Teresa Mateus, MSW, is an Indigenous Andean storyteller and ceremonialist born in Bacatá (Bogotá) in Muisca (Muysca) Territory of the Colombian Andes. She is an initiated Q’ero Paqo (Peruvian Andes) in the Apaza family lineage of Indigenous medicine. She received her Master’s in Clinical Social Work from NYU (07′) and spent twenty years as a traumatologist and trauma healer. Teresa is currently a Ph.D. student (3rd yr.) in Ecology, Spirituality and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies with a research focus on diasporic and migratory relationships to ancestral homelands and multispecies kinship carried in the ceremonies and stories across territories, unbordering Indigenous relationships to community, culture, ritual and ancestral memory. She is currently working on a chapbook and parallel multidisciplinary arts project storying in collaboration with Mama Coca (the coca) leaf, narrating past, present, and futurisms from the Andean territories into the Andean diaspora.
Teresa Mateus
