the work of Native
American and Indigenous scholars who are redefining the rich symbolism of
indigenous iconography, cultural distinctions, and the hard-earned wisdom
of our elders in the face-to-face societies who have endured so much trauma
and oppression. In our struggle for religious freedom, we see the power of
the church and colonizers and how they introduced patriarchy, which was
diametrically opposed to the matriarchal heritage of many Native cultures, in
which oftentimes, women are the religious and cultural leaders. Some Native
Americans are Christians; others refuse to convert and follow their own belief
systems in an effort to decolonize their spirits. This decolonization work is
helping us understand our complex religious histories and our multiple iden-
tities as we pursue freedom of religion, which is guaranteed to all Americans.
Unbraiding documents such as the Vatican’s Doctrine of Discovery helps us
lift the veil of Christianity.
Natalie: What inspired your current field of study?
Inés: Before coming to UCSB, I had taught Native American studies at
Dartmouth but I hadn’t looked at Native American religious traditions. Then
I received a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard and I realized that there were
no courses on Native American belief systems. After thinking about this lacuna,
I began consistent research at the Tozzer Library where I located some books
on what was then referred to as “Native American Religion,” although the term
religion does not seem to appear in Native languages. I also participated in the
Harvard Divinity School’s colloquium series where I began to critically exam-
ine the question of why Native American religious traditions are treated dif-
ferently than other religions. My effort has been to bring Native American and
Indigenous religious traditions to the same level that all religions are studied.
It is important to know that our religious traditions are based on our oral tra-
ditions: singing, chanting, and the telling of our religious histories over time,
probably since the times when we received fire and were able to sit together and
talk, sing, and dance. Many of these memories are alive today. What are called

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156 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.1

the “world’s great religions” all have sacred books that practitioners can refer
to for knowledge; Native people have oral traditions, as do many indigenous
peoples throughout the world. This is what has inspired me.
Natalie: Was that something that was clear to you when you were doing
graduate study?
Inés: It wasn’t clear to me when I was doing graduate study at University
of California, San Diego. My PhD is in linguistic anthropology and comparative
literature. As I began to study orality, I started questioning the issues involved
in translating Native American oral traditions. When I did my first postdoc at
Harvard, the problem of translation became very clear to me as I participated at
the Divinity School, and when I began to research our religious heritage, I real-
ized there was no place to do that. There was no field. Very little was ever said
at Harvard about Native American religiosity. Whenever someone mentioned
Buddhism and its relationship to nature and the environment, I would speak
up and mention the similarities to Native American religious traditions and our
veneration of nature as the basis of our belief systems.
Natalie: So you saw resonances between the traditions?
Inés: Yes. When I finished my postdoc, Professor Wilfred Cantwell Smith
asked me to stay on as an Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow so that I could
teach a course on Native American religious traditions. He assured me that I
would have at least fifty students; 250 showed up for class. That was the first
class I taught on the subject; my teaching assistants continue to teach in this
field. We see each other at the AAR every year at the two sessions on Native
American religious traditions.
Natalie: What kinds of texts did you use at that time?
Inés: I used Gladys Reichard’s book on Navajo religion. I found Morris
Opler’s work on the Apache lifeway. I also used books on ritual and theoreti-
cal studies of the world’s great religions. I studied the scholars who worked on
developing the study of the world’s great religions as a model up to a point. I was
also inspired by the work of A. J. O. Anderson on Aztec religion. I had studied
with him at San Diego State, where I learned to translate work in the Florentine
Codex on Aztec daily life.
Natalie: How did you conceive the development of the field? In what
direction did you want to take it?
Inés: Since nature is at the core of all the indigenous religious traditions,
I wanted to be sure to emphasize the study of ecology. This is essentially inter-
disciplinary work with linguistics because language is so vital to understanding
Native lifeways. Many of our languages are being lost, as are our sacred places.
This took me into revitalization work. In my fieldwork, I began studying ritual,
especially rites of passage. This is when I began to understand the complexity
of Native ceremonies, how religious traditions are at the very center of culture,
and why the natural world provides all the answers for survival.

