Healing Justice, Belonging, and the Land Within Us

Nuestra raíz de ser — Our Root of Being

I sit across from her in the bright light of our meeting room. It’s spring and we are circling up with our team, the nine of us who founded and lead Botanical Bus programming, to breathe new life into our Mission, Vision and Values. We take three collective breaths. 

Behind closed eyes she returns to la milpa*. The rain is coming, viene la lluvia, va’a xi davi (vachi davi) in her Mixteco Alto language. She rolls a handful of smooth black beans in her small fist as she follows her father between rows of freshly opened earth. He has gathered her abuelos from both sides of the family and they walk ahead laying down seeds. She joins the collective work, alongside her little brothers and sisters, burying her beans and nudging worms that lay in wait for the wet season.   

After grounding and group check-ins, I stand to write Mission, Vision, and Values on the whiteboard. We have a story to tell about who we are, quien somos—but Mission carries the weight of colonization and separation from our land and Indigenous lifeways. We cross it out and find ourselves instead in Raíz de Ser, the Root of our Being:

Botanical Bus is a mobile clinic that provides place-based, culturally-centered, collaborative healthcare so that Latine and Indigenous communities experience healing justice. 

*Words that meanings extend beyond direct English translation:

Milpa — Indigenous intercropping system centered on maize, beans, squash, and reciprocal relationship to land