Academic Rite of Passage: Weaving Indigenous Epistemology into Academia

As I wrote this, I am in ceremonial preparation, a sacred threshold that will mark a recommitment to my academic path: sacred purpose as a scholar and practitioner of ancestral arts. I am stepping into my spiritual sovereignty within an academic structure. This writing holds practical reflection and poetic truths to mark this passage. I offer a ceremony in words, a sacred pause between what has been and what is emerging.

This is a moment to mark time, to close old cycles, and to begin again with a deeper understanding of myself, the academic landscape, and my voice within this field. I am marking this as an academic rite of passage, one that integrates the liminality of becoming with the rootedness of ancestral remembering.

It is a sacred pause, a liminal moment, marking my transition into deeper responsibility, sovereignty, and embodied leadership. My journey is not one of conformity but of reclamation. I now know that for me, is not about assimilation into Western frameworks but about holding space for Indigenous ways of knowing. As Cajete (2000) writes, “We must recreate education as a ceremonial act, a process of transformation through which the individual is awakened to the responsibility of relationship” (p. 181). This rite of passage is just that. It is a ceremonial act of reclaiming and embodying the teachings I embody and carry in an academic space.

Earth & Body

My relationship with Pachamama, Earth Mother, has always been strong. I have been a steward and answered her calls, even when I did not understand the full extent of the invitation. I’ve dropped everything to travel to the places she called me to: sacred lands, ley lines, vortexes, mountains, and rivers. I’ve met the apus and the ñustas. I’ve danced with her, fasted with her, prayed with her, made offerings to her. I’ve sensed the stories, listened to stone, and offered my voice to the winds. This is not a metaphor. This is my lived embodied experiences.

Kimmerer (2013) reminds us, “The land knows you, even when you are lost” (p. 130). In those moments of loss, I found myself through Pachamama. She became my first teacher, my first altar. The wisdom of the plants, animals, stones, and elements has guided my life.

Walking Between Worlds

I walk between worlds, between city streets and sacred mountains. Anzaldúa’s (1987) Borderlands/La Frontera lives alive in my bones. She writes, “I am a turtle, wherever I go I carry ‘home’ on my back” (p. 43). I am coming home within academia. Not a home built on assimilation, but one of sacred resistance. I am reclaiming identity not through replication of dominant narratives, but through the song of my ancestors rising in my voice.

Ancestral Flame

I do not walk this threshold alone. I carry my ancestors and ancestral lineages with me. I also walk with my indigenous maestro/as. Their teachings are not theoretical, they are my compass. I do not study them, I live them. This is what Simpson (2014) refers to as “land-as-pedagogy”, learning through place, story, and relationship. I will name and honor my maestros and maestras including Fredy Puma Quispe Singona, Abuela Xochi Quetzalli, Nana Tomasi, Eduardo Churro Apaza and Santos Apaza, Roberto “Wow”, and Ira Knox, who has since crossed over.

Then there are the women who prayed over me, my grandmother, who healed me from ojo with an egg, whispering the prayers passed down from her mother and the priests. Lived experience and oral tradition is the heartbeat of my scholarship. My cosmogram is not metaphorical, it is lived. Wilson’s (2008) work Research is Ceremony affirms,“Knowledge is relational. It cannot be separated from the person who carries it” (p. 56).In the words of Elena Avila and Janine Parker (1999), “To heal, we must return to our roots and the teachings of our ancestors. This means embracing not only the knowledge of our families and communities but also the spiritual wisdom that has been passed down through generations. It is in this connection with our roots that we find the strength to heal and transform” (p. 145). This wisdom speaks to my own journey of reconnecting with my ancestral knowledge, which has provided me with both grounding and strength. It has reminded me that healing is not only a personal journey but one deeply embedded in the collective memory of my people.

Though detribalized, my spiritual identity lives on. The Quechua and Nahuatl languages offer me a roadmap. The Maya Cholq’ij calendar shows me my destiny, my Nahual in the form of a five-pointed star. My path of reclaiming Curanderismo, born from post-colonial resilience in Mexico is braided with African, Indigenous, and Spanish resiliency of survival and power. There is a rich tapestry I bring with me to enter the threshold.

The Threshold

I arrive at this threshold with experiences in sacred rage and heartbreak. The traumas I have lived through are not separate from the wisdom I carry. Injustice lives within academic walls but I will not let it stop me. They are the soil in which my medicine grows. In The Woman Who Glows in the Dark, Avila and Parker (1999) also describe the process of emotional and spiritual healing as “a continuous unfolding, much like the flower that slowly opens its petals to the sun. As we heal, we do not immediately become whole — we must allow time for the wounds to heal, for the petals to open in their own time, and for us to come into our own fullness” (p. 159). This metaphor has resonated deeply with me as I walk through my own process of healing from academic trauma, allowing each layer of pain and resistance to dissolve in its own time. The unfolding, the patience, and the gentle approach to healing and letting go are essential elements.

