Living Geographies: Urban Wixárika Places and Spaces of Knowledge

In Wixárika epistemology, Kaka+yarite/Kaka+ma (Elder ancestors) inhabit Wixárika Tsik+ri (visual representation of Wixárika land). Families connect to Elder ancestors and assure their cultural survival with pilgrimages to key locations in the Wixárika land. From El Gran Nayar to the city of Tepic, Mexico, Wixárika (Huichol) families, resist settler colonial notions of relatedness and being. In this article, I discuss how Wixárika families in urban communities 1) understand the notions of spaces and places through the relation with cultivation practices, 2) actively participate in the retracing of ancestral spaces through yearly pilgrimages, and 3) contest colonial powers by moving across colonial places and marking their salient presence in urban centers. Using theories/praxis of relatedness and being, and ongoing ethnographic fieldwork within Wixárika families in Tepic, I investigate how land in Wixárika's view reconfigures spaces and places for the exchange of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. I examine how urban Wixárika families continually reaffirm relations with ancestors through bodily practices such as cultivation. Thus, Wixárika contest settler colonization processes by the act of cultivating, maintaining kinship with Tatéi Niwetsika (Our Mother Corn), walking across spaces, making offerings, and moving from urban to rural.