Recently, we lost one of our good friends and collaborators to Pancreatic Cancer. She was only 49. Kristela Cortez was one of three co-founders of the San Antonio Mission Indian Descendants and was instrumental in bringing awareness to the cause of helping Native Americans living in Texas to reconnect not only to their next of kin through genealogy testing, but also inspiring many others to reconnect with the native ancestral traditions and culture. It was only a few years ago that she herself realized that she was Lipan Apache after doing the genetic testing, and was inspired to help others find their own roots.
In December of 2022, she agreed to sit down with me for a filmed interview, as part of an on-going project called American Voice, which is a repository of stories revolving around the conversation of being native and what it means. As part of an ongoing anthology from all over the Americas, our mission of this project is also to reconnect native families that have been separated and displaced by war and other major events, and to preserve native traditions and culture.