Hello, my name is Xóchitl Xitlalic Chanes Aguilar, a student of the Autonomous University of Nayarit, and a native of the Indigenous community of Rosa Morada, Nayarit. In my experience, I think it is important to support Indigenous youth who are low income because sadly we are the most vulnerable population but also one that has the most desire to move ahead.

MEXICAN WATER, Ariz. —  For Navajo spiritual leader Steven Benally, saving a Native American religion from extinction means preserving those diminishing lands where hallucinogenic peyote grows wild. “It’s a small but important step toward realizing a prophecy,” said the 61-year-old. Preservation also means battling activists in the California Bay Area and other cities who want to legalize consumption of the psychedelic cactus. “To these outsiders, we say, ‘Leave peyote alone. Please,’” Benally said. “Is that too much to ask?”

Mezquitic, Jalisco, February 2020.-  A historic day was lived in the ceremonial center of Las Latas, municipality of Mezquitic, in the indigenous community of Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán, where the ancestral culture has been preserved, where its girls and boys They communicate in the Wixárika language and women and men wear their colorful clothing on a daily basis. It is here that the wise elders are venerated, the territory is preserved with its sacred places and the universe is respected.

Only two months ago, the Wixáritari people (better known as the Huichols) were blocking the roads and closing the schools and medical facilities of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán in the Western Sierra Madre, in Jalisco, Mexico, where they live. The protests lasted 50 days. They were demanding the national government enforce the judicial decision of the agrarians lawsuits they had won from the ranchers of Huajimics. Nearly 2,000 hectares of their ancestral lands had to be returned to them.