Who I am
My name is Joseph Perez, I am Pima Indian from the Gila River Indian Community in central Arizona. We are descendants of the HoHoKam, who lived in the Gila River valley. The HoHoKam were Masters of Water, sophisticated farmers and understood advanced astronomy, they even recorded the procession of the equinox of the earth.
I say I have lived three lives here on this earth. Military at age 17, seduced by the sea and saw the extraordinary beauty of the world and was witness to the horror mankind can unleash upon itself during the first Gulf War. I then became a casualty of the politics and was RIF’d (reduction in forces) out. My first life ended.
My second life was coming home to help my people within Indian Gaming. I not only drank the “cool aid”, I made it. I believed Indian Gaming would help the individual Indian. It did not. I fought the Indian Country system and my own tribal government to better the lives of the individual Indian. In that process, I became a casualty of politics and corruption of politics. I picked the side of the my people and not corrupt government. I lost everything in the fight for my people, my own tribal government buried me. I Lost my home, my business, my cars, everything. At 51 years of age, with a beautiful wife and three children, I was forced to move from our 6,000 square foot home to my mother’s 2,000 house on the reservation. What they did not know, is we were seeds. My second life ended.
My third life started when my wife, who is a non-Indian (White Girl on the Rez), felt she could not live on my reservation with my mom (Elder who is, well, an Elder). She’d reached her limit, deeply depressed, she even talked “of just ending everything”, we financially and emotionally hit bottom. I took her to the mountains on my reservation, where the energy is powerful to gain some peace. She found some “cool” rocks, proceeded to research them up and in a week sold them on Ebay. From that day forward to today, the world for us changed. I embraced my Native Healing strengths, we went to the emotional foundation of our lives and in the nature of my reservation, we found precious stones and crystals in those mountains. We felt the power and learned they could heal, not only our energy but the energy of others that have the emotional wounds of the world.
The Metaphysical became our headquarters of the third life we live. Here we found the catalyst to make our healing tools, jewelry, crystals and stones to take the knowledge of my people and help those in a world that need healing. That is who I am and why we are here.