Elina Rios
Elena is an ANFT Certified Nature & Forest Therapy Guide. Holding a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, she is an interdisciplinary artist, author, and proud mother of a son who is a healthcare practitioner, outdoorsman, and avid surfer. She draws inspiration from the stories of her late grandmother, a curandera, who applied her traditional plant medicine knowledge by offering holistic healing and bone setting services in her San Fernando, CA neighborhood. She has gratitude for the support from those relatives who helped her to cultivate a lifelong relationship to land and place in the foothills of Sequoia National Forest. As a young adult, she worked on such specialized wildland firefighting crews as Interagency Hot Shots, at a time when women were just beginning to do so. She strives to assist with traditional circles of learning rooted in Indigenous Knowledge to help build support for women, veterans, first responders, and others through these ways that have been passed down by elders and teachers of the past. Her work is informed by Mexican ceremonial traditions. At present, she makes her home on Chumash land in “Awha’y (Ojai), CA. Currently she is also an employee of the Chumash Fire Department, Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Mission Indians. A native Californian, she is an Indigenous Nahua/Chicana woman with mixed European ancestry.