By Tracy L. Barnett For Thomson Reuters News Service LA YESCA, Mexico, Dec 19 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Audelina Villagrana has run her ranch in Mexico’s Western Sierra Madre mountains on her own since the death of her husband 23 years ago, herding livestock, hiring local Huichol people and even raising a young Huichol boy like […]

By Tracy L. Barnett STEELE, N.D., Dec 8 – We only made it 70 miles from Oceti Sakowin Camp in Standing Rock when a whiteout and fierce winds forced us to seek refuge in this tiny town, where the Kidder County Ambulance District and a wonderful EMT nurse named Mona Thompson took us in like […]

Tracy L. Barnett Intercontinental Cry A contingent of at least 1,000 indigenous Wixárika (Huichol) people in the Western Sierra Madre are gearing up to take back their lands after a legal decision in a decade-long land dispute with neighboring ranchers who have held the land for more than a century. Ranchers who have been in […]

By Tracy L. Barnett For El Daily Post Photo courtesy International Rivers In the strange world of Mexican water politics, things got a bit stranger this week as a citizen’s coalition filed a formal complaint with the state auditor’s office regarding a $4.6 million hydrological study by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) […]

Story and photos by Tracy L. Barnett For The Washington Post Two weathered gravestones sit in a small, dusty rectangle in front of the grand Spanish church at the heart of the nation’s newest UNESCO World Heritage Site, the San Antonio Missions. I’ve been to Mission San Jose many times — to attend the lively […]

Story and photos by Tracy L. Barnett For El Daily Post While most people were celebrating the holidays, others  from Canada to Mexico mourned the loss of a leading Wixarika scholar and teacher, a cultural ambassador and an indigenous activist whose work on behalf of indigenous unity spanned North America. Yuka+ye Jesús Lara Chivarra’s path […]

Tracy L. Barnett for El Daily Post It was one of those heartwarming victories that can renew your faith in the possibility of achieving justice peacefully. Mountain villagers in Ahuisculco, Jalisco, who had camped out for months in front of bulldozers were finally able to broker a land swap with the sugar company that was […]

Tracy L. Barnettfor El Daily Post The battle to defend the natural springs of clear water might not only have gotten this Jalisco community to protect its natural resources, it might also have unified the residents like never before. “It’s been very heartening to see that our people are staying strong and committed despite the […]

Tracy L. Barnett for El Daily Post The Jalisco village of Ahuisculco was one of the few places in Mexico where residents could open their taps and drink fresh, clean water. But an anonymous corporation moved in last September and began digging. After a while, the villagers’ crystal-blue springs ran a muddy brown. That’s when the […]

By Tracy L. Barnett For Magis Magazine Rob Hopkins is one face of the Transition movement, but there are many more. In the Spanish-speaking world and particularly in Spain one of those faces is Juan Del Rio. Del Rio, author of a new book in Spanish on the movement of transition, La Guía del Movimiento de Transición (February […]

Above: Transition Network founder Rob Hopkins, left, grants an interview to Raul Velez at the train station in Totnes, England, birthplace of the Transition movement. (Raul Velez photo) By Tracy L. Barnett For Magis Magazine One of the early Transition Town initiatives was launched in Ensenada, Baja California, by an American expat, Robert Frey. Frey went to […]

By Tracy L. Barnett For Magis Magazine Once there lived a permaculturist, far from the city on an old Irish farm. Together with his wife and four children they had nearly finished creating the house of their dreams, a house of cob in a grassy ecovillage with an organic farm. By day he taught permaculture […]

By John Ahni Schertow Intercontinental Cry For over two decades, the United Nations has observed the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on August 9. An effort to promote and help protect the rights of the world’s Indigenous Peoples, each year the event is attributed to a specific theme. This year, the theme is […]

Phil Moore and Lauren Simpson Permaculture People Editor’s note: We are very happy to share with you the sixth short film, Animal-Free Farming,  in Lauren and Phil’s new documentary film series Living with the Land for Permaculture Magazine. A pioneer in plant-based agriculture, Iain Tolhurst has been a practising organic vegetable producer since 1976. Specialising in a […]

Phil Moore and Lauren Simpson Permaculture People Editor’s note: We are very happy to share with you the third short film, Regenerative Agriculture: Rebuilding the Soil,  in Lauren and Phil’s new documentary film series Living with the Land for Permaculture Magazine. Sitting atop the hills in southwest England overlooking the sea, Village Farm in Devon is a […]

Phil Moore and Lauren Simpson Permaculture People Editor’s note: We are very happy to share with you the second short film, Natural Building,  in Lauren and Phil’s new series Living with the Land for Permaculture Magazine. Natural buildings are an ancient tradition with a modern appeal. Creating healthy, beautiful homes from natural materials such as earth, […]

Story and photos by Ivan Kuxan Suum Ancient Futures Lead photo by Adrian Felipe Pera  The recent Latin American Permaculture Convergence (or CLAP ) was held from the 15th to the 21st of June in Varsana Ecovillage south of Bogota, Colombia. For five consecutive days the different open-air and indoor spaces of the host community hosted a buzzing […]

The film Huicholes: The Last Peyote Guardians has won Best Documentary Film by the Red Nation Film Festival, the premier showcase for Native American and Indigenous film in the United States. The award was shared with The Life, Blood and Rhythm of Randy Castillo, by director Wynn Ponder and producer Johnny Depp. The selection was […]

Por Tracy L. Barnett Traducido por Angélica Narákuri TEMICTLA, México – Si alguna vez hubo duda de que Quetzalcóatl vive, esa duda fue disipada en una luminosa, húmeda y brillante semana en el corazón de México. Aquí en Temictla, un valle sagrado, una pequeña ecoaldea y un centro de retiro espiritual en el borde de […]

The film Huicholes: The Last Peyote Guardians will be on a North American tour with 30+ screenings in more than 20 cities in the United States and Canada, with the U.S. premiere at Rice Theater in Houston, Texas, and theCanadian premiere hosted by Cinema Politica in Montreal, Quebec. The documentary presents the emblematic case of […]

Editor’s note: In November of 2010, as I was winding down my journey through the Americas, documenting sustainability initiatives in the 10 countries I visited, my path crossed with that of Ryan Luckey and Leticia Rigatti, the couple who make up Común Tierra. They were doing exactly what I had wanted to do but ran […]

By Tracy L. Barnett For Truthout Ten years ago, when John “Ahni” Schertow launched the award-winning magazine Intercontinental Cry, about 50 Indigenous Nations led their own front-line struggles to save some of the last intact habitats on Earth from the ravages of modern industrial development. Now more than 500 such struggles are raging around the globe. You’d never […]

José Luis “Katira” Ramírez was serving as the governor of his community of San Andrés Cohamiata, Jalisco, when he met Argentine filmmaker Hernán Vilchez. He was not like any governor Vilchez had ever met.

When Argentine filmmaker Hernán Vílchez made his way up into the remote Wixarika community of San Andrés Cohamiata Tateikie high in the Western Sierra Madre of Mexico, he knew he would be entering another world. What he didn’t know was how deeply it would change his own life.