Tracy L. Barnett is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, Yes! Magazine, Reuters, Earth Island Journal and USA Today, among others. She is the founding editor of the Esperanza Project.
Third Annual Prayer Horse Ride traverses Native mine-affected communities in Nevada
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 […]
2023: Hope Amidst the Chaos, and a Closing of the Cycles
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 […]
Saying Farewell to a Legend
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.
Mexico: Fighting the Heat Wave with Memes and Prayers
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 […]
Oaxaca Mural Documents Struggle to Defend Native Corn
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 […]
A family lost and found — and the ongoing menace to Indigenous land defenders
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 […]
Remembering Joye Braun: Water Protector, Grandmother, Revolutionary
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, […]
Vision Council - Guardians of the Earth returns after 5-year hiatus
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 […]
Sacred Earth: Gathering the voices of the protectors of Amerikua
An interview with Ivan Sawyer, founder of Voices of Amerikua, on Sacred Earth, his new series on Indigenous Ecology
Wixarika Caravan to AMLO: We Want Our #LandBack
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 […]
Renovation of the World in Wirikuta
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 […]
Wixárika Invitation Inspires 'Mirror Altars' Around the World
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. […]
Enlightening Our Way Together - Best of 2021
As the year draws to a close, I pause to wish you all a happy Solstice season and reflect on what we’ve been able to accomplish this year: the publication of 70 stories in English and 51 in Spanish, together with our first transmedia series, a bilingual film and three related articles and the presentation […]
Moira Millán: 'A telluric movement is awakening the women of the Earth'
Moira Millán is a force to be reckoned with — a weychafe in the Mapuche tradition, or as she explains it, a warrior, a fighter, a defender. “To be a Weychafe is to be the defense of the territory, the defense of life. And that is the spirit that inhabits me.” Moira had just traveled […]
Mexican Village Sets International Precedent in Water Conflict Resolution
After nearly 17 years of creative resistance and six visits from the man who is now Mexico’s president – three of them in recent months — the tiny colonial town of Temacapulín stands poised to become a model in the resolution of water-related conflicts.
Cosmology & Pandemic is live!!! And making waves throughout the world
“You have accomplished the impossible! 30 communities with 14 film crews in remote locations in 6 different countries… to pull all of that together and deliver this important message is a feat of epic proportions.” “I am stirred deeply by the messages coming from these communities and individuals as they help us see the pandemic […]
The Arhuacos: A Message from the Mamos, the Prophets of the Sierra Nevada
When news of Covid-19 came to the enigmatic white-clad peoples of the high Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, nobody was very surprised. Trained since birth in the ways of looking to Nature for guidance, these spiritual guides of the Sierra Nevada predicted this pandemic and other current crises decades ago.
The Misaks: Balance and Harmony as Medicine
For the peaceful Misak people of Colombia’s Andean region, harmony and balance are the most important medicines, and they are willing to fight for them.
The Kamëntšá Biyá: Land Use Planning in Defense of the Sacred
Territorial planning is sacred work for the Kamëntsá Biyá people of the Upper Putumayo region in Colombia. Their approach reflects a radically different view of land use — one that is integrally connected with their view of public health.
A journey through ancient cultures during the pandemic that shook the world
Cosmology & Pandemic: What We Can Learn From Indigenous Responses to the Current Health Crisis is many things at once. It’s a transmedia series — meaning a series of articles and films and other forms of media that work together in concert. In this case, it’s a collaboration between my longtime friend and colleague, Argentine […]
Celebrating Katira: 65 Years of Magic and Activism
I met Juan José Uxamuire “Katira” Ramírez 10 years ago this coming February. I had just come down from the mountaintop of Cerro Quemado, the Birthplace of the Sun, along with about a thousand other pilgrims, gathered there in a historic all-night ceremony to pray for the salvation of the sacred desert of Wirikuta from […]
AMLO Comes to Temaca, the Town That Refuses to Drown
Saturday, Aug. 14, was a day that would be marked as a turning point in the history of Temaca. And the Carbajal sisters, together with scores of other defenders of the historic village, would be ready.
Ecobarrios Program changes lives while changing neighborhoods
Antonio Sánchez Gramiño was always one of those who would shake is head and laugh when he heard people talk about changing the world. It’s not that he didn’t care; he’s always been ecologically minded. It bothered him to see people wasting water and creating trash. It’s just that he thought it was a lost cause.
“I used to call them pendejos (fools),” he told me with a laugh. “Now, I’m one of those pendejos.”
Conversations with LaDonna and Cheryl
Many thousands this past weekend were hit hard by the news that we had lost a living treasure on Earth, the inimitable and irreplaceable LaDonna Allard. The Lakota historian, water protector and Standing Rock movement founder had been struggling for a long time with brain cancer. And even though those of us who love her […]