Rooted in Spirit

In her books, Jessica Mehta explores self-realization, cultural pride, and what it means to be an indigenous woman, but the ultimate goal of her stories is to spread awareness and educate non-indigenous people about native culture and history, which unfortunately society tried to erase for many years.

The Cherokee language was the first indigenous American language to have a written form. This syllabary was created by Sequoyah in 1809 and took 12 years to complete. But before written language was invented, native people relied on their verbal language and storytelling traditions to pass customs, legends, and history from one generation to the next. For Mehta, writing and poetry is an extension of Cherokee syllabary and traditional oral storytelling, providing a way to preserve and share native culture. Throughout history, many indigenous people have lost their oral stories and Mehta has found that writing creates a sense of permanency.

Mehta is a poet and novelist, yogi, and outdoor enthusiast from Central Point, Oregon. Growing up as a Native American girl in a small town in the 1980s, she did not experience much diversity. Spending summers on the Cherokee Nation as a kid, she relished spending time with people she could relate with. Eventually, she left home at 15 by herself, relocating to Portland. Mehta attended Portland State University, which had a strong native community.

A person’s environment has a tremendous impact on one’s mental state. Research by the Finnish Forest Research Institute has even shown that just 45 minutes spent outside a day can increase a person’s mood by 20 percent compared to others who choose to remain in the confines of industrial cities. As a native Oregonian, Mehta feels lucky to be surrounded by nature all the time.

“The outdoors is an integral part of daily life for spiritual health, physical health… it’s where I usually get ideas for my creative practice,” she says.

Mehta used reading and writing as an escape during rough times in her childhood and now primarily writes poetry, publishing 15 books, including When We Talk of Stolen Sisters, which won three Human Relation Indie Book Awards, Selected Poems: 20002020 which won the Meadowlark Birdy Prize, and Savagery which won the Reader Views Literary Award for “most innovative poetry collection.”

Writing has provided a sense of self-identity, proving a driving force in her life.

“[Writing] is my best form of communication. I need to write, it’s not a hobby. It’s my way of engaging, it’s my natural language,” says Mehta.

As a child, Mehta’s father taught her about their history as well as stories about growing up in an Indian boarding school. When her father passed away in her mid-20s, Mehta desperately yearned for more stories. Presently, she attends monthly meetings with a Cherokee Nation satellite community called the Mount Hood Cherokees where she can talk to elders from her tribe and connect with others from the eastern band of Cherokees in Oklahoma. Writing about new discoveries of her ancestral lineage has allowed Mehta to heal from past traumas in her life.

Writing is not the only way Mehta connects with her indigenous background. She is also a registered yoga instructor and has practiced since college, but she first took it seriously while living in Costa Rica in 2012. Unhappy with her metro lifestyle, unable to connect with nature, she dug into her practice, undergoing a 200-hour yoga instructor training.

“It’s a transformative experience to be that immersed and in that much of a remote area with just your core group of people,” says Mehta.

Yoga is an ancient practice that began over 5,000 years ago in Northern India, but Native American communities have been incorporating meditation and other spiritual practices into their lives via the natural world for centuries. For Native Americans, environmental connection has always been analogous with spirituality. It wasn’t until the early 19th century that Americans began to recognize nature as a vehicle toward some higher enlightenment. Transcendentalists such as Henry David Thoreau worked to change the stigma that the natural world was full of sin, as many previous philosophers and religious leaders believed. But many of these ancient nature-influencers took credit from the real founders of nature-based spiritualism in America. They failed to recognize that these meditation practices originated from indigenous peoples on the same land before colonization in America.

“As wonderful and inter-religious and transnational as it is to have Eastern religious traditions provide a lens onto the Sierra Nevada, it amplifies a problem. It reflects the inability to perceive the presence of the indigenous people who have lived here for millennia,” explains professor Devin Zuber in an article with Outside magazine titled “How to Practice Nature-Based Spirituality Responsibly.” Even though colonialism tried to minimize traditional healing and mindfulness practices throughout western indigenous culture, many have found modern day yoga to be a pathway for native people to connect with the spiritual practices of their ancestors, including Mehta, who describes it as a “life-saving force,” helping her heal from childhood trauma, family death, and an eating disorder.

“I was at a yoga class and during savasana the teacher asked us to think of three things we loved about ourselves, and I couldn’t think of one. So that was the catalyst for being serious about getting help,” says Mehta.

To support people with similar struggles, Mehta founded a non-profit called Mehtananda which offers free yoga classes to people who either do not have access to or do not feel comfortable in traditional yoga studios. She believes that yoga can help anyone no matter where they are in life, even if they are a beginner.

Mehta feels that if connecting with nature and spirituality can save her daily, it can save others as well.

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