For generations, the Mazatec people have carried medicines, songs, and traditions that nurture both spirit and community. If you have benefited from Mazatec sacred practices, or therapeutic work with mushrooms, especially if you benefit economically as a practitioner, organization or company, this is a chance to make a gesture of respect, gratitude, and reparative action for the incredible negative impact the Mazatec have endured as a result of global interest in their sacred medicine. Your donations help their language, practices and traditions continue to thrive.

One of Gather Well’s founders has a personal relationship with the family of Doña Julieta Casimiro Estrada, beloved Mazatec healer and member of the International Council of the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. In her honor, the family has created a foundation to support a language preservation project. We’re excited to invite you to join us in supporting this project!

Seven years after the passing of Doña Julieta Casimiro Estrada, her family and community gathered to honor her life. From that memorial, a vision was born: a foundation dedicated to preserving Mazatec culture, beginning with its language and traditions.

Today, the Mazatec language is fading. Spanish has overtaken daily life, and many children are no longer learning to speak the words that carry their people’s prayers, songs, and healing traditions. Without intervention, this living thread of culture could be lost.

To respond, the newly formed foundation, The Mazatec Cultural Center, has partnered with the local public school in Huautla de Jiménez to launch a youth music program focused on language and cultural preservation. By the end of September the 1st year pilot program will begin with fifteen students being given guitars and guided by a Mazatec musician and Mazatec linguist to learn songs in their ancestral language, revitalizing language through art, music, and community pride.

Through our close relationships with Julieta’s family, Gather Well has listened deeply to their vision and committed to helping them bring it to life. We sat together around a table in their home, listening as they shared both their concerns about the loss of Mazatec culture and traditions, and their ideas and prayers for how to keep them alive. They carry the passion, expertise, and prayer to guide this work, what’s needed now are the funds to make it possible. Gather Well is contributing our time, energy, and financial support, and we invite our wider community to join us in reciprocity.