Chee’ Jay - Casa Ceiba - Lifetree Haven

An offering of Ceiba Futures.
Rooted in Maya cosmology | Nourishing ancestral connection | Cultivating liberatory futures

Welcome to Chee’ Jay - Casa Ceiba - Lifetree Haven!

Chee’ Jay - Casa Ceiba - Lifetree Haven is an immersive cultural experience for Indigenous, Black, and other diasporic artists, creatives, and organizers seeking reciprocal relationships with Maya cultural practitioners in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala. This initiative supports the cultivation of transnational solidarity through weaving constellations and creative exchange.

Though often seen as a contemporary innovation, Indigenous communities have long practiced the art of worldview-shifting—embodying memory, adaptation, and futurity as pathways for collective survival and transformation. Rooted in Maya cosmology and the Oaxacan Indigenous framework of Comunalidad, Chee’ Jay - Casa Ceiba - Lifetree Haven fosters translocal kinship, cultural revitalization, and intergenerational creative connection.

Our name honors the Tz’utujil language, where Chee’ Jay means “tree house”—a space of rest, vision, and rootedness. Santiago Atitlán’s original name, Tz’ikin Jay, means “bird house,” evoking flight, perspective, and spirit. By invoking the ceiba tree in the Spanish-language and the tree of life in the English-language iterations of the name, we build a cosmological bridge between rooted place and diasporic return.

Why We Call It an Incubator

Casa Ceiba is more than an artist residency—it’s a cultural incubator for diasporic world-builders. While many residencies offer space to create, Casa Ceiba offers space to rest, remember, strategize, and emerge.

Participants receive cultural mentorship and immersive learning experiences that not only nurture creative practice but also support the development of sustainable, values-aligned offerings. From weaving to world-building, Casa Ceiba is where ideas grow into life-affirming ecosystems.

Whether you are refining your creative vision, dreaming into a new offering, or deepening your connection to land and lineage, Casa Ceiba holds space for your becoming.

Our Vision

To host 1–4 week cultural experiences that:

  • Welcome Indigenous, Black, and other diasporic artists, creatives, and organizers—particularly queer, trans, and women creatives of Central American/Mesoamerican descent—who are seeking to reconnect with their ancestral roots and build meaningful, reciprocal relationships with communities in Guatemala

  • Offer immersive cultural exchange with local practitioners in weaving, land back projects, herbalism, storytelling, and ancestral arts

  • Provide lodging and creative studio space

  • Create space for rest, dreaming, and ceremonial practice

  • Support reciprocal exchange and local community engagement

What We Offer

  • Lodging and home-cooked meals in a quiet private home with studio space

  • 1–4 week residencies co-designed through a 1:1 consultation

  • A menu of immersive offerings with Maya cultural practitioners

  • Optional mentorship, coaching, or incubation of creative ideas or cultural enterprises

We’re in the Seed Stage

We are currently in the early stages of developing Chee’ Jay - Casa Ceiba - Lifetree Haven. This includes:

  • Building partnerships with local organizations

  • Designing an immersive residency pilot for 2026

  • Securing funding support

  • Preparing the Casa Ceiba site for visiting artists and collaborators

Your support—through energy, ideas, resources, or presence—is part of this collective dreaming.

Interested in staying connected or supporting this project?

Casa Ceiba is not a tourist offering—it is a relational, community-rooted space grounded in Indigenous values, cultural protocol, and collective healing. Together, we are weaving constellations of future-building, one rooted return at a time.