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Huichol Cultural Survival
Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch):
The Huichol Indians are intact as a pre-hispanic people, but their cultural survival is in peril.
Much hard work has taken place to protect this universal treasure, yet time is running out for the Huichols. We must increase our efforts now.
Supporting organization:
Wixárika Research Center
URL:
www.wixarika.org
City:
Oakland
State/Region:
CA
Country:
USA
Project Vision Statement & Potential Social Impact:
Background
The Huichol Indians reside in the Sierra Madre mountains of northern Jalisco, Mexico.
Since 1973 Juan Negrín has documented Huichol sacred sites, dating back to pre-hispanic times and still in use today. Through photography, Negrín recorded the natural environment, people, their ceremonies, pilgrimages, artifacts and fine art. Negrín also made hundreds of recordings of music, chants, and conversations with the Huichol. These archives are critical for the preservation of the mythology and etymology of Huichol culture. He continues to collaborate with Huichol elders to pass their cultural traditions on to future generations.
Vision
The vision of the Wixárika Research Center is to create a bilingual online archive of scholarly work which shall be made available to the public, and especially to the Huichol people.
Proposal
Our current website in English-only, is used to raise public awareness of the importance of Huichol Cultural Survival. It educates the public about the beauty of this indigenous culture through the Masterpieces of their most important artists and through photo documentaries and interactive yarn paintings. Additional funding is sought to:
- Expand the acquisition, bilingual documentation, curation, and content management of archival material.
- Report on the Huichol struggle against land encroachments and assimilation over the past 35 years
- Create and sustain Huichol community participation in curatorial, archival, and discussion forums where they can express their concerns and hopes. Furthermore, Huichol will have access, for the first time, to historical photographs taken in their communities as early as the late 1800’s. Goal Engaging the Huichol in a project which highlights their cultural and artistic heritage will fortify community pride. Because pressure to integrate into mainstream society is so strong, promoting the value of their rich culture is essential to their survival as a distinct people.
Goal
Engaging the Huichol in a project which highlights their cultural and artistic heritage will fortify community pride. Because pressure to integrate into mainstream society is so strong, promoting the value of their rich culture is essential to their survival as a distinct people.
Sustainability (financial) model:
This project encompasses a three-phase transition toward sustainability while growing in scale far beyond the current level of operations.
For the next 24 months, incremental activities (as described in this proposal) will require increasing the current funding levels dramatically. We anticipate a small number of new contributors will bootstrap some components of the new plan during the next 90 days, while additional interim foundation/trust funding is in marketing and development through the subsequent quarter. With the conversion of the existing web site taking place throughout this 180 day timeframe, new services and marketing campaigns will develop the sustainable stream of funding from a large number of small contributors.
Potential obstacles:
Knowledge base erosion is an obstacle.
- Much of the meaning of symbols and objects found in sacred places, on the walls of caves, in sculpture, and elsewhere is known only to a small number of elders whose numbers are dwindling.
- Many of the caves where hieroglyphics, altars, and ancient offerings reside are being flooded by the rising waters of the recently constructed hydro-electric dams.
- Poachers have been plundering much of what remains along ancient routes and within sacred sites. Thus, a lot of the pre-hispanic cultural artifacts are being lost. Therefore, photography is an urgent priority.
Resource Needs:
Acquisition, hosting, consulting, installation, configuration, and operation of open source content and contributor management systems to facilitate site requirements.
Engagement in social, socially-conscious, and professional networks.
Professional business development, marketing, and public relations services to accomplish objectives.
Equipment, software, training, travel allowances, visa arrangements and stipends for Huichol university student interns as well as elders and school teachers in the Huichol communities of the Sierra Madre.
Legal and lobbying support for Huichols in regulatory/legislative bodies.
Global partnerships in methods and practices of Cultural Defense.
Reliable metrics for progress the project’s objectives.
Salaries and benefits for full-time staff.
Key Milestones:
Over the next ninety days, the following milestones shall be fulfilled:
1. Board of Directors meets to discuss proposed changes in board composition, new president, and business plan.
2. Planning, scheduling, and funding for further interpretive meetings with elders and shamans in the Huichol Sierra with an emphasis on the esoteric native terminology.
3. Recruit business development, public relations, and marketing advisors.
4. Proposals to J. Paul Getty Trust, Ford, and Rockefeller foundations.
5. Solicit key intellectual contributors globally from the elders and academic brain trusts of Huichol culture.
6. Find resources and assign translation into Spanish/Huichol of existing web pages.
7. Get estimates for bringing bilingual theming, community, discussion forum, content and contributor management into the web site.
8. Re-estimate budgets for Huichol elders, university student interns, and school teachers.
9. Establish footprint in social and professional networks, with aid of existing members in the Friends of Wixárika, to develop more of the intellectual and monetary contributor base.
