Salvia Tijerina, Research Coordinator for the Aspiring BIPoC Educators Program
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Aletícia “Salvia” Kyle Tijerina joined the team as the Research Coordinator for the Aspiring Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPoC) Educators Program, bringing to the team decades of work in academic research and social justice movements. As an activist-scholar, she holds a PhD in Political Science and Native Nationalism from Northern Arizona University. Her theoretical work is in grounded theory and Native philosophical thought. As a qualitative researcher, she utilizes Indigenous and community-based participatory research approaches in her work.
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Salvia is a longtime activist-scholar. She became a part of the early pan-Indian Sun Dance movement as a Sun Dancer at Big Mountain, Navajo Nation, where she supported the Diné people facing forced relocation off their traditional lands, enabling her to observe how ceremony as an Indigenous Knowledge System (IKS) informs the political status of Native peoples. Her participation also informed her “spiritual mestizaje,” a theory developed by Gloria Anzaldúa and her own theoretical development of Native Nationalism found in her manuscript Sun Dance Movement and Native Nationalism: Unburying the Hatchet.
Along with her family, she co-founded an Indigenous social justice nonprofit committed to Indigenous Peoples transformational social justice through direct activism and education. Most recently, her family participated as Water Protectors in the NoDapl (Dakota Access Pipeline) movement, slated to run beneath Lake Oahe, the only water source for communities on Standing Rock Sioux. Her next research project will address the crisis of water shortages throughout southwest Native territories.
An activist-poet by trade, Salvia has performed on countless stages ranging from the National Women’s Conference to dive bars, addressing international and domestic violence against Indigenous women and children. She is a published poet, a socialist, and abolitionist. Currently, she is performing from her collection of poems in Red Sinew and is writing her second political-personal book called Sexicon, embedded in queer theory.
Along with her family, she co-founded an Indigenous social justice nonprofit committed to Indigenous Peoples transformational social justice through direct activism and education. Most recently, her family participated as Water Protectors in the NoDapl (Dakota Access Pipeline) movement, slated to run beneath Lake Oahe, the only water source for communities on Standing Rock Sioux. Her next research project will address the crisis of water shortages throughout southwest Native territories.
An activist-poet by trade, Salvia has performed on countless stages ranging from the National Women’s Conference to dive bars, addressing international and domestic violence against Indigenous women and children. She is a published poet, a socialist, and abolitionist. Currently, she is performing from her collection of poems in Red Sinew and is writing her second political-personal book called Sexicon, embedded in queer theory.