Date of Award
2025
Abstract
This capstone explores the evolution, methodology, and spiritual grounding of MILPA (Motivating Individual Leadership for Public Advancement), a Chicano-Indigenous-led movement space rooted in cultural healing and intergenerational leadership. As a formerly incarcerated man, Co-Founder and Executive Director, I document the transformative journey of MILPA from its origins disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline in Salinas, California, to becoming a statewide and national catalyst for justice, cultural healing, and intergenerational leadership. Drawing from Indigenous epistemologies, movement elders, and personal lived experience, this project articulates the core MILPA philosophy through the "Buena Onda" (Good Way) method: a five-step process of leadership rooted in permiso, palabra, platica, proceso, and being a good relative.
Through ethnomethodology, cultural analysis, and narrative inquiry, this work illuminates the commitment MILPA continues to pursue focused on “Cultivating Change Makers for the Next Seven Generations” through culture, consciousness, and movement building. The findings reveal that sustainable leadership for formerly incarcerated and system-impacted individuals must center cultural identity, ancestral practices, intergenerational and collective well-being. By reflecting on both the wisdom and the wounds of movement work, this capstone offers a blueprint for how organizations like MILPA can hold rigor, compassion, and candor while imagining liberated futures.
Program Director
Marie C. Vea Ed.D
Professional Affiliate Coach
Randi Byrd MPS
Document Type
Project
Recommended Citation
Gomez, Juan, "MI PALABRA: CULTURAL HEALING AND INTERGENERATIONAL LEADERSHIP AT MILPA" (2025). Rubenstein School Leadership for Sustainability Project Publications. 51.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/rslspp/51