I'm Hi, Hi, Matakiapi, this is Nick Estes, live with the Red Nation podcast.

We are joined by a special guest, a friend of mine, somebody who I met on this journey,

doing Red Nation work.

It's J.J. Otero.

JJ, do you want to introduce yourself to our audience here and maybe talk a little about what you do?

Sure. Sure thing. Good morning. Nick's been a while since we've talked, but

like you said, we've met on some lonely reservation roads down on the Navajo Nation years ago.

So yeah, but my name is JJ Otero. I'm a full-time artist.

What that means is very fluid.

In this case, what we're highlighting is I do,

I've been playing music for years ever since I was in high school.

And so I've always written songs, and, and so that's, that's one of my, that's the thing

I fell in love with years ago as a teenager, being able to sing.

And it's mostly singing that I, that I enjoy.

I play guitar just to accompany myself.

And so that's, that's kind of the beginning of what,

you know, being an artist for me was. And then so now currently, I work full time as a,

as a silversmith. So I make jewelry. And so it's, it's another, it's a means to make a living.

And I really, really absolutely enjoy it because I was able to unplug from the system or corporate

corporatism and just be able to make a living for myself and my family and my needs are met.

And it's a very craft, excuse me, craft-oriented industry.

And yet, same time, it's really fulfilling in terms of being free from a lot of the stuff that comes with corporate world.

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