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A gentle breeze, laden with the scent of the sea, softened the stifling heat: The temperature had reached 108 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was only 10 in the morning.

Salma’s home was at the end of the main road in Punta Chueca, a small town on the mainland coast of the Sea of ​​Cortez, also known as the Gulf of California, about 75 miles west of Hermosillo, Mexico. When I first met her in 2017, she was a 22-year-old young woman with a serious face and few words. A member of the Seri people, also known as the Comcáac, she was the only woman who had worked in the Indigenous group’s traditional guards that guarded the Seri lands for decades.

“I like to defend my people and my land,” he proudly told me as he held the gun he used on patrol. “If we don’t, no one else can.”

We are the ones who can support and defend our identity.”

In late 2016, I traveled to India to write a story about a nonprofit that teaches rural women how to build and repair solar panels and accumulators in their local communities. Four of the trainees were Seri women: Guillermina, Veronica, Francisca and Cecilia. They would spend the next six months learning solar engineering in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan.

When I heard the women speaking Spanish, I went to greet them and listened as they told me their stories. Concerned about the survival of their people, a nation of only 1,000, four women traveled thousands of miles to acquire a set of skills that would help them – to a country whose language and customs were completely foreign to them – to improve conditions in their own society.

I am impressed by their struggle.

I became close with the Seri women while documenting the NGO’s work, and eventually promised them that I would visit them whenever I could and when they returned to Mexico to help them share their stories.

A few months later, in 2017, I was finally able to keep my promise.

Serial people live a strict and brutal life – and intense biodiversity – corner of the Sonoran Desert in northwestern Mexico. Most of its members live either in Punta Chueca or in the nearby seaside village of El Desemboque, about 40 miles north.

Traditionally, their common homeland also included the Island of Tiburón, where certain Seri groups lived for hundreds or even thousands of years. Now, the island – the largest in the Sea of ​​Cortez – is administered as an island. nature and ecological protection. It remains a sanctuary for Seris, who hold exclusive fishing rights in the channel between Tiburón and the mainland.

The identity of the Seri people is inextricably tied to their natural environment, which has become susceptible to an increasing number of existential threats in recent years: warming temperatures, intensifying storms, regional development, encroachment by mining companies, overfishing of surrounding waters, and loss of traditional knowledge of local plants and animals.

The range has also struggled with limited access to fresh water for decades – but the installation of a recently installed second desalination plant in Punta Chueca has brought some relief.

These threats caused major changes in the habits and traditions of Seri. One of the consequences – as a result of the decline in traditional diets based on fish and once abundant plants, and the introduction of sugary drinks and processed foods – is a significant increase in the prevalence of diabetes.

The community, whose territory stretches along the drug trafficking corridor all the way to the US border, has also seen an increase in drug use among its members.

Yet the community continues to fiercely protect their land and heritage. In 2014, for example, a small group of Seri women – with the support of the tribe’s traditional guards – defended themselves and their lands against a mining company that began searching for gold, silver and copper in a nearby area. They said the operation threatened a sacred place where the tribe traditionally harvested herbs and cactus berries.

Despite these challenges and the relative lack of economic opportunity, young people like Paulina do not want to leave their communities. “We are the future,” she said, adding that she plans to become a lawyer to help her people.

“I’m not leaving here,” he said.

Salma echoed this sentiment, saying her dream is to study biology so she can help with local conservation efforts.

He said his ultimate hope is to preserve the flora and fauna his people have relied on for countless generations.