Returning to Our Roots — Why Reclaiming Culture Matters Today with Dakota Camacho

In this conversation, Liv sits down with Dakota Camacho to explore the importance of returning to our cultural roots and why reclaiming ancestral wisdom matters more than ever. Through the lens of CHamoru culture, they reflect on the wisdom of our elders, the values that shape our identity, and how our generation can reconnect to culture and carry these traditions forward.

EPISODE TAKEAWAYS

• Embracing our heritage helps us understand ourselves and our community more deeply
• Traditional practices and language carry the wisdom of our ancestors and keep culture alive
• Cultural knowledge guiding activism strengthens community and supports collective healing
• Art, poetry, and music give us ways to share our stories and find healing
• A culturally connected future grows through community care and sustainable living
• Reconnecting with our roots can be a powerful journey that honors ancestral wisdom

CONNECT WITH DAKOTA

Dakota Camacho is a Matao/CHamoru artist born and raised in Coast Salish Territory who creates indigenizing processes through altar-making, movement, film, music, and prayer. Yo’ña (their) work has been presented across five continents and throughout Oceania. Exploring the intersections of integrity, ancestral and Indigenous lifeways, true love, and accountability, guiya (they) activate a Matao worldview to make offerings toward inafa’maolek—balance and harmony with all of life. Through embodied practice, Camacho generates encounters with self, community, spirit, and the natural world, cultivating spaces where multiple ways of knowing, being, and doing speak to one another in service of collective liberation.

Camacho is a Nia Tero Pacific Northwest Artist Fellow and a Western Arts Alliance Native Launchpad Artist, and has received awards and support from the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, the National Performance Network Creation Fund, NDN Collective’s Radical Imagination Grant, and Creative Capital. They co-founded I Moving Lab, an inter-national, inter-cultural, inter-tribal, and inter-disciplinary arts collective that creates self-funded initiatives connecting rural and urban communities, universities, museums, and performing arts institutions. Camacho holds an M.A. in Performance Studies from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a B.A. in Gender & Women’s Studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison as a First Wave Urban Arts and Hip Hop Scholar, and has taught at UC Santa Cruz and the University of Guåhan, including their self-designed course, “Performing Indigenous Worldviews.

Website: https://www.gimatanguma.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/infinitedakota/?hl=en

CONNECT WITH INA WELLNESS COLLECTIVE

Website: https://www.inawellnesscollective.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inawellnesscollective

WATCH FULL EPISODES ON YOUTUBE

https://www.youtube.com/@inawellness

WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER

Well Within Membership

https://www.inawellnesscollective.com/wellwithin

Rise & Align Group Program

https://www.inawellnesscollective.com/riseandalign

SPECIAL THANKS

This episode was recorded in the beautiful Penthouse Suite at Dusit Beach Resort Guam. Dusit Beach is part of the interconnected Dusit destination resort in Tumon Bay, alongside Dusit Thani Guam Resort and Dusit Place, offering guests a seamless, all-in-one beachfront experience with world-class dining, shopping, and relaxation.

Follow them at @dusitbeachresortguam

View all Offerings at https://www.dusit.com/dusitbeach-resortguam/