We’re looking forward to introducing you to Chiara Beaumont. Check out our conversation below.
Hi Chiara, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: What is a normal day like for you right now?
A normal day begins with me waking up when the sun comes up and doing a morning routine that involves skin care, general hygiene, getting dressed, and hair care while listening to the radio. I try to not get on any social media or internet for at least the first 30m of being conscious. Then I have until 2pm (usually) to get small errands, emails, meetings, planning done. Maybe it’s drafting out an expected budget for the next month or hopping on a call with someone who requested to meet with me, or picking up prints that have been ordered and preparing them to sale. If I have energy (or if my body allows it) It’s within this slot that I’ll move my body as well, climbing, walking, swimming, then a sauna session and cold plunge. After all this, I head to my “9 to 5” (which isn’t technically my 9 to 5 since it is really my 4 to 9 and I only have it 4 days a week) which I am lucky to enjoy. After that, I get to head back home where I do my evening routine. I close out on any messages and emails I might have had that were waiting, I shower then have a cup of tea to help me sleep concluded by general hygiene, skin care, and dressing down for bed. I boop around on my phone for a little bit sometimes, but always try to be eyes closed in bed by 12a.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I wear a lot of hats. Online you can see I’m listed as having two primary roles “Indigenous Resistance Educator” and “Indigenous Resistance Artist” while that about covers it, I also am Language Keeper for my tribe and do whatever it is I am able to do to help. So, to be an “Indigenous Resistance Educator” can be boiled down to me offering an ‘indigenous’ perspective on everyday morals, values, ideologies that we were taught as Americans that challenges them in a healthy way and begins to unpack their origins of violence and suppression. We get to “decolonize” the way we view things like communication, our relationship with the outdoors, art, (and more). I travel around and speak on panels, give lectures, and workshops on this topic as well as create collages inspired by resistance work as well. It’s a niche field to be in that is special to hold because this isn’t a topic you can really study up on and have enough information to provide talks about. This information is thousands of years in the making and is a collective effort of the work not just I have done, but my tribe and our surrounding community has done to survive this long in the face of all the injustices we have faced. These wisdoms that are shared are not mine, but rather a collection of teachings passed down, remembered, and shared with intention over the course of many many generations, reworded and presented in a contemporary setting, so that us (the contemporary american) might understand it better.
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
Lucky (and not so lucky at times) for me the world has always seen me for who I am and it has remained this way, unchanging, for as long as I can remember. The world has told me many things about myself: “You are a brown girl, you will have to work hard” “You are an Indigenous girl, you will feel alone” “You are a Karankawa girl, you must represent your people” “You are a minority, you will have to push forward”
The world took me at face value: brown eyes, tan skin, dark hair, and told me that I would use this body to give a message of what ‘people like me’ can do.
-and I have always been up to the challenge. Throughout the years I am more ready than others, and as the years go by I get better and better at being who the world has always known I am. I am lucky that I have always been aligned with the soft whispers of the world and trust their honest reflection of my presence on it while I’m here. I know this isn’t the case for everyone, but for me, when I heard the world telling me who to be it aligned with who I wanted to be and who I always was any way. A Karankawa girl.
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Suffering taught me that it is as natural and inevitable as success is. That it is all around us and it is coming for us, if we aren’t already at its table.
It taught me true humility in my body and spirit and that all things pass, the good and the bad. I truly believe that old saying is true “Nothing good lasts forever” and especially because of this, I hold on to the good times very fondly and appreciate them every step of the way.
Suffering taught me that it is natural to be uncomfortable, to ache and grieve, to tear and suffer. but that (like all things) it is cyclical. Though it might take a long time, the time surely passes. Just like the growing things on the earth who get sick and injure. Not always will it be that way. But you can be sure that suffering is coming.
So, until it gets here (I just left a very tremendous bout of suffering myself, haha) I get to feel gratefulness and humility. Excitement and hope. I learn more about myself every time I get to suffer.
And I suppose that I would rather suffer than be dead.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. Is the public version of you the real you?
The public version of me is just a part of me!
Who I am in private amongst loved ones AND who I am in private all ‘by myself” are very different people with a lot more depth and nuance to them.
In public I am aware of my surroundings and everything in them (noises, smells, sensations, people, plants, animals) and so the person I am is constantly reacting (or intentionally not reacting) to these stimuli. It is like anxiety. I am hyper aware of my place in this all and try reacting appropriately, this falls on a spectrum of “blending in” to “standing out” and takes effort from my person that I do not extend when I am among closed family and friends or on my own. But all this is a part me, and so therefore is the real me 🙂
It’s just a small part of the real me.
Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: Are you doing what you were born to do—or what you were told to do?
I am absolutely doing what I was born to do.
For I was told that I could do anything I wanted to do by my mother.
– and only ever told that I was a brown minority girl by the world.
I get to have the unique experience of living authentically in my own skin, inspired by my own life experiences and those that came before me (who without, I would not be here) and create a life out of that. A successful one at that.
I’ve never been one to follow orders anyways, resistance is in my DNA. So if ever someone “told” me to do or be something, naturally I just wouldn’t take them seriously at all if they weren’t already a pillar in my life that had shown to me not just their input being valuable, but that they had followed their own advice first.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://karankawas.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karankawachicharra/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiara-beaumont-b16271150/
