🌎 Indigenous Peoples’ Day Reflections

Hello friends,

Today is Indigenous Peoples’ Day — a moment to pause, listen, and honor the original stewards of the lands we live on.

I’m writing from the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, beneath Long Mountain — ancestral lands of the Arapaho, Shoshone, Ute, Cheyenne Nations (and others). When people ask me where I’m from, I like to say, “near the Continental Divide,” because it feels meaningful to identify with the land itself — a place that has held countless stories since tectonic plates first lifted this mountain range into being.

I was born in the Wasatch Range of the Rockies, and my father often took me exploring across the Four Corners region: New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah. I remember standing in awe before Newspaper Rock, gazing at some of the earliest visual stories of cosmology and culture carved into stone. I was fascinated by the dwellings of Mesa Verde and the stories of the ancient Pueblo people — these always felt more alive and sacred to me than the pioneer narratives I learned in Utah schools.

Later, while studying Studio Art and Psychology at university, I began peeling back the layers of history that our textbooks had left out. I learned about the Sand Creek Massacre, about Chief Niwot (whose name graces a nearby town), and about how Colorado’s rivers, canyons, and peaks were renamed by colonizers — even as their original caretakers were displaced or killed. Visiting the Pawnee Grasslands years later, I could almost imagine the thunder of bison across the plains, long before fracking wells and cattle fences divided the land.

Around this time, I read “God is Red” by Vine Deloria Jr., and began asking deeper questions about my own heritage and relationship to land and belonging.

My lineage is a mix: on my paternal side, German immigrants who fled famine and early fascism in 1846; on my maternal side, Plains settlers and First Nations ancestry, though many details were lost through assimilation and generational silence. My maternal family endured poverty and the Dust Bowl — another ecological wound of settler colonialism — yet passed down resilience and a deep connection to growing food and living close to the Earth.

These stories — of migration, loss, resilience, and reconnection — inform how I approach Earth Medicine Apparel Co.

When I began this work, I envisioned it as a platform for visual storytelling and community building — honoring the ancient relationships between people, plants, animals, and the ecosystems that sustain us. As I deepened my own connection to Earth Medicines (and their stewards), such as travelling for a cultural exchange with the Matsés people, I began to understand how healing practices from around the world are interwoven with the landscapes and cultures that birthed them.

Much of this knowledge has been diluted or commodified through global capitalism — and yet, there’s a growing collective remembrance taking place. People are reconnecting to the truth that the Earth is our source of healing.

Through Earth Medicine Apparel, I aim to celebrate this living wisdom and to highlight the Indigenous and local communities as they continue to protect and teach these traditions, often while facing challenges like poverty, environmental threats, and cultural erasure.

Our impact campaigns are small acts of reciprocity — reminders that honoring the medicine means honoring the people and lands it comes from.

Today, and every day, I give thanks to the original stewards of the Earth — those who have kept the songs, the stories, and the ceremonies alive so that all of us might remember our place in the web of life.

IF you feel called to support our current impact campaign, we’ve exceeded our goal, but the Rios-Javá family can still use support.

Donate to our GoFundMe Campaign Here, or consider purchasing a shirt in our Kambo Collection, where a portion of the profits goes back to our impact partner, Ecomunidad Nativa Kambo Family.

Other organizations we intend to align our impact goals with include:
Junglekeepers | First Nations Development Institute | Rainforest Flow

With reverence,
Cloudsong
Founder, Earth Medicine Apparel Co.