LAND BACK Project
The School House
A Center for Indigenous Health, Healing, and Reciprocity.
The School House is a thriving, land-based center rooted in Indigenous knowledge and cultural practices where healing, reconnection, and justice are cultivated through community, ceremony, and collective action.
Purchased in April 2025, the School House is envisioned as a space to root deeply in connection with the land and Traditional Ecological Knowledge. The property was acquired as IHEI’s first LAND BACK space to foster cultural knowledge exchange and action across the medicine lines of so-called Canada, USA, and Mexico. Here, we actualize unity across turtle island within a home for healing, cultural resurgence, leadership development, and justice movement building—honoring the wisdom of our ancestors, while envisioning liberated and connected Indigenous futures.
The School House is the original school for the town of San Ignacio, located in Nayarit, Mexico—just 3 minutes from Sayulita and 45 minutes from Puerto Vallarta. While San Ignacio is not formally recognized as an Indigenous community, the state of Nayarit is home to several Indigenous nations, including the Wixárika (Huichol), Cora (Naayeri), Odam (Tepehuan), and Nahuatl-speaking peoples.
The School House is a 6,400-square-foot property that has been lovingly transformed from an abandoned site into a vibrant, living space dedicated to the mission of the Indigenous Health Equity Institute (IHEI). Here, our goal is to advance health justice by weaving together Indigenous values, science, and ancestral wisdom.
As IHEI’s primary headquarters and training space in Mexico, the School House will also serve as a retreat and healing center for Indigenous and BIPOC community leaders, students, cultural practitioners, and knowledge keepers.
What is the School House?
The School House offers a physical and spiritual space to reinvigorate medicine lines and bring together ancestral relatives who have been separated by colonial borders. The property will hold a variety of intentional uses centered around these three focus areas.
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A sacred retreat space for Indigenous peoples, community members, advisory boards, and allies.
Dedicated areas for ceremony, cultural exchange, and land-based healing practices.
Indigenous Healing & Medicine Workshops for reclaiming and sharing ancestral wisdom.
Intergenerational wealth-building workshops focused on sovereignty, sustainability, and community resilience.
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Cultural immersion exchange programs to enhance youth learning and professional development.
Reviving ancestral land-based knowledge through partnerships with local Indigenous communities.
Artist and Activist Residency to support creative resistance and Indigenous futurism.
Space for ideation and movement building toward Health-Land Justice.
Space rentals to support self-sustainability of the School House.
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Direct Action Camps
Growing and stewarding Indigenous crops, medicinal plants, herbs, and fruits.
Land stewardship training and caretaking of regenerative gardens and permaculture systems.
Traditional skills and land-based building workshops.
Across the Medicine Lines Fellowship
The School House will be one of four host sites for the Across the Medicine Lines Fellowship. In partnership with our hub sites, IHEI will offer BIPOC health and climate justice organizers from Canada, the U.S., and Mexico immersion and training experiences in food, land, and climate justice. This year-long leadership development program advances cultural exchange and dialogue across medicine lines to support a interconnected web of healing justice practitioners.
Interested in our Across the Medicine Lines fellowship programs?
IHEI Hub Sites
The hub sites make up a constellation of collaborators who support the Across the Medicine Lines Fellowship and other IHEI programs. The Destination Sites are locations in Mexico and the US that offer immersive, transformative programming rooted in community and cultural exchange, while our partner sites are institutions dedicated to Indigenous health research by leading Indigenous scholars in public health.
Destination Sites
The Farm at Coyote Crossing (Portland, OR)
Located in the heart of Chinook territory, this hub site builds capacity for deep relationship with the land. The farm centers food and land sovereignty; connecting with ancestral land knowledge practices; and hosts direct action camps for the Indigenous Peoples’ Power Project.
Spanish House (Oaxaca, Mexico)
An immersive Spanish language program with relationship to the surrounding Zapotec and Mixtec Indigenous communities. This hub site offers an experience in restoring Indigenous kinship worldview through revitalizing reciprocal connections rooted in traditional medicine and food practices.
The School House (San Ignacio, Nayarit, Mexico)
The School House offers a physical space to bring movement builders, community leaders, and knowledge keepers together for programming around healing & wellness, kinship, and cultural exchange. This hub site is the nucleus for the Across the Medicine Lines Fellowship.
Partner Sites
Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health Great Plains Hub (Rapid City, SD)
Oregon Health Science University-Portland State University Indigenous Health Program (Portland,OR)
These research-based centers aim to address health disparities among Indigenous populations. These partner sites support student skill-building in research evaluation through tribal, urban, and international cultural exchange opportunities offered at our other hub sites.
