Born during the height of Summer in Southern California, in the midst of local Fiesta celebrations of 1992, Elias Matisz-Cordero is an indigenous actor-poet-thinker-life student-activist of Chumash heritage. An openly queer individual, Eli enjoys sabotaging prevailing hetero-normative social concepts of gender and sexuality, prefers mixed gender pronouns and drinks hot chocolate instead of coffee. At ten years old, Eli wrote a bilingual poem entitled “Sxamin Chantik (The Ocean)”, which incorporated a Chumash to English language translation of a child’s ode to the sea and was subsequently published in News from Native California. Presently, he is reluctantly attending college courses while continuing the trend of independent study and creative exploration which she considers most conducive to her character and interests.
Some of Eli’s favorite poets, writers and artists include: Oscar Wilde, Joanna Newsom, Anais Nin, Andrea Gibson, J.R.R. Tolkien and The Beatles.
