Metseri Alba tells the story of how she discovered that her family was secretly indigenous/Native* while working with indigenous communities in Mexico City. In this two part interview series, she describes both her background, why her grandfather hid that background from her, others in their family, and the rest of the world. She also relates her current passion working with indigenous communities in Mexico and her current research in New York City.
Indigenous communities face frequent attempts by Mexican authorities to speak on behalf of them, teach their ways to them, and otherwise impose their will on them. This can manifest as top-down government programs and discrimination by regular people, and even in indigenous urban-dwellers choosing to hide their identity to “get by” in life. Metseri chronicles various ways she has seen indigenous people respond resiliently to this.
While doing so, she weaves in her own story growing in up Mexico City, working with various indigenous communities, and now living in New York City. Through it all, her own sense of identity has evolved as she encounters different ways the communities in each of the places that she lives react to attempts to box them.
(*In Mexico, indigena is the common word for peoples whose heritage proceeds the arrival of Europeans; whereas, in US English, Native has become the preferred word. Out of respect for the Mexican communities themselves, I have decided to use “indigenous,” the closest English parallel to the Spanish term.)