There’s nothing like a talk between sisters — especially sisters with a common vision and dream — to inspire action. This talk with Earth Sky Woman Tami Brunk, the astrologer, dream nurturer and world-changer who is my fourth of seven sisters, was just the first of a whole series of inspiring conversations with eco-elders, indigenous […]

Select Recordings of Event AND Resources Will be Uploaded Soon! Cheryl Angel is an indigenous leader, Lakota (Sioux) elder, mother of five children, and devoted water protector who helped initiate and maintain the Standing Rock camp from April 2016 until its forced dismantling. She was vital in the nonviolent resistance to the Dakota Access and Keystone XL […]

In the best Vision Council tradition, we closed The Call of the Turtle with a “Cosecha” or harvest of the group wisdom. In the context of the real, week-long transformational event that is the Vision Council, this closing ceremony takes the form of a pilgrimage from one Council Space to another, where each council shares […]

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 […]

Coyote Alberto Ruz Reports from People’s Summit, Peace Village and International Rights of Nature Tribunal

Fifty years dedicated to studying, writing, creating, promoting and serving as an international networker have made Coyote Alberto Ruz a first-line pioneer, a veteran and an historian of the intentional communities, ecovillage and bioregionalist movements. In the last seven years he has dedicated most of his time to organizing global, local and national campaigns for an Earth Jurisprudence, recognizing Mother Earth as a living being with rights of her own.

Review by Ana Ruiz Photos by Tracy L. Barnett ZIPOLITE, OAXACA – Nine actors emerge as bats, bees, butterflies and wild felines, pollinating and controlling crop pests as they weave a fabulous dance into the web of life. Monsanto suddenly steps onto the stage, depicted as a fat man with a briefcase and a sprayer, […]

Overlooking the brilliant, placid waters of Bacalar Lagoon, in the breezy shadow of a palm tree, it’s easy to imagine that one has landed in a sort of tropical paradise where the noise and traffic and contamination of tourism magnets like Cancún are a world apart. But Marco Jerico, founder and director of the environmental […]

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 – […]

Left and above: First Encounter, Vision Council: Call of the Sage – Teopantli Kalpulli. By Laura Angélica Almazán The call of the caracol has called us together once again. The family has reunited one more time to continue with a mission that started more than two decades ago, and gets more and more relevant every year. The […]

TEOPANTLI KALPULLI, Jalisco, Mexico – I live at the corner of Earth and Fire streets, around the corner from a pyramid. I wake each morning to the crowing of roosters and the lowing of cattle. On Sundays I join my neighbors in kneeling and entering the womb of my mother in the form of a […]

MEXICO CITY, Mexico – Thanksgiving day – I awoke this morning far from home and family but filled with a profound sense of gratitude. Grateful for the sun that was just beginning to brighten the sky outside my window; grateful for the dear friends who have given me a home in this city of cities. […]

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, […]

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 […]

Author’s note: Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery ruled that members of the Lipan-Apache “Hoosh Chetzel” Native American Church would be allowed space to worship at a sacred site in the headwaters of the San Antonio River within a city-owned park. However, in his preliminary ruling, he wrote that they were to be […]

By Tracy L. Barnett and Hernán Vilchezwith production by José Antonio Calfínphotos from the Esperanza Project film “Legacy of the Andes” For the Mapuche people of Chile and Argentina’s Patagonia region — or Wallmapu, as its original inhabitants know their territory —, the warnings of the pandemic began in the form of a flower. When […]

By Tracy L. Barnett and Hernán Vilchezwith production by José Antonio Calfínphotos from the Esperanza Project film “Legacy of the Andes” Deep in the otherworldly landscape of Northern Chile’s Atacama Desert – the world’s driest non-polar territory – the Atacameño or Lickanantay people managed a delicate balance for more than 12,000 years, developing a sophisticated […]

PINE RIDGE, S.D.- A global enterprise based in Spain may seem an unlikely role model for a fledging American Indian initiative. But inspired by its success, Winona’s Hemp and Heritage Farm in Anishinaabeg territory is sowing the start of an intertribal cooperative consortium. The new endeavor, called the Indigenous Hemp and Cannabis Farmers Cooperative, is […]

Editor’s Note: The U.S. eleventh-hour climate policy — to pin global greenhouse gas reduction on the proliferation of individual electric vehicles made with lithium exclusively from the American continent — appears to be having a domino effect nationally and in countries south of the border. In April, when Chile’s President Gabriel Boric announced his intention […]

“The smell was what woke us up. The green flies, the mosquitoes. The headaches. The pestilence, which at night no longer lets us sleep. Then something appeared in the fruit, as if it were smoke. The bushes looked sad and would soon dry up. When we realized it, the Kekén farm had already been running for a year.