Jiapsi Gomez

How are you using education to build more sustainable and equitable communities? Tell us about your EE work and impact.

I enjoy creating opportunities for people who typically lack access to scientific equipment and knowledge to experience and engage with these tools. I offer resources to people that often come from underfunded schools and communities yet have brilliant minds or artistic talents, and a willingness to care for the earth. One of our goals is to bring people out into nature, to connect with the land in a more intimate way and become familiar with life as it was before colonization. We additionally tap into modern science and explore how it relates to our cultural teachings. 

Tell us about your journey to where you are today. What inspired you? What has your path been like?

Being an Indigenous person in a colonial era is undoubtedly difficult, in a country with over-policing and militarization that lacks consideration for the environment, compassion for the weak, and empathy for the innocent, while expecting its citizens to bankroll destruction and greed, while our communities suffer.

My parents raised me to be a protector of children, elders, women, the land, and the disabled, and to do it out of the goodness of our hearts instead of the greed of the mind. There is a resonance with all Indigenous cultures around the world that allows us to recognize each other’s hearts, understanding each other’s desires for a safe world to raise our children in, a healthy world that cultivates abundance, and to build relationships unclouded with hatred and mistrust. 

We inevitably stand in solidarity as our struggles are interconnected. Everything we do, we do for our children and for the lives without voices. I’m inspired by those who came before us, in liberation movements, Land Back movements, civil rights movements, telling us that change IS possible. Not only possible, but necessary.

How can people learn more about or support your work?

The best way to tap in is through social media (Instagram: @cenyeliztliseeds, @tierras_indigenas , @pocfungicommunity). Any professional inquiries can be sent through email (jiapsig@tierrasindigenasclt.org) or LinkedIn.

A Little More About Me

What is your superpower? Which of your qualities best fuels the work you do?
My name, Jiapsi, means “heart” in my people’s language. I believe our names can give us power. I try my best to live full of heart, hope, and optimism, to offer my love, patience, and empathy to the deserving. I deeply extend this love towards our non-human relatives, who are often the last to be considered and are often feared. An uncle of mine taught me that “empathy is a universal language extended beyond human life.”

If you could be any animal or plant, what would you be and why?
I would like to reincarnate as a jellyfish in the next life so I can live a life as a brainless creature, drifting with the ocean currents, unconcerned.

What book, film, or art piece has had the greatest impact on you?
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.