This year, however, would be vastly different from years past. This year, the sacred lands of Wirikuta lay under the shadow of an uncertain future. Vast swaths of the protected, UNESCO-recognized reserve had been concessioned to Canadian mining companies, and hundreds of hectares had been bulldozed by agroindustrial companies. This year they were responding to a call that ran through all their communities, spread out through the Sierra Madre over four states: The candles of life were dying, and they would come together there to pray for their renewal.

The human avalanche began to flow from the ridgetop of the Sierra de Los Pajaritos around 10 am on Thursday, September 22: 500 indigenous Huichols, heirs to the old lords of the mountains, descended in a quiet tide into the valley Huajimic, in search of historical justice. The expectant landholders, who had succeeded them in the domain of these lands, observed them worriedly as an ominous sign.

In Northwest Mexico, the Western Sierra Madre Mountains rise like giants from the coastal wetlands of the Gulf of California to the Central Mexican Plateau. Indigenous communities have long found shelter in these isolated lands, and the space to maintain their culture and way of life.

Some of my most treasured childhood memories happened in or near a river. I can still feel the cold water on my feet, and the current that pulled me smoothly past rocks and branches. I remember vacations with my cousins, throwing ourselves into the river near my aunt and uncle’s country house, leaping from the tops of rocks or swinging from the branches of a tree. I remember summer road trips, driving down seemingly endless bridges over the great rivers of southern Mexico.

A shamanic retreat in Juneau led by a Californian has caught Sealaska Heritage Institute’s attention.

Members of the Wixarika Tatei Haramara Council of Nayarit, Mexico have denounced the illegal sale of one of their sacred ceremonial sites, Tatei Haramara island, to two “ghost” tourism companies. Now, the island is out of reach for the Wixarikas (called “Huicholes” in Spanish because of the name given to them by the Nahuatl people), who can't perform their religious duties there anymore nor have access to its water fountains, which has also caused severe health problems among them.