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 Avalos: Interview with Inés Talamantez 157

Natalie: So, the core of your work really focuses on relationships to land
and ecology more generally.
Inés: Yes, and my major focus is on these issues in the American Southwest,
where there is a struggle to preserve land, languages, and sacred beliefs, which
are endangered.
Natalie: What kind of reception did you get when you began your position
at UCSB and began presenting at AAR?
Inés: I was the only woman in the department for twelve years. Four of my
male colleagues were Scandinavian, and they seemed to like me because I was
married to a Norwegian. However, they knew very little about my field of study,
so we didn’t talk about my work very much. I did find more institutional support
outside of my department, in Black Studies for instance. At one point, I was 50
percent in the Department of Religion and 50 percent in Chicano Studies. Just
before my tenure review, I was asked to come into Religious Studies full time,
which I did. I earned tenure after a difficult struggle.
Natalie: I remember you mentioned to me that when you first began
attending AAR, you wanted to improve upon the approaches of those who were
working on Native American religious traditions at that time.
Inés: Yes, there were mostly anthropological approaches, with the exception
of [Åke] Hultkrantz; I think he understood Native traditions a little better than
everybody else. Actually, he was the one that told the department . . . because
they used to bring him from Sweden every year to teach a class on Native
American religions. He told them, “Why do you do this? Why don’t you just
hire a Native American?” So, that’s when the department decided to start a line
for Native American religions. But the others at the AAR . . . I only remember
seeing this panel with these three non-Indians and none of them were discuss-
ing it in the way I thought they should. They were more focused on standard
anthropological approaches to religion. I asked them, “How many of you know
the languages of the traditions that you’re teaching?” and no hands went up. So,
I thought, “well that’s good,” because I had a plan to get rid of them. So then,
the next year I asked, “How many of you have done extensive qualitative field
work with the tribe you’re looking at?” And no hands went up. By the third year,
my students were on the panel. They were all Indian students, one Yupik, one
Tlingit, and one Potawatomi. From then on, it was mostly Native students.
Natalie: You have done extensive fieldwork. When did you start going out
into the field? In graduate school?
Inés: Actually, when I was completing my BA at UCSD. I started going
to New Mexico to connect with relatives because I had seen the puberty cer-
emony when I was a little girl and I always wanted to have that ceremony but
we couldn’t afford it. When I met Willito Antonio, my Apache mentor, he said,
“stop worrying about that, we’re going to take care of that one these days.” And
sure enough he did. He had a female initiation ceremony for me, and then he

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158 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.1

officiated a wedding ceremony for my husband and me. It was two days. And
then he initiated me into the Sun Clan. He had asked me, “What was the reason
that your father didn’t want to get registered?” I said, “Because he didn’t believe
that the BIA should tell him how to live his life, or define who he was.”
Natalie: Which was true for a lot of Apaches and other Native people.
Inés: Yes, he was a very independent person, so he didn’t want to do that.
And my grandfather was not registered either. He came from Mexico, from La
Sierra de Guadalajara where some Apaches were living. He was Ndé, Lipan
Apache.
Natalie: Did you initially think that you wanted to do research on the
ceremony?
Inés: No. I was just going to see it because I had remembered seeing it as
a young girl. And then I kept going back every year. Eventually, one of the other
singers said, “Willito wants to meet you.” And I didn’t sleep all night; I thought
maybe I had done something wrong.
Natalie: Because he was the main singer?
Inés: Yes, he was the main singer and head of the Sun Clan, as well as the
respected teacher of the girls’ rites of passage ceremony. He called himself a
“chanter.”
Natalie: So, it sounds like you had two strains of research from the start:
the work you were doing on Nahuatl and Mesoamerican culture with Anderson
and then the exploration of the Apache girl’s puberty ceremony. Were there
things that inspired you about this latter experience that motivated you to
research it further?
Inés: Yes, the beauty of the ceremony is that the girl is instructed on what it
means to be an Apache woman. But then she’s also given the Apache history—
our language, our medicine. When she starts her first menstruation, she chooses
a sponsor to work with her for a year. That sponsor teaches her everything that
an Apache woman is supposed to know. In the process of the ceremony, she’s
separated from her family, because in the old days, the girl lived with her spon-
sor for the entire year. Now they don’t do that, but the sponsor and the girl
meet regularly. The other part is that when the sponsor is teaching her all these
things, she’s already on a sacred journey.
Natalie: Can you say a little bit more about this?
Inés: The girl has a spiritual relationship with the sponsor and the sponsor
has a spiritual relationship with the girl, so that forever the girl with call her
“mother” and the sponsor will call her “my daughter.”
Natalie: So, she becomes a spiritual mentor for life?
Inés: Yes, but it’s more than just spiritual. She’s also teaching her about her
relationship to the land, the history of the tribe . . . .
Natalie: So the sponsor is really becoming an instructor of the culture for
the girl?

