Comunidad Maya Pixan Ixim

Comunidad Maya Pixan Ixim (CMPI) is a 501c3 organization of the Maya Community in Nebraska, dedicated to empowering their people through community development programs and led by Mayans, for Mayans. Founded in 2012, their mission is to improve the health and well-being of the Maya people through community development strategies in Omaha. In 2013, CMPI organized the first International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples Conference in collaboration with what was then the Native American Studies Program under Creighton University’s Department of Anthropology. In Q’anjob’al Maya territory, consistent with the Q’anjob’al Maya system of social organization, they fight for the rights of Indigenous People. The main problem they face is members caught in situations where their power to determine how community resources are used is limited or non-existent. CMPI continues to create leadership within the Maya and Indigenous peoples to lift them up.

CMPI has a staff of 13 and an 11-member board of directors. Its website lists 40+ sponsors and partners, and its Facebook page declares 1,800 Facebook followers. Among its many efforts to nurture long-term sustainability of Indigenous people in Nebraska, the group grows, teaches about, and provides culturally appropriate food and supports regenerative agriculture, featuring poultry, natural systems of crops, and agroforestry. CMPI maintains the Maya Community Center in South Omaha, where it grows the “three sisters”—corn, beans, and squash—as well as sunflowers, okra, melons, and traditional medicinal plants important to the displaced Maya community from Guatemala and other Indigenous people, such as their partners, the Omaha Nation. At the center, it teaches traditional farming techniques and herbalism. CMPI has collaborated with Agrarian Land Trust to attain a USDA Land Access Capital grant and has partnered with Omaha Permaculture, which develops healthy ecosystems on unwanted land.

For more information:

NATION TO NATION: Comunidad Maya Pixan Ixim, Omaha, Nebraska – Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine, November 2018