Rooted Stories, Global Impact: Fuel IRP’s Next Chapter

✨ What if your donation could help preserve centuries of Indigenous wisdom — and ensure it's shared by the people who still maintain their ancestral way of life?

We invite you to be part of Espíritu, a community-led film by Indigenous Roots Productions (IRP) and Nahua voices from San Miguel Tecuiciapan, Guerrero, Mexico. This isn’t just a documentary — it’s a movement for Indigenous visibility, a living archive of land, language, and legacy.

🎥 About Espíritu

Espíritu is an Indigenous-led oral history documentary centered on Erika Sebastián Aguilar, a Nahua woman, community leader, and cultural guardian. Erika is breaking new ground as she pushes to become the first female member of the local commissary while engaging youth to uphold traditions of language, agriculture, and environmental stewardship.

Through Erika’s story, viewers experience the ancestral rhythms of Nahua life: from the waters of the Río Las Balsas, to the hands preparing ceremonial maize, to the vibrant colors of Día de Muertos altars. Filmed entirely in Náhuatl, this documentary reclaims narrative power and reminds us that language, food, water, and ritual are acts of resilience.

Watch a basic proof of concept filmed during pre-production here!

⚙️ Why We Need You

We’ve completed filming. Now, we need your support to bring Espíritu to life in post-production and to sustain the organizational backbone of IRP.

Your donation directly supports:

🎥 Editing and color grading
👁️ Multi-language subtitling (Náhuatl, Spanish, English)
🎧 Sound design and Indigenous-language audio mastering
🌍 Community initiatives, like oral history workshops and ongoing language preservation
🏢 IRP’s infrastructure (website hosting, donor outreach, project development)

This campaign fuels both the completion of Espíritu and IRP’s global vision: to support Indigenous communities telling their own stories, on their own terms.

💸 What Your Gift Makes Possible

Donation	Impact
$25	1 hour of professional transcription or translation
$50	Pays an Indigenous language consultant
$100	Supports film post-production (Seed Sower)
$250	Funds deeper community engagement & research (Field Companion)
$500+	Builds long-term storytelling infrastructure (IRP Legacy Builder)

🤍 Every contribution makes a difference — and helps rewrite whose voices are heard.

🌍 From Arkansas to Mexico — and Beyond

IRP is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in Little Rock, Arkansas, with an expanding network across Mexico, the U.S., and Indigenous communities worldwide. We’ve grown entirely from grassroots support, and this campaign is our next step toward long-term impact, ethical storytelling, and global visibility.

Whether you can give $10 or $1,000, we’re asking you to stand with us — and share this campaign with your network.

💬 Can’t donate right now? Share this page with 3 friends and help spread the word.

🙏 Join Us

We believe in community over extractive research, in amplification over exploitation, and in storytelling as resistance.

Thank you for believing in us — and for helping fund this work with purpose.

With gratitude,

Shmuel Josep Tamo

Indigenous Assyrian and Founder of IRP

Rooted Stories, Global Impact: Fuel IRP’s Next Chapter

By Indigenous Roots Productions

Rooted Stories, Global Impact: Fuel IRP’s Next Chapter

By supporting Espíritu, you help finish the film and strengthen IRP’s mission — empowering more communities to tell their own stories, in their own way.