atatobu isherikeili
new beginnings through old world medicine
Adela Nieves Martinez is a visual storyteller, traditional community health practitioner, and Carrier of the Wisdom of the Heart. The familial lineages she knows most deeply are her Boricua/Puerto Rican roots and Taino ancestry (and is learning more everyday). She has worked closely with Mexica, Meso-American, and Aztec traditions and is grateful to be included as ceremonial family.
Adela (meaning Noble) was named by her kindhearted grandfather Melquiades. He asked if she could be named after his first love, the person he couldn’t be with but never forgot. Named after the strength of the unforgotten, it makes sense that her path ahead would be the honoring of relationships, and always connected to the heart.
As a child she was called Ada (also meaning noble) and as a teenager, Adi/Ady (again, meaning noble). Adela’s name was americanized to Adele (guess what that means?) by her father, and she reclaimed the correct pronunciation “Adela” almost 12 years ago. Before 2011, you will find a good portion of her work under the name Adele. As in any good Boricua household, things flow well when someone has at least 10 nicknames. She is ok with folx calling her Adele, although she prefers Adela.
Adela’s practice explores the intersection of healing and the creation of collective memory. Her work has always sought to build cultural connections, call forward ancestral knowledge, and evolve our collective definitions of health and wholeness.
Her passion for mixed-media storytelling includes the curation of spaces, media installations, writing projects, and film. Adela’s most recent video project “10 Years Later” (2020) is a continuation of an archival docuseries which began in 2010. Through community interviews of Detroit activists, it explores the connections between local and global movements that are working to create alternative systems and practices. In the juxtaposition of the two pieces, her vision of preserving collective memory comes to life.
Her words can also be found in Sonia Renee Taylor and adrienne maree brown’s Institute for Radical Permission 12-week course – Unit 4.
And, the recently released book HEALING JUSTICE LINEAGES: DREAMING AT THE CROSSROADS OF LIBERATION, COLLECTIVE CARE, AND SAFETY by Cara Page and Erica Woodland, Foreward by Aurora Levins Morales.
Over the last 20 years, Adela’s leadership, writing, art, healing, facilitation, administrative and communication work has appeared across several mediums including the US Social Forum, Essence, ZNet, Bitch, Allied Media Conference, make/shift, Left Turn, SPEAK! Women of Color Media Collective, Vivirlatino, Shetroit.com, B.L.A.C. Magazine, Scholar & Feminist Online and many other spaces.
Adela has also spent a good portion of her life restoring the traditional practices from her family, and now living on the island of her people – Boriké (known as Puerto Rico). She has worked with Traditional healers from around the world, sharing and learning lessons, strategies, and healing traditions. In 2015 she founded Healing by Choice!, a circle of women and gender non-conforming healing justice practitioners based in Waawiyatanong (Detroit). She remains committed to their work.
Today, Adela’s journey of care and creation is rooted in the urgent need to restore our connections to each other, creatively and practically, and with Atabey/Mother Earth. For her, now more than ever it is important that we remember who we are and strive to undo how we are defined externally by keeping our stories alive, together.
She finds joy and breath barefoot in the grass, resting in a hammock, and dancing with her six-year-old.
*Bo’matum to all my teachers known and unknown, beginning with my maternal grandmother Carmen (Indigenous Espiritismo), Aracoel Margarita ‘Kuku-ya’ Nogueras Vidal (Taino), Paula Terrero (Reiki), Don Alberto Ramirez (Aztek-Mexicatl Danza), Arocoel Michael Lopez (Taino), Rita Navarrete Perez (Meso-American Curanderismo), Toñita Gonzales (Meso-American Curanderismo), Sylvia Ledesma (Mexica), Abuela Celia Perez-Booth (Mexicatl/Lipan Apache), Cara Page (Healing Justice), Olatokunboh Obasi (African Cosmology/Taino), Schantell Puameole Taylor (Kanaka Moli), Matt Birkhold (transformative cultural practices), Yuketi (Taino), Matthew Cross (life, love and film) and many others.
My Journey
- Prestar atención – Parte uno / Paying attention – Part oneIndigenous Caribbean wisdom will tell you, they/we know when storms are coming because the trees are heavy and ripe with fruit. They produce them a couple of weeks before. – Maestro Gabriel (Escuela Micael) Social media posts reminding us that our grandparents and great grandparents knew when bad weather was coming because the two-sided leafContinue reading “Prestar atención – Parte uno / Paying attention – Part one”
- La Cura Podcast“Healing By Choice! joins La Cura from Detroit, Michigan and they bring all the wisdom and nourishment you didn’t know you needed. Adela Nieves Martinez, Marcia Lee and Amanda Hill, all members and healing arts practitioners share their story and their spiritual perspective on this moment, their take on collective care and what this pandemicContinue reading “La Cura Podcast”
- Will See Music Music Visual “Weak (Love Is) ft. Adela Nieves MartinezWill See Music just debuted a new Music Visual “Weak (Love Is) featuring Adela Nieves Martinez, directed by Bridget Quinn – Awe Society.
Does a Movement Need a Name?
Website Designer: Cassandra Lopez Fradera
Adela Nieves Martinez 