It was confirmed that the Secretary of Infrastructure and Public Works, Netzahualcóyotl Ornelas, is being detained at the meeting; as well as the Secretary of Education, Francisco Ayón López, and the Secretary of Development and Social Integration, Daviel Trujillo Cuevas; Lizana García, director of DIF Jalisco, and Mario Vladimir Avilés, director of agrarian affairs in the state; Mario Ramos Velasco, general director of the Secretariat of Rural Development (Seder); the municipal presidents of Bolaños, Juan Carlos Rodríguez Mayorga, and of Mezquitic, Misael de Haro.

“As long as the Mexican State, and particularly the Federal government, doesn't fulfill its basic commitment with the Wixarika people and keeps violating the rights of the Wixaritari, the indigenous community of San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlan will carry out different pressuring actions,” they said in a statement, at the same time they demanded the presence of President Enrique Peña Nieto in a community assembly to take place on May 9.

Lawyer Carlos Gonzalez Garcia and the assessor Cristian Chavez Gonzalez, both members of a coordination and monitoring commission of the CNI and the Indigenous Government Council (CIG), were traveling to the Huajimic community in Nayarit on April 12, along with local legal authorities, to reclaim the ancestral lands of the Wixarika (also known as Huichol in Spanish), when they were stopped and threatened by a group of about 200 people driving more than 20 cars.

“With their knives they ripped the tires of the truck owned by Benjamín Sandoval, a lawyer from Tepic who is supporting us; Cristian Chavez, our geographer, arrived, and they slashed two of his tires with knives, broke off a mirror, and tried to threaten him. They brought a rope with a noose and they put it through the window, so that I could put my head in (suggesting that I should be hanged).

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.

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

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.