10. Find strategic partners globally for sharing methodologies and practices.
11. Assign the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and Critical Success Factors (CSF) metrics construction and tracking.
12. Find pro bono support for the Huichol Rights Legislative Defense program in Mexico.
Project Summary:
The race for dominance has always destroyed culture, and will continue to do so. We know little of what has been lost. Our humanity, valuable knowledge, practices, and aesthetics have been trampled in the imperial stampede to exploit resources, control the flow of commodities, and rule over everyone’s spiritual life.
When one culture is even partially diverted from diaspora, humanity can share in the rewards of following the path to cultural survival. Collectively we are responsible for the success of these struggles, knowing full well that the opportunities to collaborate among cultures abound. The Wixárika Research Center wants you to know about the culture that they seek to defend and how they will move forward.
The Wixárika are an indigenous group that resides in the Sierra Madre mountains of north western Mexico. The Wixárika people found sanctuary in these highlands when pre-columbian fascism destroyed every symbol or cultural icon of the less-aggressive peoples which dominators found in their paths. Today, the Wixárika are known to the outside world as the Huichol. Their culture is persecuted in the name of economic development, nationalism, corporatism, globalization, and religious evangelism.
During the past thirty-four years, the founders of the Wixárika Research Center have lived among the Huichol people, learned their language, participated in their rituals, studied their beliefs, preserved artifacts, collected their exquisite art, published some of their achievements, labored for & advanced Huichol legal rights, and organized culturally-safe community development projects.
Comments
Huichol Cultural Suurvival / Wixárika Research Center
The Wixárika Research Center is my first choice, also, as it's been run for decades by a most admirable and devoted family. The Wixárika Research Center began when the organization's founder first trekked far into the mountains, suddenly finding himself among the Huichol, a barely-known network of the last surviving Stone Age tribe in Mexico. Their name in their language is Wixáritari. These are a people whose entire lives are devoted to spiritual development, a focus vividly seen in their lives of prayer and pilgrimage, and in their extremely complex and beautiful weavings, embroideries, and yarn paintings.
What the traveller found was an ancient group living largely in the old ways but carrying a new burden: tuberculosis. Stunned at what he'd seen, he raced back to the city for medicine and returned to begin what became his life's work: protecting the elders and their knowledge, and doing his best to keep threatening modern depredations from obliterating the entire culture. Wixárika has managed to carry on its stellar good work despite ongoing attacks from land speculators, loggers, and even financially-questionable departments of the Mexican government.
Few established organizations are as completely committed and impeccably honest as is this one. Anyone having an interest in humanity's history, in small languages and cultures, or in the myriad ways we find to live holy lives will be gratified to inquire into the excellent work of the Wixárika Research Center.
VICTIMS
I AM FROM MEXICO AND I AM AWARE OF THE SITUATION WITH THIS HUICHOL PEOPLE, MOSTLY THEY HABE BEEN MANIPULATED IN SEVERAL WAYS BY THE MEXICAN GOVERMENT DUE TO THE TERRITORY THEY ARE LIVING IN. THEY ARE VICTIMS OF THE "PROGRESS" I AM VOTING FOR THIS PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATION BECAUSE THEY HAVE A REAL BACKGROUND KNOWING THE RIGHT WAY TO SOLVE THIS CULTURE PROBLEMS.
A project with a crucial human element
I just put this project in my top ballot slot. I did so because it comprises an urgent real-world need as well as a unique web element.
If there is an endangered species list for human cultures, it certainly doesn't get the attention it deserves. But it should. To lose a unique culture -- the language, art, music, dance, ritual, architecture -- impoverishes all of us.
The variety of human cultures is still staggering. And that variety is a crucial element of our humanity. But with each passing of the last practitioner of a certain art or the final speaker of a language or the player of an instrument, variety is reduced.
I particularly like the idea of using the indigenous culture to help preserve the indigenous culture. I find that quite appealing, appropriate and effective.
I think this project has the potential to succeed in stopping the destruction of yet another indigenous -- human -- culture.
Are you amazed by the Ethnosphere yet?
We all have so much to lose, yet what has been lost (and what will be lost) as a result of cultural extinction can’t be calculated. The losses will be beyond measure. Are we copasetic with increases in the rate of extinction? I hope not.
Cultural survival is a global imperative about preserving language, meaning and symbols in the universal circle of life. Of the 6,000 languages spoken in the world today, 50 percent are no longer taught to children. Listen to Wade Davis (a most extraordinary anthropologist, biologist, and ethnobotanist) deliver a spot-on presentation entitled “Our Amazing Ethnosphere” at TED in Monterey, CA in 2003. He talks about preserving the "ethnosphere," by which he means "the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness."
Please look and listen to Wade Davis on YouTube and prepare for a rare treat. Since his presentation runs 22 minutes, you can try to listen with one ear while multitasking, but at some point his message is going to grab you.