Casa Ceiba

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

A cultural incubator for rooted return and collective transformation

Starting At the Root

This residency carries three names—Chee’ Jay, Casa Ceiba, and Lifetree Haven—each marking a bridge between worlds.

• In Tz’utujil, Chee’ Jay means tree house: a space of vision, rest, and rooted imagination.

• In Spanish, Casa Ceiba honors the sacred Ceiba, the world tree that connects the Heart of Sky, the Heart of Earth, and Xibalba.

• In English, Lifetree Haven speaks to sanctuary and regeneration.

The Ceiba is both cosmological and personal. On the land where my father grew up near Guatemala’s Pacific coast, a great Ceiba once stood—alive before colonization and later cut down after he immigrated to the United States. That story lives in me as a symbol of rupture, a tree severed from its roots. Casa Ceiba grows from the longing to heal the rupture of diaspora—to remember that our roots reach wide and deep, even across displacement.

This residency is the kind of space I once needed: a place of accompaniment for those walking through the portal of reconnection to Indigenous ways of knowing. It holds complexity across languages and worlds—Tz’utujil grounding us in place, Spanish acknowledging the layered realities of Guatemala and the diaspora, and English connecting those of us shaped by the global north.

About The Residency

Casa Ceiba is an immersive residency and cultural exchange in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, designed for Indigenous, Black, and other diasporic artists, culture bearers, organizers, and creatives—particularly queer, Two Spirit, LGBTQIA+, women, and young-adult (18–28) visionaries—who are walking paths of remembrance, creative renewal, and reconnection with land and lineage.

Rooted in Maya cosmology and the Oaxacan principle of Comunalidad, Casa Ceiba cultivates spaces of rest, creation, and reciprocity. It is more than a place to make art—it is a living ecosystem for world-building, where cultural practice becomes a bridge between generations, movements, and worlds.

Casa Ceiba is also a living laboratory for narrative strategy—an approach that uses art, story, and ceremony to shift the stories shaping our worlds. Through residencies, workshops, and creative exchanges, participants explore how collective storytelling can heal colonial rupture, spark imagination, and inspire movements toward justice.

Our Vision

We are building Casa Ceiba as a home for diasporic return and collective imagination, hosting 1–4 week residencies that:

• Welcome Indigenous, Black, and queer artists—especially those of Central American and Mesoamerican descent—into reciprocal relationship with local communities.

• Offer immersive learning with Maya practitioners in weaving, herbalism, storytelling, and ancestral arts.

• Provide space for rest, dreaming, and ceremonial practice alongside creative production.

• Cultivate narrative strategies that center ancestral knowledge, joy, and self-determination as tools for cultural and systemic transformation.

• Model equitable exchange through fair compensation and community collaboration.

• Inspire new networks of solidarity that ripple across borders.

Transnational Exchange as Transformation

Casa Ceiba grows from the understanding that solutions are already being lived in the South. As Raúl Zibechi writes in Constructing Worlds Otherwise: Societies in Movement and Anticolonial Paths in Latin America, the most profound transformations arise from communities who, through daily practice, are already building alternatives to colonial systems.

Our residencies honor this lineage of translation across worlds—not translation as extraction, but as reciprocity. By bridging Maya cosmology and diasporic creativity, Casa Ceiba becomes a meeting ground where knowledge travels south to north, ancestor to descendant, earth to imagination. This exchange reminds us that liberatory futures are not invented—they are remembered, tended, and shared.

Rooted in Place, Connected Across Distance

While Casa Ceiba is grounded in the lands and waters of Santiago Atitlán, our relationships extend beyond borders. We recognize that many of our kin—especially those navigating immigration statuses, displacement, incarceration, disability, or economic constraint—cannot always travel.

To honor this, Casa Ceiba includes virtual components that amplify connection and collective impact:

• Online gatherings and storytelling circles that bridge residents with our broader community.

• Workshops and reflections co-facilitated by Maya practitioners, shared live or recorded to reach relatives across geographies.

• Digital archives and creative exchanges that ensure learning and relationship continue long after each residency ends.

These offerings uphold our commitment to translocal solidarity, ensuring that those who cannot be physically present remain woven into the fabric of our collective becoming.

Why We Call It an Incubator

Casa Ceiba is where ideas take root. Residents receive cultural mentorship and co-designed experiences that nurture creativity and sustainability—helping them turn projects, practices, or seeds of imagination into life-affirming offerings.

Each residency nurtures both creative and strategic growth, supporting artists and organizers to develop narrative practices that strengthen community power and expand the horizons of social change.

From weaving to world-building, Casa Ceiba invites participants to slow down, reconnect, and imagine liberatory futures together.

We’re in the Seed Stage

We are in our seed stage, preparing to open our doors in 2026.

Your support helps us:

• Prepare the Casa Ceiba site with lodging and studio space.

• Build partnerships with local organizations, cultural practitioners, and elders.

• Pilot our first residencies and exchanges.

• Ensure access through scholarships and fair compensation for Maya practitioners.

Every story that emerges from Casa Ceiba is part of a broader movement for transformation. By supporting this work, you help seed new narratives of belonging and possibility—stories that challenge extraction, celebrate interdependence, and imagine liberated futures rooted in care.

How You Can Support

Casa Ceiba is not a tourist offering—it is a community-rooted project grounded in Indigenous values, cultural protocol, and collective healing.

• Donate: Your contribution helps build sustainable infrastructure for artists and elders, fund scholarships for participants, and grow this ecosystem of care.

• Partner: We welcome collaborations with organizations, funders, and cultural networks aligned with liberation, equity, and ancestral memory.

• Join our interest list: Be the first to hear about residency openings and upcoming programs.