UPDATE: Zoom Into the Huichol Center was a huge success with thousands joining from across the globe as Founder Susana Valadez and her team reported live from the Center’s remote headquarters in Mexico’s Western Sierra Madre. Susana shared with us the ways in which Covid-19 is transforming the continued operation of the Huichol Center, an […]

Earth Day 2020 marked a milestone for The Esperanza Project. We took our first baby steps into the world of broadcasting with our very first online program: Esperanza is the Antidote, a lineup of Esperanza Project collaborators from the USA to Argentina.

Editor’s Note: Standing Rock movement founder LaDonna Allard left this life on April 10, 2021, after a battle with brain cancer at the age of 64. Mourners from around the world joined hearts on social media for days afterwards. Here we share a telephone interview with LaDonna from August of 2019. When LaDonna Brave Bull […]

Lyla June on Renovating Native Foodways as a Path to Sovereignty

For Sicangu Lakota water protector Cheryl Angel, Standing Rock helped her define what she stands against: an economy rooted in extraction of resources and exploitation of people and planet. It wasn’t until she’d had some distance that the vision of what she stands for came into focus. “Now I understand that sustainable sovereign economies are needed to […]

In the harrowing days of the Standing Rock resistance to the Black Snake, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard — Tamakawastewin, or Good Earth Woman — became an icon, though she’s quick to step away from such titles with her self-deprecating humor. The Lakota historian’s fight to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline from plowing past her son’s […]

Lakota Spiritual Activist Cheryl Angel believes in listening to her dreams – the ones that come to her at night as she sleeps, and the ones that arrive as messengers from the road as she travels the globe. She has been traveling extensively over the past two years, connecting with indigenous and non-indigenous women and […]

The third anniversary of the Water Protectors movement at Standing Rock passed by quietly earlier this month. With the pipeline construction industry booming across the U.S. and Canada, Donald Trump seeking to bulldoze the cancelled Keystone XL Pipeline through more than 800 miles of unceded Lakota treaty territory, and at least nine state governments working […]

Call it democratization of the media, call it citizen journalism, or simply call it frontline storytelling – The Esperanza Project is empowering the voices of people on the flashpoints of movements for social and environmental justice from Argentina to Ecuador, Panama to Mexico, and of course back at our home base in the U.S. of […]

Río Atoyac in Puebla has gone the way of most rivers in this country: It’s become a contaminated, barely recognizable version of its former self. But something is different about Río Atoyac. That’s because a handful of people cared enough to fight for it. The result: Ríos Vivos (Rivers Alive) Atoyac Xicome Forum + Festival, the […]

Left: Cayuco Maya, the venue for the XV Vision Council, “Call of the Water,” was held on the shores of Bacalar Lagoon. Foreground: The Rainbow Peace Caravan’s Circus Tent has been a trademark gathering space for two decades in Vision Councils from Peru to Mexico. BACALAR, Quintana Roo, Mexico — The XV Vision Council – […]