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 Avalos: Interview with Inés Talamantez 159

Inés: Yes, because the whole point is to get her to become an exemplary
woman. She goes from learning all this from the sponsor to—that’s the sepa-
ration part from Van Gennep’s tripartite schema in his Rites of Passage—she’s
separated from her tribe, from her family, from the people. Then, the middle
part of the ceremony, the liminal period, is that she is now entering the role of
Isanaklesh, and she becomes Isanaklesh, the female deity. She leaves the role of
Isanaklesh the next morning when she runs back from where Isanaklesh lives in
the forest. She has now transformed from a girl into female deity and then from
a female deity into a woman. And I think that’s religiously powerful; she now
understands díyíí, sacred power.
Natalie: Is this what motivated you to continue—your excitement about
the process?
Inés: Yes. The motivation started very early; I saw it when I was nine years
old. There was a short article written that year by an Apache man. I was nine, so
it would have been 1939. It was the only thing I found on the ceremony when I
was really scouring for information. And I thought, “wow.” It was the only thing
written by an Apache. It wasn’t very thorough but it described the ceremony
from a male perspective.
Natalie: Did it become a personal journey for you to learn more about it
since it was something you wanted to have but didn’t?
Inés: Yes, it was a journey. You know when you’re a little girl and you see
another little girl doing something cute or special, you want to be like that little
girl. I wanted to be like that girl in the tipi. And my cousin Margaret was with
us because my mom and my aunt took us to see the ceremony and she wasn’t
interested at all. She was saying, “Why is it taking so long? Can we go eat?” And
I was totally engrossed. I think it had to do with the fact that when I was a little
girl I was a dancer also, and the girl is dancing in the tipi. And then my mother
wanted to go with her too and said, “OK, I’ll take her to get something to eat.”
And the three of them walked away. I said, “OK, I’ll wait for you right here.” It
was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Later, I began studying it
and realizing “she’s going through all these transformations and she’s becoming
Isanaklesh—where do you see that? Where does that happen?” It’s like the
transformation of the body and blood of Christ. I never make that association
in my work but that’s what it is; it’s a ritual transformation. It never left me. The
only year that I didn’t go back to see it was the year my mother died because I
was in mourning and I couldn’t go.
Natalie: So, you went back every year from the time you were finishing
on your undergrad degree? So the late sixties through the seventies and so on.
Inés: Yeah, and I’m still going. I’m going in August again. Every time I
see it, it’s not that I see something different but that the ceremony itself is
so religiously powerful that I always learn something. I listen to the women
standing next to me during the ceremony all the time, and they will say to their

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160 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.1

