Indigenous Wisdom, Spiritual Ecology & Regenerative Agriculture Can Heal Our World
Seven years ago, I traveled with Native American Church leaders to visit leaders of the Wixarika in their sacred land of Wirikuta in Mexico, in support of their mission to conserve their sacred peyote medicine north and south of the border. In the context of that visit, I got to participate in my first sacred Indigenous ceremony, an all night Wixarica prayer for global unity. With the dawning of the sun, they sacrificed a bull, symbolizing death, rebirth, and renewal, which also happened to be my granddad Dr. Bronner’s death day and my kid Maya’s birthday, March 7th. Dr. Bronner had also dedicated his life to the same all-one unity prayer. As a vegan for over two decades, deep in the medicine, I contemplated the powerful sacrifice of this bull, and saw clearly how our colonial mindset, quick to dismiss such acts as barbaric, is profoundly ass backwards .
The bull, like most animals in Indigenous lifeways, had lived free—unconfined, instinctually whole. Its life was honored, its death prayed over, its flesh consumed reverently. Contrast that with the 99% of animals in our modern food system, raised in factory farms, enduring lives of torture in cages and feedlots, fed from GMO monocultures that have turned over half of U.S. farmland into toxic wastelands. Our system floods the land with synthetic inputs that kill soil life, pollute ecosystems, and threaten our health—an ecological hellscape powered by fossil fuels and methane, driving the sixth great extinction and our climate over the edge.
From Wirikuta, I was flying directly to Expo West in Anaheim, to launch the Regenerative Organic Certification standard alongside Patagonia, Rodale, Compassion in World Farming, Fair World Project, and others. Building upon the organic foundation, our ROC standard adds next-level requirements: no confined animal systems, only pasture-based, high-welfare operations; strict soil health criteria; and fair trade and labor practices. I realized that this Wixarica ceremony and the sacrifice of the bull, was in some ways a powerful ceremonial blessing from the deep indigenous wisdom traditions, to restore right relationship between humanity and the animals we consume, as well as nature at large with farming practices that do not harm surrounding ecosystems.
My blog Regenetarians Unite, written the year before, helped lay the groundwork. That vision was also inspired by our 2016 Burning Man camp, “Refoamation”—also a prayer to restore right relationship between humanity and the natural world, embracing both regenerative agriculture and intentional psychedelic use. (Note: our camp is a diverse collective; Dr. Bronner’s as a brand isn’t present.)
With ROC, we’re seeding an agricultural ecosystem that, at global scale and aligned with a collective shift toward eating less and better meat, can help heal our broken relationship with animals and nature. As it stands, most people are profoundly disconnected from the origins of their food, unconsciously fueling the industrial machine tearing the Earth apart. We need to integrate animals back into regenerative systems—mixed cropping and rotational grazing—where their presence enhances natural fertility.
Fast forward six months from Wirikuta to Reno, NV, August, 2018, right before burning man starts. In a Reno hotel parking lot, I met my rancher friend Jake Takiff—our camp’s sole provider of pasture-raised meats, field-harvested without stress to the animal. Jake and I had connected through Ryland Englehart (co-founder of Kiss the Ground) as I explored high-welfare, pasture-based farms. As a committed vegan and lifelong animal welfare advocate, I found myself in deep solidarity with ranchers like Jake, whose animals lead dignified lives close to their wild nature.
Farms like his function as living ecosystems, balancing animal and plant life, cycling nutrients naturally. While I affirm my veganism—and often wish my regen friends had more ability to just say no to bad factory farmed meat—I want to ensure our dog and future cat only consume regenerative, ethical animal products. It’s about doing right by the animals and land, even across dietary lines.
In our Burning Man camp, we serve vegan meals daily, and on alternating days offer pasture-raised meats from Jake’s ranch—a big step for me emotionally and philosophically. The message: if your meat isn’t ethically regenerative like Jake’s, you don’t have to eat it.
That year, Jake couldn’t join us at the burn proper—he had a newborn—so we met up briefly in that Reno lot to transfer the meat from his to our truck. I shared how the Wixarika ceremony six months earlier had shaped my vision, and how I thought of him during the bull sacrifice—and our shared prayer for ethical, regenerative food systems replacing industrial agriculture globally.
Jake responded deeply: “Woah bro, I’m honored to get to pray in teepee every week. I’m deep on the Red Road—we bless our kids in ceremony, too. This is powerful prayer and medicine.” And just then, my phone started lighting up—photos from a high-level Indigenous Medicine Conservation (IMC) friend who had, without my knowing, returned to Wirikuta with the same Native American Church leaders. They were with the same Marakame, taking the sacred blue deer to another holy site.
I showed Jake: “Wow this is happening right now!” One of the most heart-melting, mind-blowing synchronicities of my life.
In Wixarika tradition, the blue deer represents self-sacrificing love that regenerates the world. It is deeply syncretized with Christ.
This synchronicity reveals the profound power of Indigenous prayer, and of the medicine people who work in rhythm with Gaia’s deeper currents. Western science is only scratching the surface of what they’ve known for generations. Ryland’s own commitment to regenerative ag came through spirit, during an Indigenous-led ayahuasca ceremony where he viscerally connected to soil as Gaia’s living membrane.
So the title of this blog refers not only to that sunrise over the sacrificial prayer, but to the spiritual ascent of Indigenous wisdom and regenerative pathways—showing global culture how to re-enter right relationship with Earth and all her creatures. The prophecy of the Eagle and Condor speaks to this, as does the spiritual ecology movement. The film Common Ground (streaming Earth Day, April 22) offers a vivid portrayal of what’s at stake—and what’s possible with regenerative agriculture—when we listen to the Earth and its original stewards.