Episode 5 features Dr. Magaly Ordoñez, a Latinx Sexualities Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Utah, and Dr. Gabriela G. Corona Valencia, a postdoctoral research associate in the Latina/Latino Studies Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Magaly and Gabriela discuss “Archival Alchemy: Chicanx Feminist Memory Keeping and the Transformative Power of Hauntings,” with our guest host Yesenia Ramos, a CDA Graduate Assistant, Knowledge River Scholar, and MLIS Graduate.

Magaly Ordoñez, Ph.D. (they/them) research includes historical and contemporary cannabis culture in Los Angeles to understand how queer Chicanx/Latinx cannabis histories, relationships, and spaces refuse subversion to a capitalist cannabis industry by centering care, critical cannabis education, and abolitionist feminist politics. Dr. Gabriela G. Corona Valencia's research includes histories of medicine and public health, pedagogies of pleasure and desire, and critical archival methodologies.

This conversation was recorded in Oct. 2023 and is an extension of a conversation started at a Conference for MALCS (Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social).

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Irma Payán is a community archivist and active member of Arizona Barrio Stories, an organization dedicated to recording and collecting data and stories from Chicano communities and families in vanishing barrios in Arizona. Irma was born and raised in central Phoenix, and shares her thoughts on food and culture in the Chicano/Latinx community, and preservation of family recipes and food memories.

Irma is an educator who taught in the Roosevelt School District #66 in South Phoenix for 33 years. Upon retirement she returned to aid the district in several programs for an additional 5 years. Irma conducts interviews and hosts a program on Facebook, YouTube, COX Glendale channel 11, Roku, and the Irma Payan Show on Latino USA TV on https://latinousa.live/ too!

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Dr. Rafael A. Martínez is an Assistant Professor in Southwest Borderlands at Arizona State University teaching history courses at the Polytechnic Campus in the East Valley. As a first-generation immigrant to the U.S., Dr. Martinez has learned first-hand the power of storytelling in forming connections to place and community. As an advocate of community-based history projects, he is engaged in public projects that seek to connect academic work with community development.

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Hand-tapped tattoos are a way to honor Filipino culture and ancestry. The ancestral marks are received in ceremony, using handmade tools, and with designs specific to a person’s lineages and life paths. Nicole Umayam has brought this ancestral tradition back into her lineage and shares how her tattoos can be a form of archiving.

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Aging and past traumatic experiences can be difficult to confront, but Arizona State University PHD student, Tanya Burgess, has found a way to deal with those thoughts and emotions through role playing games. As a master of tabletop games, social worker, and aging researcher, she creates and leads games to help players deal with their own past and confront the fear of loss. 

Tanya is also the C.E.O. of Healed and Refreshed. Healed and Refreshed aims to encourage community healing on the issues of mental health and aging wellness, by building community in innovative and fun ways. Tanya founded The Aging Journey Podcast to amplify the voices and experiences of marginalized communities and the triumphs, trials, and tribulations of aging through tabletop roleplay games. As a game master (GM) for the podcast, she runs collaborative and narrative-driven homebrew campaigns in systems like Kids on Bikes, Cthulhu Dark, and Stars Without Number where players go on an adventure and explore themes of time and age, in fantasy, sci-fi or real-world roleplay games.

Listen to this episode to learn more about role playing games and the ways it is healing those from underrepresented communities.

Tanya’s podcast Socials:

Discord: https://discord.gg/Q96eKRvynr

Listen to the podcast: https://shows.acast.com/agingjourneypodcast

Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@agingjourneypodcast

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“Music is a form of archiving, " Alex Soto says. As the director of the Labriola National American Indian Data Center at Arizona State University, Soto has seen the importance of preserving and sharing history through books, but his passion for making music and emceeing has helped him preserve memories in different ways that speak to youth.

Soto is a member of the Tohono O'odham Nation in Arizona. Throughout his life he has experienced the poor representation Native American culture has had across Arizona in archiving, history, and music. Today he uses his education in library and information science and passion for music to share the stories of his people and create spaces for Native American youth to feel understood and represented.

Music in this episode featuring Alex Soto is by Phoenix area Hip Hop Trio, Shining Soul from the album Politics Aside.

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The Chicano/a community has played critical roles in the development of the state of Arizona. This state has historically been a place where migrants from Mexico and other parts of the world have traveled looking for work. The state is rich in mining and agricultural opportunities. American interest in these resources and interest in the expansion of the country transformed Arizona from a Mexican territory into a U.S. state in 1912. Quite often, it has been members from the Chicano/a community that have filled the needs in these industries for cheap labor. 

 Small towns across the state became populated with families looking for more opportunities in the early 1900s, but many faced unfair wages and discrimination in their industries. They eventually became tired of the inequalities and started unions for fair wages and hours. The children of these workers also confronted language and financial struggles to become educated and support their parents. 

Guests Dr. Christine Marin, historian, archivist, and founder of the Chicano/a Research Collection at ASU Library, and Dr. Pete Dimas, a historian and educator, are children of Mexican migrants who worked tirelessly for their family’s success. Both pursued degrees in history to preserve the history of families like theirs and ensure Chicano/a labor history is not erased from Arizona’s memory. They emphasize the importance of historical education and never giving up on one's dreams because they changed their life. Those two things can be the start of change and the first steps toward ending discrimination.

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Archiving is the act of memory keeping. It's a living thing that people can do to preserve their family history. However, this hasn’t historically happened in many communities across Arizona. Lack of representation in archives for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities across the state has left people with a lack of identity and self. White-dominated narratives have hurt the way communities see their past and culture. 

Nancy Godoy, Director of the Community-Driven Archives (CDA) Initiative, and Bridget Bravo, an educator, are working to implement more methods for communities to preserve history themselves. They are doing this to heal their communities and create safe spaces so others can heal from the colonial historical lens that has nearly erased their identities. They also open up about their trauma and relationship with archiving to ensure others don’t have to feel left out as they have. 

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