This post is part of Global Voices’ August 2026 Spotlight series, “Indigenous Rights.” This series offers insight into the lives and experiences of Indigenous peoples to build connections across regions, center Indigenous experiences, and share the stories of leaders, activists, community members, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.
For many Indigenous communities, the traditions, art, and ceremonies are the backbone of their shared identity, essential for marking important milestones, fostering a sense of community, and passing on histories to the younger generation. However, all too often, these traditions are extracted, repackaged, sold, or seized for someone else’s gain.
Spiritual ceremonies get restaged for tourists. Manufacterers co-opt Indigenous art without credit or payment. Governments annex Indigenous heritage to legitimize their own power. The mechanics differ across geography and culture, but the result is the same: Resources and meaning flow outward from the community that created them and enrich outsiders — often the same groups that have been oppressing them for centuries.
In Oaxaca, Mexico, wedding planners sell “Oaxacan weddings” as a commercial package, offering calenda processions, mezcal, and traditional dancing, stripped of the ceremonies and reciprocity that give the tradition its meaning.
Meanwhile, major international fashion houses shamelessly lift Indigenous textile patterns, profiting off their designs while failing to give credit or payment to those who conceived of them. But this story isn’t only about extraction: In Guatemala, Maya weavers are fighting back, pushing for legal recognition of their collective intellectual property rights.
In Southern Mexico, Oaxacan communities have a rich tradition of elaborate wedding ceremonies that are being commodified and monetized to reach outside audiences. Oaxacan weddings typically involve elements like calenda (a traditional Oaxacan procession), Guelaguetza (a traditional Oaxacan festival), as well as specific food, music, dance, drink, and rituals.
These “Oaxacan wedding packages” strip the events of all of their cultural significance and reduce them to a transaction. As Oaxacan author Kupijy Vargas explains:
El concepto de bodas oaxaqueñas está ofertado en un mercado comercial, ofrecido al público por paquetes, construidos a partir de la apropiación cultural de una calenda, incluyendo el mezcal, la música y las mujeres bailando.
Estos paquetes ofrecen ese concepto para después tener una fiesta en el jardín etnobotánico, en donde se sirve comida oaxaqueña gourmet, alimentos que se comen dentro de la región pero servidos de manera estilizada. Quienes los preparan y los sirven, es decir, los meseros, cocineras, etcétera, son quienes sostienen con sus atenciones a esa fiesta en donde no existe la Guelaguetza, ni el acto de dar y recibir, sino que existe una monetización por los servicios. Es allí cuando el colonialismo vuelve a triunfar, convirtiendo en trabajadores a todas esas personas de la cultura en la que crecieron y nacieron, en sus propias tierras.
The concept of Oaxacan weddings is marketed commercially, offered to the public in packages built upon the cultural appropriation of a calenda (a traditional Oaxacan procession), including mezcal, music, and women dancing.
These packages offer this concept followed by a party in the ethnobotanical garden, where gourmet Oaxacan food is served — foods eaten within the region but presented in a stylized manner. Those who prepare and serve the food — the waiters, cooks, and so on — are the ones who sustain this party with their attention to detail. There is no Guelaguetza (a traditional Oaxacan festival), no act of giving and receiving, but rather a monetization of services. It is here that colonialism triumphs once again, turning all those people of the culture in which they grew up and were born, in their own land, into mere laborers.
A similar dynamic unfolds with textiles in this region and other Indigenous communities. Oaxacan author Tajëëw B. Díaz Robles argues that extracting traditional textiles without acknowledging or compensating the communities that invented them is a form of appropriation.
…propongo que el plagio y/o apropiación de la blusa de Tlahui y de sus patrones gráficos por parte de Isabel Marant y Antik Batik (otra empresa de moda francesa que también incurrió en la copia del textil de Tlahui en su colección Bartra de 2014) es la conversión de formas diversas de derechos de propiedad colectiva-comunal a propiedad privada, puesto que hasta el momento del plagio los bordados eran considerados parte de la identidad cultural de un colectivo, un textil cuyos patrones gráficos identifican a una comunidad en específico y que se recrea comunitariamente. Esto no significa que no sean personas específicas las que las elaboran ni que no exista una comercialización local, pero estas personas crean y producen en un contexto comunitario delimitado y las prendas circulan en un mercado que identifica claramente su origen. De ahí que Marant y Antik Batik, en palabras de las autoridades comunitarias de Tlahuitoltepec en su pronunciamiento de junio de 2015, hayan cometido algo que enuncian como ‘la apropiación de un patrimonio cultural.’
I propose that the plagiarism and/or appropriation of the Tlahui blouse and its graphic patterns by Isabel Marant and Antik Batik (a French fashion company that also copied the Tlahui textile in its 2014 Bartra collection) constitutes the conversion of various forms of collective/communal property rights into private property. Until the plagiarism, the embroidery was considered part of a collective’s cultural identity, a textile whose graphic patterns identify a specific community and are recreated communally.
This does not mean that specific individuals do not create them, nor that local commerce does not exist, but these individuals create and produce within a defined community context, and the garments circulate in a market that clearly identifies their origin. Therefore, Marant and Antik Batik, in the words of the Tlahuitoltepec community authorities in their June 2015 statement, committed what they describe as ‘the appropriation of cultural heritage.’
Some Maya communities in Guatemala are fighting back against this phenomenon by pushing for legal protections for traditional crafts and textiles.
The fight has been going on for over a decade: In 2016, the Women’s Association for the Development of Sacatepéquez (AFEDES) and a coalition of weaving cooperatives filed a constitutional challenge arguing that Guatemala’s silence on Indigenous textile rights was itself unconstitutional. The Constitutional Court sided with them twice, ordering Congress to pass protective legislation. Thus far, Congress has failed to do so. Two bills have died in the legislature: Initiative 5247 in 2017, and Initiative 6136 in 2022.
In June 2026, the movement, now working under the name “Ru Chajixik ri Qana'ojb'äl” (“safeguarding our knowledge,” in the Kaqchikel language), delivered a third proposal, Initiative 6788.
Like its predecessors, the bill defines textile intellectual property as “collective, inalienable, and imprescriptible,” meaning it belongs to the community rather than any individual, can’t be sold or signed away, and can’t expire.
If passed, it would formally recognize Indigenous peoples as the legal authors of their weavings, designs, and techniques — including specific motifs, patterns, symbols, colors, glyphs, and petroglyphs passed down through generations — and create a National Council on Textile and Indigenous Clothing Intellectual Property to enforce those rights. The weavers have also asked Congress for three concrete commitments alongside the bill itself: A favorable ruling affirming the constitutional and international legal basis for collective Indigenous intellectual property, expedited legislative handling, and a standing dialogue between Congress and the movement to track the bill’s progress.
Regardless of how the bill fares in Guatemala’s legislature, the proposal presents a model for other Indigenous groups around the world looking to safeguard their own intellectual property rights.