granddaughters, “go up into the front so you can see everything really good.”
And then we talk to each other. I made a super mistake one time. There were a
couple of guys who were obviously drunk standing on the outside at the edge of
the tipi and they were talking really loud. I said to one of the women standing
next to me “I sure wish they would be quiet or go away or something.” She said,
“What’s wrong with you? They need this more than you and I.” It’s one of those
moments doing fieldwork when you eat humble pie. She was right. I was just
being careless. . . . I was trying to concentrate and the talking was bothering me
so I said that to her and she corrected me. And she was right. That’s what the
tipi is all about.
Natalie: That it works for the whole community. . . . What role do women
play in the Apache culture?
Inés: It is traditionally a matrilineal society and I still see remnants of that.
But the political structure, which is run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, doesn’t
participate in that. In the everyday face-to-face society, which Mescalero is,
I’ve been there long enough to know that women are the ones still wielding
power.
Natalie: So, they wield social power?
Inés: Yes, and they wield religious power too because they talk about cer-
emonies a lot and they explain the symbolism. They castigate you sometimes
if you don’t go to ceremonies. You know, we fed everybody for most of the
ceremony for four days. Some people go just for the food. There’s usually an
elder talking about “it’s not about the food . . . it’s about the fact that here we’re
presenting the food in the home of Isanaklesh [the female deity].” So, every-
thing has to be done according to her wishes, which is the traditional Apache
way. That involves everybody working together and doing everything as well
as you can do it because that is her home. You can’t be careless. Even when
you’re washing dishes, there’s a certain way you’re supposed to do everything.
And when you’re making the bread and cooking the beans and preparing the
potatoes, it’s all structured and it’s the women that carry that out. And it’s the
women also that insist on ceremonies for their children when they first walk,
when the baby first smiles, when they have their first haircut, when they put the
baby in the cradleboard to bless it. These are the things that the women insist
on. The women are the ones that say, “well, my daughter didn’t have a feast but
I’m going to make sure my granddaughter does.”
Natalie: In essence, women act as the glue holding the society together.
Inés: Yes, which is what happens in matrilineal societies. Women are the
ones who use díyíí, not power like we know it in English but power in the
Apache language, which means the power to keep the sacrality of the culture
moving and alive.
Natalie: When you first started bringing some of this information out to
non-Native people, did you think about how they may be affected by it?

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 Avalos: Interview with Inés Talamantez 161

Inés: I didn’t really think about that. I was just focused on Willito wanting
me to write a book because people are forgetting how to do it. He said, “If you
write this book, then they’ll know how it’s supposed to be.” There are a lot of
people on the [reservation] waiting for me to finish this book, and so are my
husband and my family, and many of the people of the Mescalero Sun Clan.
Natalie: So, it becomes a community record.
Inés: Yes. [Willito’s] sisters—my clan sisters—are also knowledgeable
about it, especially Nina. I was there one time during a ceremony and her phone
was ringing constantly. Because people were having a ceremony but they didn’t
know how to follow procedure. They’re calling her, asking “What am I supposed
to do?” and she’s telling them, “You were supposed to do that a year ago, why are
you calling me now?” She was scolding them. She’s never scolded me, but I’ve
seen her scold people at ceremonies because she, again like her brother, knows
it needs to be done correctly.
Natalie: Is that a role that a woman takes, once they’ve had the puberty
ceremony and they’ve become an elder in the community? Because they hold
this information?
Inés: Yes, because they’re seen as exemplary women. They’ve been through
it and they have the wisdom. So they’re always respected. I was very lucky to
work with the late Meredith Begay, who also learned from Willito. Meredith
was half Navajo like Willito, and they always worked together. She was a sponsor
and he was a chanter.
Natalie: What is the role of spiritual power in the girl’s puberty ceremony?
How does it work there?
Inés: It’s amazing. It all has to do with language and ritual. When the girl
first announces that she wants to have it—and she has to make the decision
that she wants to have it—then the process opens up and grandmothers and
aunties and teachers start teaching her everything she needs to know. Then
when she has her first menstruation, they appoint a woman to be her sponsor
and then that sponsor will also be teaching her for a year before her ceremony.
So, she is learning, basically, what it means to be an Apache woman. She’s learn-
ing about the history, why the language is important; she’s learning about the
plants, the animals; she’s learning what it means to be a mother, a wife, a grand-
mother—that’s why I say she’s learning how to become an exemplary woman.
In the puberty ceremony, since it’s a long ritual, the training starts when she
first menstruates. Then she finally gets to the ceremony, which takes eight days.
The first four days are the reliving of Isanaklesh’s ceremony. We still do every-
thing the same way that they did it for her. We follow the sacred narrative.
What happens is that she enters the ceremony as a young girl and in the ritual
process of the singing and the dancing that she does, the words of the singers,
they start building díyíí, the sacred power. She dances every evening. Then on
the fourth night, she dances all night long and the transformation occurs where

