Red Medicine: Traditional Indigenous Rites of Birthing and Healing

About the Author

273 About the Author As the granddaughter of Kickapoo, Comanche, and Macehual peoples who migrated across present-day United States and Mexico, Patrisia Gonzales specializes in Indigenous ways of knowing and Indigenous medicine. She descends from several generations of traditional healers. She obtained her PhD in mass communications from the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She has received human rights awards for her national columns and for her book The Mud People: Chronicles, Testimonios and Remembrances (Chusma 2003). As a Kellogg Fellow, she explored community healing. She helped to establish a promotora project on traditional medicine in New Mexico. She is a promotora of Mexican Indigenous medicine. She apprentices with Nahua elders as a traditional birth attendant. She has coordinated traditional wellness treatments at women’s centers, at Indigenous gatherings, and for survivors of violence. She is faculty in the Department of Mexican American Studies and affiliated faculty in American Indian Studies and the Native American Research and Training Center at the University of Arizona. She teaches courses about traditional Indigenous medicine (TIM) and conducts collaborative research with Indigenous knowledge keepers on TIM. ...