Ixchel Tonāntzin Xōchitlzihuatl

Ixchel (she/ we/ they) is a peace and culture strategist. They are formally trained and work as a practicing visual and performing artist. They also are formally trained and practice as a coach and consultant in somatics, mindfulness, arts and community-based research and group facilitation. They are the founder and director of the peace and culture organization Xi’im Ek Balam. Additionally they are a widely published author, former professor of art and regular panelist at summits in arts, creative placemaking and community development.

They support people in remembering, serving and reconnecting to their first mother, the earth. Ixchel is committed to contributing to the co-evolution of the human species towards peaceful, liberated and sustainable futures. Their techniques include design justice, socially engaged art, emergent strategy, traditional indigenous wisdom, trance state hypnosis, sacred theatre and community decolonization.

Ixchel trains, collaborates and has studied with indigenous communities throughout Abayala (Maiza/ the Americas) primarily with the Kichwa (linage of the Gualinga family), Waorani and Shaur in the upper Ecuadorian Amazon. She has also studies with the Wixrarika (Marakame Silvestre Villa Carrillo) and is a beginning Nahuatl student (Cuitlahuac Arreola Martinez). She is greatly influenced by the story of the Great Peace (Haudenoshone) and has spent time studying the Great Peace with people of Mohawk, Seneca, and Oneida tribes. She presented on how the Great Peace has influenced her intertribal peace building practices at the University of Buffalo Story Tellers Confrence with Dr. Renda Dionne Madrigal and Dean Seneca (2024).

Ixchel studied theatrical improvisation at the Second City Theatre Conservatory in Chicago, IL. They worked for a number of years as a touring actress and improvisor throughout the early 2000’s. Their continue work is influenced by studies in ancestral ceremony, drama therapy, masking, trance and sacred theatre.

Ixchel also holds an MFA from Colombia University, School of the Arts, and an Ed.M from Harvard University School of Education. While studying at Harvard, they also took classes at the M.I.T. Media Lab. Ixchel is also trained in BDSM (forthcoming), sex, and intimacy (Somatica Institute), Buddhist liberation practice and philosophy (ongoing through Braided Wisdom Original Medicine Program), Emergent Strategies (adrienne maree brown and the Emergent Strategies Ideation Institute) and the Jazz Aesthetic (Omi Osun Joni Jones and Sharron Bridgeforth).

While studying at Kopan Monastery Ixchel completed multiple teachings on Tibetan Buddhism (including in the Heart Sutra) and at Dharamsala she received two teachings (Chakrasamvara Initiation in the Krishnacharya Tradition) from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. She is named Thubten Drolma (victorious liberator) in the lineage of the primary teacher and co-founder of Kopan, Lama Thubten Yeshe.

Ixchel is mixed indigenous (primarily Uto-Aztecan/ Uto-Nahuatl), mixed race (primarily Celt), two spirit woman and queer being.  They are a 2023 Soros Art, Land and Memory Fellow, a Sozo Fellow (2024), a co-fellow grantee for United States Artists (2020), and a co-fellow of Blade of Grass (2018).  Their writing has been published by Grant Makers in the Arts, NonProfit Quarterly, Shelterforce and the Ford Foundation's Creative Futures program. They are a member of the Interstellar Alliance Social Experiment Group, student of Sarah McCrum and in the Neal Donald Walsh's Mentorship program.

Ixchel is rematriating land to build an intertribal peace center (called Land Back As Art by curator Amy Rosenbaum Martín) in the Ecuadorian Amazon with the Waorani, Kichwa and Shuar tribes. Their forthcoming film, in collaboration with the artist AnAkA and aktiv8 will screen at the Stellenbosch Bioscope (South Africa) and the indigenous convening outside the United Nations Climate Change Conference (Brazil) in 2025.

May her work be pleasing to all those who have come before, working towards liberation and earth stewardship. May all beings feel peace. May all beings feel nourished. May all beings know rest. May all beings be healthy. May all beings remember their nature of oneness and shine brightly with light of one thousand and one suns.