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162 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.1

she becomes Isanaklesh. That’s why she blesses everybody on the fifth morning.
People come up to her—this is an adolescent girl—but they come up to her
to be blessed because she is Isanaklesh. And we all know that. It’s not the girl
that went into the ceremony. She became the deity and is now getting ready to
become a woman. It’s a magnificent transformation that occurs. And her danc-
ing every night, the transformative power of the singing, and being allowed to
only look at the rattle in the singer’s hand or the fire in the middle of the tipi,
puts her slowly into a trance. And then she transforms again on that last morn-
ing from Isanaklesh into a woman.
Natalie: When you talk about the girl’s puberty ceremony in your classes,
you’ve mentioned that the young women are really interested but so are the
young men. Why do you think that is?
Inés: This last class I taught on rites of passage, I had about twenty-five stu-
dents. The first thing I had them do was research problems that were affecting
American youth. And they did. They came back and reported on it. And they
were just as astounded as I was because one the things that they found is that
there is nobody working effectively, with a few exceptions, with young people
at that age, at the start of adolescence, getting ready to enter into manhood
or womanhood. Unless you have a grandmother or an auntie or someone who
takes you by the side and says “I’m going to teach you what you need to know.”
Kids are into technology; they’re into drinking and drugs and sex. It’s rampant
and they have no control.
Natalie: They don’t have guidance. Essentially, you’re asking them to
explore their own lack of guidance.
Inés: Yes. I tell them “you can learn from this. You don’t copy it,” because
then it would be appropriation. But I also say, “I’m teaching you this so that
you learn what’s expected of you as an adult because you’re going through a
rite of passage right now. You left home where hopefully everything was taken
care of for you by your parents. And now you’re at the university where you’re
surrounded by all kinds of peoples from different nations, so the more you can
learn from them the better for you.” You can see that in the students—who is
really prepared to be here and who’s not—and unfortunately, mostly it’s students
of color who are not prepared to be here. So, I talk to them about that. And we
discuss US youth, why are they acting like this? Because students realize that
acting out is not the ideal. They’re smart. They know what’s missing for them.
Natalie: So, they recognize that there’s something missing and they also
attribute the something missing to a lack of guidance.
Inés: Yes.
Natalie: How do they feel about rites of passage as the course moves along?
Inés: Well, after that assignment, I start talking to them about the dif-
ferent rites of passage. They learn why we consider rites of passage to be so
important for our young women and our young men also but we don’t focus on

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 Avalos: Interview with Inés Talamantez 163

the men. I give them a few examples but I don’t go further into that because
there’s so much to talk about with regard to the girls and women. So, once we
establish that there are so many problems among youth, such as gangs, I say
“now you can understand why it is that we do have rites of passage because
some cultures are very concerned about their youth and they’ve been doing
this for centuries.”
Natalie: How do students respond? What do they say about it in the end?
Inés: They were amazed. I got three e-mails from students from that class
about how it changed their life—just to know this. “Now, I don’t want to copy
the Apaches,” one of them said, “but I can certainly learn from this how to be a
better human being. And I want to thank you because this course changed my
life.” I got three of those.
Natalie: So, they essentially feel that it helps them understand what it
means to live in the world and transition into adulthood.
Inés: Yes. I made this a big issue, explaining that when a young man looks
to marry a woman he looks for one of the girls who has gone through the puberty
ceremony because he knows she’s smart, knows the history and how to take care
of children, respects elders—all of that is embedded in those teachings. So,
some of that I teach to the students.
Natalie: So, they get a sense of what’s valuable: respect, integrity, devel-
oping care.
Inés: Becoming an exemplary woman is so important in Native cultures.
Natalie: So, they then think about how those values work in their own lives.
Inés: I told my students they could write their paper about anything we dis-
cussed in class. Most of them talked about teenage pregnancy, gangs, problems
with their parents, and questions about what to do with their lives—that’s what
they were focused on. And then they explained why we need to have puberty
ceremonies because they take care of these issues. They were made aware that
if you don’t respect your parents and you don’t listen to them or if you start
hanging out with a gang, you’re headed for serious trouble.
Natalie: So, they have a new context for how to live in the world.
Inés: Yes. All the values that are taught are just basic human values. But
there’s few adults teaching that to mainstream kids. There’s very little teaching
on what it means to be an ethical human being.
Natalie: Do you see this class as filling that gap? Like our existential gap?
Inés: That’s exactly why I designed it because I wanted to know how
the students would react. And I continue to see major problems with most
American youth. Having raised seven children—that was also a learning expe-
rience because children do teach you a lot. And each one of my kids taught me
very different lessons. And I was a really dedicated mother. I was totally devoted
to them until I went back to school. My whole life was guiding my children. And
what I knew was important. American youth—especially Indian youth—many

