Eva Castellanoz
 Eva stands in front of a mural painted by youth she organized into a work party in Ontario, Oregon. Mexican (Mechica) Traditional healer and maker of coronas and ceremonial objects "Our rituals, our life is so precious, and I feel and know because of experience that it should be on earth." Eva grows special herbs and plants in her garden to use in healing ceremonies.Eva Castellanoz was born in Guanajuato, Mexico. Her family moved to Pharr, Texas when she was very young. She grew up in a migrant agricultural community that traveled annually from southern Texas to eastern Oregon. Both of her parents were farm workers and traditional healers called curanderos. Over the years, Castellanoz learned healing arts from her parents and, eventually, began practicing in the Snake River Valley of Oregon where she lives. People come from many miles for her help and to purchase her beautiful wax and paper bouquets and coronas or crowns. Castellanoz received a National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1987 for corona making. "Ritual is so important, but sometimes [traditions] get torn, yanked... not that they are forgotten. As I go through my life, I see that these affirmations were what kept us as a close family."
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