Yesterday, in an explosion of celebration, dance, music and pure love, the Peace and Dignity Journeys runners from the North — the Route of the Eagle — met their counterparts from the Route of the Condor. It was a long-awaited encounter south of Bogotá, Colombia, with runners that started their journey in Alaska in May, […]

Para leer este artículo en Español ir a Defendiendo lo Sagrado en Colombia: Un Llamado a la Acción Today I write to you from the “Heart of the World,” the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, where Indigenous communities—the Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa, and Kankuamo peoples—are facing intensifying violence after decades fighting to defend their land and […]

Today in the Aztec calendar is Ce Xochitl, One Flower. A single flower for the bereft. A flower on the grave of the hope that we could rise above, that we could at last be a peacefully coexisting multicultural nation coming home to the fact of the diversity that is our strength. For the hope […]

Dear readers: As you may have noticed, it’s been a long dry spell. We just sent our first newsletter since June; while Mother Earth has been busy prodigiously giving fruit, cereal, root and seed for human and non-human sustenance, this land has been lying fallow. But harvest time brings the fruit of that period of […]

Grandfather’s vision about ‘gallons and gallons’ of Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara seeds nurtures tribal college food sovereignty project. Dr. Ruth Plenty Sweetgrass-She Kills recalls when her grandfather, Gerard Baker, shared with her some seeds – and his dream that they would multiply. “His wish was that there would be gallons and gallons of jars of these seeds […]

Good news! After three long years of labor, we are showing Legacy of the Andes, the long-awaited second part of our Cosmology & Polycrisis (formerly Cosmology & Pandemic) transmedia series, at the Cosmology & Polycrisis website (cosmocrisis.com). All proceeds from the rent and purchase of the films go to support our independent transmedia work to […]

Over 250 Indigenous representatives and allies unite to forge Sacred Covenant at Palenque’s ancient ceremonial center. It was a scene that could have played out a thousand years ago, or more. Amid a cluster of ancient Mayan temples, a rainbow-hued assemblage of Indigenous elders and young leaders formed a ceremonial circle. They looked on as […]

Walkers, runners, riders join to honor memory of journalist, a defender of land and culture Josh Dini learned and practiced his calling as a water protector under the tutelage of Myron Dewey, his elder brother. Dewey was a beloved Paiute Shoshone filmmaker, photojournalist and drone pilot who founded Digital Smoke Signals. This independent media outlet […]

This past year has been a tough one for many. Devastating wars in Gaza and the Ukraine have taken their toll far beyond their excruciating epicenters. Climate change is no longer a future foretold but a reality unfolding before our eyes. An uncertain economy has been further fueled by tens of thousands of layoffs spurred […]

I learned the news when I was in the middle of a meeting. The notification sounded and I checked my screen – I could only see the last words from a dear friend, “…he was suffering so much.”

In a heartbeat I knew. Alberto was gone.

It’s been nearly three weeks since I left the suffocating conditions of a Mexican heat wave to land right in the middle of another one in Missouri. This one was a little cooler — 94 degrees instead of 98. Along with the Southwestern US, Mexico is suffering a brutal heat wave — but with a […]

In a noisy entrance to one of the oldest markets in Oaxaca City, not far from one of the sites where corn culture originated  9,000 years ago, muralist Mariel García stood on a scaffold in the hot sun for three weeks and painted her heart out. The mural she was creating, more than a year […]

This weekend has been a frightening one for many here in Mexico — at least among the people who care about the land and our Indigenous peoples. The social media networks were on fire after it was announced that a longtime friend, Wixárika land defender and attorney Santos de la Cruz Carrillo, had disappeared on […]

In a green valley of Central Mexico, below the distinctive humpbacked mountains that stand like guardians over the itinerant ecovillage that was taking form in the forest near Tepoztlan, the resonant call of the caracol, or conch shell, rang out from the sacred fire before sunrise: It was time to begin the activities of the […]

Last week we lost a powerful voice in the Water Protector and Climate Justice movements. Joye Braun (Wambli Wiyan Ka’win) of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Nation passed away at her home on Sunday, November 13th. Her untimely death at 53 leaves a void that no one can fill.  Esperanza Project contributing editor Talli Nauman, […]

Renowned artists, healers, wisdom keepers, scientists and changemakers will be among the participants in a unique transformational gathering that celebrates its 16th encounter with “Embrace of the Amate” in Tepoztlan, Morelos — returning to the place where it was born.  The Vision Council has been carried out for more than 30 years and “has been […]

One of the principal founders of the Vision Council – Guardians of the Earth is also an icon for the World Rainbow Community since the seventies. “Coyote” Alberto Ruz Buenfil is a visionary revolutionary who has been planting seeds of change in every step of his way.  Alberto, a native of Mexico born in 1945, […]

Archaeologists, anthropologists and members of the indigenous communities of Guatemala are making an appeal to the Guatemalan government to reject a controversial bill affecting the administration of the country’s archaeological sites. Law 5923, called “Rescue of Pre-Hispanic Heritage,” has been proposed as a matter of national urgency both by the Ministry of Culture and Sports […]

In a forceful step against corruption and discrimination, San Sebastián voted to manage their own federal tax dollars — joining the ranks of a growing number of indigenous communities in Mexico. And they will do so with women at the table under an agreement of gender parity, a rarity among Indigenous governments and, indeed, governments in general.

An interview with Ivan Sawyer, founder of Voices of Amerikua, on Sacred Earth, his new series on Indigenous Ecology

Mothers pushing baby carriages, grandmothers and grandfathers in their 70s and even a man in a wheelchair joined the ranks of the 200 Indigenous Wixárika people making their way nearly 1,000 kilometers along the sweltering highways of México in a generations-long battle to recover their stolen lands. The Wixárika Caravan for Dignity and Justice departed […]

On the night of March 18, 2022, a full moon rose over the Cerro del Quemado, the mountain known to the Wixárika people as the Birthplace of the Sun, to reveal an unforgettable sight. Hundreds of Wixaritari – elders, youth, children, mothers and fathers with babies in their arms – encircled the concentric rings of […]

Two years ago, Clement Guerrá was immersed in the film project of his life: The Condor & the Eagle, an award-winning environmental justice film documenting the fight of Indigenous people from Canada to the Amazon to defend their territories from petroleum, mining and other extractive industries. But for the French filmmaker, making the film was […]

It is that time of year again, when, since time immemorial, the Wixárika people are preparing their offerings. The candles of life, the chaquira gourd bowls, the God’s eyes, the prayer arrows. They are beginning to retrace the arduous journey of their ancestors, carried out every year in sacred reciprocity for the gift of life.  […]