The Sand People: The Comca’ac of Mexico
Painting The Stories of their Ancestors & the Children of Giants
The Comca’ac (“The People”), known as the Seri to outsiders, are historically semi nomadic hunter-gatherers traveling between land and sea. Known by the Yaqui as the Sand People.
Now based in Sonora and Tiburón Island in Mexico, the Comca’ac have fiercely protected their language, culture and territory against outsiders, colonizers and missionaries. Their language is unique and distinct from all other groups in Mexico.
The Comca’ac typically practiced a nomadic egalitarian social model, in small bands of people without a leader. Only shamans and medicine people are central, who’s powers derive from dreams and visions. For a long time they resisted the use of money, as they saw its unfairness. They practice sharing, allowing all to have equal access to food that is caught and gathered.
One of their celebrations are for girls coming of age, and another a feast for a great basket Saaptim, that takes several years to weave.
Another festival is that of Hamazaj cmiiqui, which takes place when someone travels through the forest and would find an ancient artifact. His responsibility is to perform a ceremony of four days and nights to appease the spirit of the object and avoid bad luck, and then return it to the place where it was found.
They have vast astrological knowledge of the moon and stars expressed through myth and story, and have incredible navigation skills on the ocean with unparalleled maritime routes.
Today, the Comca’ac are part of important projects Paraecológos, Grupo Tortuguero and Ecologists of the desert. In the first, they study birds, plants and terrestrial mammalian animals, in the second, they monitor the protection of turtles, and the third, work by uniting ancestral and western knowledge on studies of desert plants and animals. They have vital knowledge of traditional medicine strengthening ethnomedicinal knowledge.
Connections have been made with the Bufo Alvarius toad medicine DMT 5meo and the ancient traditions of the Comca’ac people. The reintroduction of the medicine has supported healing from addictions to other substances that are trafficked through the region.