Indigenous Research

RENOVANT® X Indigenous Research

At RENOVANT®, regeneration is not a trend—it is a professional responsibility. It requires moving beyond mitigation toward measurable restoration: rebuilding ecological function, strengthening net positive impact, and designing residential environments that operate within the limits of land and water systems. this standard informs every project we accept and every partnership we undertake. 

Indigenous Data Governance

Honoring Indigenous authority.
RENOVANT® is an Indigenous-led practice. The regenerative frameworks the firm brings to residential construction are grounded in the founder’s own ancestral knowledge and lifelong relationship with land stewardship. That foundation is deepened — not sourced — by ongoing engagement with Indigenous scholarship.
RENOVANT® works with Indigenous researchers whose work embodies relational intelligence, cultural depth, and decolonial integrity. Dr. Angélica Medina García is the firm’s current research collaborator, and the first of what will be a growing network of Indigenous scholars informing this practice.
In all research engagements, RENOVANT® is guided by the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance — ensuring that Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics shape how knowledge is engaged, referenced, and applied:
Collective Benefit — knowledge serves the communities it comes from, not only the firm that references it
Authority to Control — Indigenous researchers and communities retain authority over their knowledge
Responsibility — the firm is accountable for how it engages with and applies that knowledge
Ethics — engagement is guided by relational accountability, not extraction

RENOVANT® does not extract Indigenous knowledge. It builds ethical architecture around it.
The goal is not representation. The goal is responsibility.

Indigenous knowledge Meets Regenerative Residential Design​

The introduction to Dr. Medina García’s thesis will be published on the RENOVANT® website as part of the firm’s Indigenous Research work.

This publication is not a summary or simplification. It is a carefully contextualized translation from Mexican Spanish into American English — one that honors Indigenous authority, relational knowledge, and the ethical responsibility that comes with bringing that work into a new language and professional context.

This is the beginning, not the conclusion, of an ongoing commitment to reshaping how residential construction engages with land, culture, and community intelligence.
Watch Video

A Conversation with PhD. Medina Garcia

At RENOVANT® we believe that true transformation begins with deep listening.
In this exclusive dialogue, we invite you to explore reflective questions answered by PhD. Medina, and indigenous researcher whose work on Tsotsil experiences challenges conventional paradigms and redefines knowledge, identity, and justice across borders.
Her responses offer not only rigorous analysis, but wisdom grounded in lived experience—directly informing our indigenous regenerative frameworks for residential construction, sustainability strategy, and culturally coherent project management. This exchange is part of our ongoing commitment and honoring indigenous voices as essential to the future of residential sustainability, community evolution, and regenerative infrastructure design.
How would you like to introduce yourself—beyond academic titles?
Dr. Medina: I’m a person walking through this human experience, hoping to leave something meaningful behind—whether it reaches one person or three. Even if it’s just a smile or a touch to the heart when they remember me.
Dr. Medina: That it opens a door. That it’s a seed opening itself and breaking the soil. That it leaves behind a bit of hope, a spark of that great fire that sustains us—and that it moves thoughts or emotions, whatever they may be. That something within them shifts after reading it.
Dr. Medina: Every Indigenous nation is unique, with its own worldview and systems of organization.
There are many ways of being Indigenous.
Our clothing, language, or use of technology do not define how “Indigenous” we are.
Please do not romanticize us—there are customs, laws, and practices that need to be questioned and transformed.
We don’t appreciate being treated with infantilization.
We are not souvenirs or trendy topics.
Reciprocity matters.
Always speak truthfully and clearly.
Be respectful and ethical in your work—put yourself in the shoes of those you collaborate with.
Respect people’s beliefs and community structures.
Do not endanger those who participate in your projects.
Be prudent.
Understand risk. Practice self-care and collective care
Dr. Medina: Sometimes, telling those stories is the best way to protect them — also by taking care of the places and spaces where they are shared.
Dr. Medina: Why have Indigenous communities remained in disadvantaged positions for over 500 years?
What sustains the persistent inequalities and racism against Indigenous peoples?
Why do government institutions fail to recognize the racist actions they themselves carry out?
What sustains invisible racism?
Dr. Medina: I’ve been curious since I was a child about how the mind and society work. Sociocultural Studies offered an integrated way to explore both, drawing from various disciplines and critically analyzing the realities we live in. It also opens the door to diverse methodologies and interventions that aim to contribute and respond to social challenges.
Dr. Medina:
Identities: The one who walks grounded, barefoot, and deep. The one who whispers and soothes.
Geographies: Oaxaca, Chiapas, Baja California, the Global South, the world.
Dr. Medina: For me, when listening and documenting, there is still a certain kind of extraction of knowledge. This brings up a constant questioning within me — in some way, even a feeling of betrayal that I find important to acknowledge. I recognize it because, in the end, by listening, I still end up extracting. In the end, I’m the one who speaks, and I’m the one who is heard — I’m the one being read in academic or institutional spaces, because only the most agreeable among us, those who have been “westernized” or “institutionalized” in one way or another, or as some say, the “good savages,” are the ones who get taken into account.

