Season 6, Episode 11: Jenny McGrath, Renee Begay, and Rebecca W. Walston on Resilience and Die De Los Metros

Guest Bio: Renee Kylestewa Begay is from the Pueblo of Zuni in Southwest New Mexico. She is a mother to three daughters and married to high school sweetheart Donnie Begay. During her undergrad, she founded the Nations movement—a national ministry...

Good morning. It's October 30th, 2025. Can you believe it? So I'm releasing these videos. Today's videos on resilience. Four distinct cultures coming at you. Jenny McGrath. Me, Danielle, my friend Renee Begay from New Mexico and Rebecca Wheeler, Walston. Tune in, listen to the distinctly different places we're coming from and how we're each thinking about resilience. And then find a way that that impacts you and your own community and you can create more resilience, more generosity, more connection to one another. It's what we need in this moment. Oh, and this is The Arise Podcast, and it's online. If you want to download, listen to it. There you can as well.

 

 

 

Renee Begay (00:14):

Okay, cool. Okay, so for those watching my introduction, I'll do it in my language. So my name is Renee Bega. I just spoke in my language, which is I'm from the Pueblo of Zuni tribe in Southwest New Mexico, and I shared the way that we relate to one another. So you share the clan system that you're from. So being a matrilineal society, we belong to our, there's lineage and then we are a child of our father's side of the family. And so I belong to the Sandhill Crane clan as my mom is my grandma. And then my daughters are Sandhill Crane, and then I'm a child of the Eagle Clan, which is my dad's side. So if I do introduce myself in Zuni and I say these clans, then people know, oh, okay, you're from this family, or I'm, or if I meet others that are probably Child of Crane, then I know that I have responsibility toward them. We figure out responsibility toward each other in the community and stuff, who's related to all those things. Yeah. And here in New Mexico, there are 19 Pueblo tribes, two to three Apache tribes, and then one Navajo nation tribe. So there's a large population of indigenous tribes here in New Mexico. So grateful and glad to be here.

(02:22):

Yeah. I guess I can answer your question about what comes to mind with just the word resilience, but even you saying a d Los Muertos, for me that was like, oh, that's self-determination, something that you practice to keep it going, to remember all those things. And then when you mentioned the family, Jenny, I was like, I think I did watch it and I looked on my phone to go look for it, and I was like, oh yeah, I remember watching that. I have a really short-term memory with books or things that I watch. I don't remember exactly details, but I know how I felt. And I know when I was watching that show, I was just like, whoa, this is crazy.

(03:12):

So yes, I remember watching that docuseries. And then I think Rebecca, when you're talking about, I was thinking through resilience feels like this vacillation between different levels, levels of the individual in relation to the community, how much do we participate in self discovery, self-determination, all those things, but then also connect it to community. How do we continue to do that as a community to stay resilient or keep practicing what we've been taught? But then also generationally too, I think that every generation has to figure out based on their experience in this modern world, what to do with the information and the knowledge that is given to us, and then how to kind of encourage the next generation too. So I was just thinking of all those scenes when I was listening to you guys.

Rebecca (04:25):

Yeah, when you said the generational thing that each generation has to decide what to do with the information given to them. This past weekend in the last week or so was that second New Kings march, and there's some conversation about the fact that it was overwhelmingly white and in my community that conversation has been, we weren't there. And what does that mean, right? Or the noticing that typically in this country when there are protests around human rights, typically there's a pretty solid black contingency that's part of that convers