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164 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.1

of them are in situations where they feel lost and that is sometimes the reason
they join gangs.
Natalie: Do you see the book Becoming being a resource like this class is?
Inés: I think it will be for girls, but I don’t see that boys are as interested in
it, I mean outside of the university. But when these girls become the exemplary
woman, they bring the young men along. Because these women that I know
that had their feast that are married, their husbands are really, really respectful
of them.
Natalie: What direction would you like to see the field of Native American
religious go in? How would you like to see it grow and change?
Inés: Following E. O. Wilson’s challenge that we all have the responsibility
to take care of the ecosystems and we all have to be more humble and more
grateful because we need to protect these places from extinction. That is a prob-
lem that I think, personally as a Native American scholar, is very important.
That’s what drew me into Native American religious traditions, the fact that
there’s such an emphasis on caring for the natural world and knowing your eco-
system. And that’s what he’s calling for—to know our ecosystem and to protect
everything within it that is alive. That is a huge responsibility, but most people
don’t seem to care. I’m encouraged by young people like yourself who do care
about the environment and who understand the relationship between Native
American history and its focus on respect for the natural world. They knew
way back then, before colonization . . . they knew that the only way to survive
was by knowing the natural world. Most people in mainstream society need to
be educated about the environment. They don’t know. This is a serious issue
critical for the survival of the earth. We must create a new direction. This field
is part of the solution.
Natalie: So, do you see the field as really helping educate the greater pub-
lic on the greater world?
Inés: The natural world, yes. Like Buddhism and Hinduism—these tra-
ditions also emphasize the natural world. But we’re not in China or Tibet or
India; we’re here. So, it’s the responsibility of all of us here to take care of this
place. And we can. According to Wilson, we can prevent these extinctions. But
it’s going to require work. We have to change . . . I think we do a pretty good
job of changing the consciousness of some of students when we’re teaching this
material because they do respond. They will often make a start with an intro-
duction to Native American religious traditions and then they go right into my
class on religion and ecology. That class is a dialogue between students who are
interested in the environment and those who are interested in religion. So, I see
that as a projection . . . so that one day the young people will begin to say “I’m
fed up with all of these things. Down with Coca Cola, down with petroleum,
and let’s start living like human beings. And respect each other and respect the
world we live in.” That goes back to my earlier question. How do we convince

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 Avalos: Interview with Inés Talamantez 165

people that many of the keys to salvation of the natural world come from people
who have always revered the natural world?
Natalie: So, you see that there needs to be a transformation among
non-Native people in the United States?
Inés: All people in the United States. There are a lot of people that come
here from Mexico and they understand that. Some middle-class people from
Mexico even understand that “we’re ruining the environment. We’re acting just
like the United States.” There’s so much that needs to be done. At my age, I’m
very happy that I’ve spent the last half of my life in this kind of work and training
scholars like yourself who really care—it’s a blessing to be able to do that.
Natalie: Because it carries on.
Inés: It carries on. And you will take it and you will spread it—like all my
other students. The proof is that they’re always there every year presenting at
the AAR on these very issues. And now, Native people in the Southwest and
elsewhere are going back to growing their own traditional food and getting rid
of what caused diabetes. So, as Andrea McComb Sanchez’s work explores, these
are the things that are going to make a difference. We have to stop eating pro-
cessed foods because our bodies do not know how to digest it.
Natalie: Do you think that changes that Southwestern tribes are making
may trickle out into non-Native communities and bigger cities?
Inés: I think it is already happening. There are a lot of people who are doing
organic farming. It’s difficult out here in California because of this drought that
we’ve had, but they’re still doing it. And they’re advertising healthy food that is
not processed. It’s the processed food that makes everybody sick, but we have
become addicted to salt and sugar. These are the things that we need to elimi-
nate from our diet. And the work on this that’s growing is excellent. I think that’s
a direction that environmentalists and even nutritionists want to go.
Natalie: What do you think are the beneficial influences of the puberty
ceremony at Mescalero?
Inés: It’s continuing on but it’s changing. To talk to you about the changes
would take a book. A lot of it has to do with the loss of language. But there are
some young people that are taking it up. There are always those young ones that
want to learn and know and that are interested in knowing. The problems on
reservations are often those imposed on the people by the tribal government,
not to mention Christian churches that focus on Western traditions.
Natalie: What do you think are some of the most important aspects of your
book that people in religious studies might want to know about?
Inés: When I taught the class on rites of passage, I noticed the students
really responded. When I was a kid, we didn’t have the kinds of problems that
you have today. I see the message in my book will be that we need to go back to
educating our young people about appropriate behavior and respect for elders,
respect for nature, respect for everything that is alive because even some older

