The Blind Spot Podcast Episode 20: From Ancestral Wisdom to Our Planetary Future: A Conversation with Dr. Yuria Celidwen
Feb 11, 2026
Dr. Yuria Celidwen, a Nahua and Maya research scientist blending Indigenous wisdom with academic inquiry. She explores Indigenous sciences as relational knowledge. She recounts Mesoamerican narratives and rituals as ways of knowing. She outlines an ethics of belonging and speaks about translating ceremonial, communal practices into contemporary research and action.
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Knowledge As Relational Systems
- Indigenous sciences treat knowledge as intersubjective, symbolic, and relational rather than purely objective and universal.
- Yuria argues these narratives study systems and include the researcher's influence on the phenomena.
The Leyenda De Los Soles Origin Story
- Yuria retells the Mesoamerican Leyenda de los Soles origin story with Quetzalcoatl, bees, worms, and the mother goddess co-creating humans.
- The ritual practices like Day of the Dead reenact and adapt this story yearly, blending communal and individual meaning.
Ethics Of Belonging Defined
- The ethics of belonging centers kin relationality and ecological belonging, seeing all beings as family with roles and authority.
- This ethics replaces hierarchy with reciprocal responsibility and collective flourishing.