 

Unfortunately, Indigenous people themselves are not listened to directly.

I like this question because I think it’s necessary to recognize that contradiction — that research and science done from a senti-pensar (feeling-thinking) perspective, from the knowledge of the peoples and in general, is complex and full of contradictions. Still, I hold on to my commitment to speak, to raise my voice, and to tell what is really happening, because I am present in these spaces with greater visibility.

 

Dr. Medina: What I love about academia is that It pushes me to my limits. It challenges me to think, feeds my need to broaden my perspectives, and keeps me questioning myself and my reality.
Dr. Medina: My own Indigenous family, native Chatino speakers. The EZLN. The network of ancestral healers. Various feminist collectives. Artists who resist. Growing up in a tough neighborhood. Being a migrant. Working with migrants in shelters. Cultural center organizers. Defenders of water, territory, and human rights.
Dr. Medina: If we could realize that we are each a seed opening to life—and connect with the profound creative power within humanity to imagine new possibilities—our path on this Earth could be lighter for all of us.

Live. All or nothing.
Dr. Medina: If you’re interested in learning more about my work, feel free to contact me at: 
Email: angelica.medina25@gmail.com
Web: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-2552-8432
What is usually lost in translation when indigenous knowledge and worldviews from Mexican Spanish are rendered into American English?
This is a question RENOVANT® approaches in a multidimensional way, because it cannot be answered with a single comment or from a single discipline. 

RENOVANT® recognizes that there are many worldviews and perspectives across the world, and that translation always takes place within power-laden histories and epistemologies. From a dominant Western perspective, a literal translation of this thesis into American English tends to narrow and simplify the context, rather than the wording, of how Tsotsil women’s cosmovisions are lived and understood.
For example, the Spanish term “cosmovision” is usually translated as “worldview”, but in American English “worldview” often refers to an individual’s personal outlook or interpretation of the world. In contrast, “cosmovision” in this thesis speaks to a holistic system of knowledge and practice—collective and individual—that emphasizes deep interconnection with land, community, non-human beings, and the cosmos, providing coherence and meaning to life, relationships, and existence. 
This alone reveals how Western framings can flatten Indigenous perspectives, cultures, and knowledges in translation. Binary logics and extractive ontologies distort the depth of embodied, relational, and territorial experience, and reduce life as a lived process to concepts that fit Western academic and policy categories.
When RENOVANT® reads and translates these texts from a non-Western approach, the focus shifts from merely carrying words across languages to honoring the complexity, nuance, and specificity carried by Tsotsil women’s stories and analyses. In translating this thesis into English, RENOVANT® works to provide readers with as much contextual framing as possible—so that they can at least begin to sense the magnitude of the work, the histories that sustain it, and the authority embedded in these words. 
Even with this care, RENOVANT® acknowledges that no translation can fully reproduce the experiential, relational, and ceremonial dimensions that are present in the original; the aim is to bring readers closer without pretending to fully arrive. 
RENOVANT®’s approach is also shaped by lived experience: decades of work alongside Indigenous peoples and communities, as well as with displaced and vulnerable communities in different countries, and a personal lineage that is itself indigenous. Long before learning the language of formal governance standards, RENOVANT® was already guided by principles of reciprocity, consent, and responsibility to communities rather than to markets. 
This is why, when invited in 2025 to contribute expert input to the development of the CARE Data Maturity Model— an assessment tool grounded in the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics)—RENOVANT® recognized many of its own commitments reflected there. 
Today, RENOVANT® is proud to name these alignments explicitly and to integrate the CARE framework into consulting, translation, and research practices. Through participation in the CARE Data Maturity Model workshop and collaboration with Indigenous Data Sovereignty leaders, RENOVANT® works to ensure the assessment indicators are realistic for corporations, boutique consultancies, and independent researchers, while still upholding Indigenous authority and ethical obligations.
This is part of building an ethical architecture around Indigenous data and knowledge, so that translations—whether linguistic, digital, or institutional—move in ways that center Indigenous rights, community standards, and self determined futures. 
Learn about the CARE Principles
The regenerative frameworks developed by RENOVANT® are the original work of its founder and principal. They are grounded in her Indigenous heritage, professional expertise, and independent research practice. Scholarly references, research collaborations, and client engagements inform this work — they do not author it, co-own it, or hold rights to it.

© RENOVANT® 2020. All rights reserved.