In Láak'ech Study Group

In early 1998, while housed on C-Facility at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, California, a majority of our study group was composed of Native Americans, although the group was open to all races and ethnicities. At the time our Spiritual Leader, Ricardo Duran, and I were working on acquiring for the group the status of an Inmate Leisure Time Activity Group, a.k.a. an ILTAG. Acquiring ILTAG status paved the way for a group to have scheduled time in the educational classrooms, a budget for books and other materials, and the ability to invite guest speakers to come into the prison. Part of the process of acquiring ILTAG status was to present to the administration the proposed name for the group. Other members of our study group (both Native and non-Native) and I struggled for months to come up with a name for the group that both encompassed the main focus of our endeavors (Maya research) and the spiritual philosophy of the prison-based Native American Circle that gave rise to the study group. Several suggestions centered around different Native greetings or tenets. For example, one suggestion was "The Mitakuye Oyasin Study Group." Mitakuye oyasin is a Lakota phrase meaning "All my relations." This phrase denotes the universal connections between all animate and inanimate entities—the winged ones, the four-legged ones, the ancient tree and stone ones, etc., and serves as a reminder of both our place and responsibility to live in harmony and with morality, because everything we think, do and say has an effect on that web of kinship. While such a name indeed encompassed the philosophical aspect of our group, it did not really reflect the Maya research aspect.
 

In March of that same year, we had our annual spring ceremony at which we built the new sweat lodge for the prison. For this ceremony Ricardo had brought in a Yukatek Maya Holy Man, José Tuch Pum, from Mexico City. José spoke Yukatek and Spanish, so Ricardo acted as his interpreter (in Spanish) for the day. As José greeted each of the members of the Circle, he repeated the phrase in láak'ech. I asked José, through Ricardo, what the phrase meant, to which he responded that it was a greeting that meant "I am another you," and was meant to convey that everything and everybody are connected, that what happens to one happens to all. At the subsequent meeting of our study group, by unanimous decision, we became the In Láak'ech Study Group.