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166 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.1

people seem to be disrespectful. They won’t accept the fact that there is some-
thing happening as far as climate change—no matter how much evidence you
put in front of them they just still can’t accept it.
Natalie: So, you’re saying that one of the reason they won’t acknowledge
this is they’ve lost their own sense of identity in relation to the earth.
Inés: Their connectedness to the earth and to the wisdom of our ancestors
is not valued.
Natalie: Their connectedness to the earth.
Inés: Yes, they do not understand that we are all connected to the natural
world. Of course, there are still people who are very connected, and they are the
ones we need to be listening to on how to save the planet. I don’t think people
realize how in danger the earth is. Even though we’ve had four or five years of
drought here in Santa Barbara, people are taking it like “Oh, it’s no big deal.”
Or they’re ticked off because they have to stop watering their lawn or turn off
their water fountains.
Natalie: They see it as an inconvenience instead of as a crisis.
Inés: Exactly. That’s exactly right.
Natalie: Do you think the class on rites of passage has helped students
realize that rites of passage are not just about transitioning from one phase of
life to another but about your responsibility to the earth?
Inés: Yes, your responsibility as a human being. Being a responsible person.
And as you know, I like to say as far as the girls’ rites of passage that it creates
exemplary women who know their history and understand their traditions and
who will foster them in the future. It makes her knowledgeable; she has wisdom.
Natalie: How do you think your work has influenced the field of Native
American religious traditions? What kind of legacy are you leaving?
Inés: Well, all of you, my students. When I first went to the AAR, the pan-
els were all by non-Indians, and as I said before, now it’s my students that are
on those panels; so we’ve made the Department of Religious Studies at Santa
Barbara additionally known for its work on Native American religious traditions.
All of you are carrying that forward. Then you’ll be training students as well, and
they’ll go that way too so it’s not going to end; it’s going to continue. That makes
me feel “mission accomplished.” [Laughs] That makes me feel as if I’ve done
something, besides having seven wonderful children, and living with a brilliant,
caring husband, that I’ve made a major contribution to the study of religion.
And I think that when my book comes out, you’ll see that my teacher Willito was
an amazing philosopher, chanter, and teacher of our traditional ways.
Natalie: Why do you think Native American religious traditions are an
important part of religious studies as a field? Do you think it has anything to say
to or teach the field?
Inés: In Native American religious traditions, we don’t have a book; we
have oral traditions that are carried down from generation to generation. In

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 Avalos: Interview with Inés Talamantez 167

