The lush Shenandoah Valley, which I’m grateful to call home, offers the perfect place for my family to garden, forage, and cook our traditional foods. Although far from our Choctaw community, I sought out opportunities to learn more through visiting family. My sister and I also grew up around traditional foods, like our heirloom squashes and corn, and those experiences grounded my understanding of Indigenous foodways from an early age.

Angélica Noel Lozano-Romines became an aunt at the age of seven. As the youngest of five, Lozano-Romines often took care of her nieces and nephews. That experience solidified what she had always known: that she wanted to support children and their development.

Lozano-Romines grew up in a predominantly BIPOC community in Ardmore, Okla., then moved to a smaller rural area for high school, where only a few students looked like her. This experience gradually led her to assimilate, which resulted in experimenting with blue-colored contacts during her early college years.