In the words of Arturo Meza Gutiérrez (1997), “Tezcatlipoca, the Black Tezcatlipoca, represents the power of the shadow. It is the force of introspection, a mirror that forces us to confront our deepest fears, our desires, and our unresolved wounds. It is in the shadow that we encounter the deepest truths about ourselves, the places where we are most resistant to change and healing.” (p. 52) Shadow work has been a necessary part of my transformation. Last year was largely dedicated to facing these shadows. It has been in facing these aspects of myself that I have found deep lessons and healings and returned to my indigenous teachings with such strong conviction.

My commitment en el camino rojo, my studies in curanderismo, my initiations are not extracurricular, they are my curriculum. As Smith (1999) affirms, “decolonizing methodology is not about simply adding in Indigenous content, but about transforming the paradigm.”“Awakening is not a metaphor, it’s an ancestral mandate,” I once wrote in a moment of poetic clarity. My awakening was grounded in prayer, fasting, visions, and also hard lessons. My healing is not personal, it is ancestral. It is collective. I walk through this academic threshold with the blessing of those who came before and those who walk beside me.

Through this process, I embrace the Andean teachings of the Pachacuti. I consider Tlakaxipehualliztli, as explored by Gomez (2025). This sacred time, Gomez teaches, “marks a period of sacred renewal. It reminds us to honor our inner selves, to strip away what no longer serves us, and to engage in self-reflection so that we can enter into our fullness with clarity and strength” (Gomez, 2025). It is much like a snake shedding its skin.

Return with the Medicine

I will be embarking on a Wilderness Rite of Passage soon, a modern vision quest. What I hope to bring back is the medicine of embodied clarity, not as a performance, not as over-functioning, but as presence. Someone close to me once told me, “A happy Crystal makes the world a better place.” As I shed, I choose to no longer lead not from depletion, but from Joy, from creativity, from visionary knowing.

In the past, I would have rushed back from experiences with new knowledge and begin to work, to teach, facilitate, or guide. Now, I hope to return as a sacred witness, a storyteller, and a thought leader. My leadership is shifting from wounded healer to weaver, from practitioner to pattern holder. I walk with one hand in the stars and one in the soil. The opening of a new cycle will allow me to emerge in a more aligned way.

Prayer/Declaration

I walk this path not to fit in but to remember. I pray to deepen into the cosmologies I study, to live them, not just cite them. I am composing a living cosmogram. My life is research. My scholarship is a ceremony. I embody my Nahual. I listen to the stars. I no longer need institutions to validate me. I walk this path because I am called to as a sacred disruptor, a seed bearer, a shapeshifter, a wayshower. I walk my path with integrity, in community, with elders who will keep me accountable.

While I do grieve the absence of representation and limited curriculum in Academia to support this approach, my commitment remains. I continue my self-study and will weave sacred wisdom from the lineages I carry and study. I am learning how to do this in a way that both protects and honors these teachings with the permission of my elders.

Final Reflection

This is an academic rite of passage, a threshold, a sacred pause, a cyclical beginning. I carry lessons and teachings forward not as an individual achievement, but as a collective offering. To quote Wilson (2008), “If research doesn’t change you as a person, then you haven’t done it right” (p. 135).

I have been changed. I am becoming. I am returning home.

I am not here to perform scholarship, I am here to live it.

I am not here to prove I belong, I am here to remember I have always belonged.

And I will continue on this path because the story is still unfolding and I have only just begun to sing.(Author’s own writing)

Conclusion

I offer this writing, this ceremony, as a bundle of prayers, lessons, and visions. I cross this threshold with humility and fierce love, not only for my path, but for the ancestors, the earth, and future generations. This is an opening of a new sacred cycle. Tlazocamati. Thank you. I am ready.

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References

Anzaldúa, G. E. (2012). Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza (4th ed.). Aunt Lute Books.

Avila, E., & Parker, J. (1999). Woman who glows in the dark: A curandera reveals traditional

Aztec secrets of physical and spiritual health. J.P. Tarcher/Putnam.Cajete, G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Clear Light Publishers.

Gomez, A. (2025, April 3). Solar Months series: Tlakaxipehualliztli [Online lecture]. MachtiaToltekatl / INASCA’s Virtual Ameyalli. https://inascaonline.tlakaxipehualliztli

Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and theteachings of plants. Milkweed Editions.Meza Gutiérrez, A. (1997).

Tezcatlipoca: Nuestro ser interno. Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo. (2009).

Simpson, L. B. (2014). Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(3), 1–25.

Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples. ZedBooks.

Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Fernwood Publishing.

Crystal Peña at the "Heart Rock" in Ollantaytambo, Peru. Personal photograph.