spite of our complex history, we’re still here. And that has survived. It’s the
only thing that allowed us to survive—our spirituality. The colonizers knew that.
They directed their soldiers to kill the medicine people first; because they knew
without the medicine we would fall apart. It was a deliberate attempt at geno-
cide. Native Americans were herded off to boarding schools where the plan
was to change our identity by forcing us to give up our languages and to follow
a different religion—to make us something that we’re not. So, the struggle with
this trauma is now multigenerational. Bringing up this notion of trauma that has
happened over the centuries is so important because it has awakened a lot of
people to the reality of what it means to be an Indian in American today. I think
we’re just beginning to scratch the surface—when the field is further developed
and more is known, I think it’ll make Indian people proud of who they are.
And many will return to being Indian again. I believe it is time for us to leave
Christianity and Western ways.
Natalie: So, to some degree the expansion of the field also ultimately ben-
efits Native people.
Inés: It benefits all people. Because if you really think about it, there are
probably more people around the world that practice traditional belief systems
than people that practice the “world’s great religions,” because there isn’t the
same kind of hierarchy.
Natalie: What do you think it teaches us about power? We’re still living
with colonialism, we’re still living with forces of empire around the world; do
you think the field itself is helping us better understand its ramification as a
global society?
Inés: Yes, I do because each culture has its own word for power. In Apache
it’s díyíí. It’s not like Western power that implies authority and control, such as
we see in the military. The only thing that has allowed us to survive is our under-
standing that in our cultures there is that concept of sacred power. Christianity
has tried to destroy it, but it’s there.
Natalie: Our own spiritual power.
Inés: Yes. Díyíí is the power within you. It allows you to become a human
being and to live in a good way—not in an abusive way. Because when you
think of the word power in English, it means something completely different,
such as the “power of the Church—the authority of the Church—you do what
the Church tells you or else you’re excommunicated.” In our case, we were
forced to learn something else and we were forced to give up our history, our
languages, our land, and our resources—that’s why in our hearts we fight so
hard for the land and for nature because there can be no justice without our
land. It’s still a history that hasn’t been told. So, there’s this whole historical
reality, which for us is very different from slavery, where people were forced
to leave their beloved land and treated horribly and there’s terrific trauma
there also. But for us, it’s different. We were here. It was our land. And it was

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168 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.1

taken through power, in a Western sense, and authority. But that’s not the kind
of power I talk about when I speak to you about díyíí, which can help us to
counter Western power.
Natalie: Do you think that if the greater fields of religious studies and
even your students, if this kind of power—which is really about our relationship
between ourselves and the natural world, right, and the spirit world?
Inés: Right, the spirit world.
Natalie: That they would actually reevaluate the authoritarian forms of
power around them?
Inés: Well, I think we are doing that already because look at the Doctrine
of Discovery, which comes out of the Vatican, and clearly says what they’re plan-
ning to do to us and people are studying that and critiquing it. And there are a
lot more documents like that in the Vatican. It’s powerful to study that and see,
in their own words, what their plan was for us. We can take that apart, critique
it, and put it right back at them in a scholarly way.
Natalie: That is part of the discourse around decolonization, right?
Inés: It is.
Natalie: Can you say a little bit about how to view decolonization now?
How you understand decolonization or what its aims should be?
Inés: For that, I really follow Linda Tuhiwai Smith, the Maori scholar from
New Zealand whose book on decolonizing methodologies is brilliant. Even
though she’s giving us examples from New Zealand, something like that can be
done from an American perspective. That book came out not long ago, but look
how powerful it is already. Somebody was talking about that book at every con-
ference I went to after it came out. We need more books like that about Native
American decolonization.
Natalie: It’s become ubiquitous in the field.
Inés: When I met Linda [Tuhiwai Smith], I was amazed to listen to what
she had to say. I also think that the work that the women in Hawaii are doing as
far as decolonizing Hawaii is very important. I’m glad we’re meeting next year
in Hawaii for NAISA [Native American and Indigenous Studies Association]
because I want to give those sisters my support.
Natalie: Do you feel that the indigenous peoples’ movement worldwide
has become more powerful, more present?
Inés: I do, but Christianity is still so embedded in that. And this is true
for Native American scholars, that tradition of missionization . . . there’s a lot
of Christian Indians. And like I’ve said, it’s time for Indians to become Indian
again and let Christianity slip away.

Natalie Avalos is a visiting assistant professor in the Religious Studies

Department at Connecticut College. Her specializations are Native
American and Indigenous religious traditions and Tibetan Buddhism. As

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 Avalos: Interview with Inés Talamantez 169

an ethnographer, her research and teaching focus on Native American and

Indigenous religions in diaspora, healing historical trauma, decolonization,
and social justice. Her scholarship explores how continued and revitalized
religious practice among transnational Native and Tibetan communities shape
their respective efforts for self-determination and facilitate both structural and
personal forms of liberation. [email protected]

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