IRKA MATEO
Sacred Taino Healing
ABOUT SACRED TAINO HEALING
Sacred Taíno Healing was born from a lifelong devotion to remembering who we are as Taíno people and carrying that memory forward with integrity, beauty, and purpose. My path has unfolded through decades of ceremony, cultural reclamation, and the teachings of our elders, shaping a practice that weaves together the spiritual, the creative, and the ancestral.
My work flows through many channels — ceremony, guidance, teaching, healing, and the ceramic arts — all of them anchored in singing, the ancient ceremonial chants, our share wisdom, and the living memory of our people.
Rooted in Taíno cosmology and nourished by our earth-based traditions, Sacred Taíno Healing is a living space of remembrance. Here, we restore a relationship with the land, the spirits, and the stories that shaped our ancestors. Through ceremony, creative expression, and community
learning, we continue the work our people began long before us — tending the fire of identity, healing, and belonging. Here, we reconnect with the land, the spirits, and the inherited traditions and stories that our ancestors carried forward — practices that remain alive in our communities today.
Sacred Taíno Healing is both a homecoming and an offering: a place where ancestral knowledge meets contemporary need, and where each person is invited to return to their deeper self with dignity, clarity, and reverence.
ABOUT IRKA MATEO
I am Irka Mateo — Akutu — a Taíno elder, cultural and spiritual bearer, and ceremonialist rooted in the Taíno and Afro-Indigenous traditions of Kiskeya. My life is shaped by ancestral lineage, decades of research, and a calling to renew Taíno spiritual memory in our time. For ten years, I served as the Taíno Lead Teacher at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in New York City. My archival work in ceremonial music has been supported by the Grammy Foundation, preserved in the National General Archives of the Dominican Republic, and honored with Grammy album consideration.
My Work Today — 2026
Welcome:
Welcome to this space of connection, ceremony, and creative expression — a place to honor
ancestral wisdom, the cycles of the earth, and the living spirit within each of us.
My work moves through many channels — healing, ceremony, teachings, music, and ceramic
art — each nourishing the other and carrying the voice and living memory of our ancestors. My
healing is guided by intuition and divination — an intimate dialogue with spirit — and I offer
shamanic divination, power animal retrieval, and pattern-breaking journeys to those called to
explore their path of connection and restoration. I welcome one-on-one clients to experience
these practices in a personal, guided way.
After five years and 152 moon circles, December 4, 2025 marks my final moon ceremony — a
cycle lovingly completed, held with gratitude for the community it nurtured, the prayers shared,
and the healing carried through the hardest times, including the pandemic. From here, my
ceremonial focus turns to the equinoxes and solstices, the Day of the Dead, and gatherings in
Kiskeya that celebrate culture, artistry, and spiritual connection, honoring the cycles of the earth
and the living heritage of our ancestors. Dates and details for upcoming gatherings in 2026
will be shared soon.
Music has always been a heartbeat in my work. I continue guiding the virtual Songkeepers
program, a circle devoted to preserving and revitalizing ancestral Taíno ceremonial rhythms and
songs, honoring the rural elders of Kiskeya who carried these melodies across generations, and
teaching both the traditional countryside songs and my own ceremonial compositions.
I remain in service to the community while also honoring the artist within me. In 2026, I am
devoting special care to creating a new body of ceramic work for exhibition, alongside writing
new songs for recording and release — allowing the creative path to stand fully and visibly
beside my service work.
I am grateful to serve on the Abya Yala Council of Elders of Kako Earth and to be part of
Heartland Gathering — including its first two years as OR — offering ceremony, healing, and
exhibiting my ceramic art across the United States and beyond.
Invitation:
If your spirit feels called, you are welcome to join a healing session, ceremony, or in-person
gathering in Kiskeya — to experience my ceramic work, listen to the music, and connect with
the ancestors, the land, and the creative currents that flow through us all.
My Body of Knowledge
I guide others in Taíno cosmology, stories, ceramic arts, and songs as living practices of reconnection. I am a lifelong student and researcher of Taíno and Afro-Indigenous music, ceremony, and rural traditions in the Dominican countryside. I have learned directly from elders and other knowledge keepers — and from shamanic and ceramic arts wisdom keepers across Abya Yala — weaving these teachings into pathways of remembrance for our contemporary community, and deepening my understanding of earth-based spirituality and the arts through ancestral forms, time-honored techniques, and the sacred resonance carried within these practices.
Art, Music & Ceremony
Before founding Sacred Taíno Healing, I lived as an established performer and recording singer–songwriter, yet every song I created emerged from the ceremonial rhythms I learned from elders in the countryside — never separate from prayer. This foundation remains at the center of all I share — in ritual, teaching, healing, and in the creation of Taíno- and pan-Indigenous inspired ceramic arts.
Closing Thought
“May these songs, ceremonies, and teachings nourish our shared remembrance, and may we continue to walk together in healing, guidance, and ancestral connection.”
ATTEND A CEREMONY
Equinoxes and Solstices,
Day of the Dead
Continuing with the indigenous traditions of earth honoring ceremonies, Akutu Irka celebrates mother earth and its cycles by acknowledging the change of seasons on the solstices and equinoxes. These changes remind us that there are times for planting, growing, harvesting and resting.
Final Full Moon Ceremony — A Closing of the Lunar gathering in December 2025
For completing the year-calendar, she offers a ceremony to the ancestors on the Day of the Dead when we receive their visit and blessing. We will add: This December 2025, the community is invited to join her for the final Full Moon Ceremony, a closing gathering under grandmother moon.
BOOK A HEALING SESSION
Power Animal Retrieval ︎︎︎
Some of our indigenous relatives from the Amazon give a power animal to every child that is born in their villages. This is a belief and tradition that has been passed on for centuries.
Shamanic Divination ︎︎︎
The Akutu enters into a non-ordinary state of consciousness to get the help of her compassionate spirit guides to bring the answers to the questions requested by the person.
Breaking Patterns ︎︎︎
From a shamanic point of view, when a person experiences a trauma or harsh difficulties in life it creates a pattern that will lodge in specific places of the body. Once there, this outdated and unwanted feeling and behavior will inform the responses to the current life situations.
CERAMICS
Irka Mateo is deeply rooted in her heritage from Kiskeya/Ayiti, now known as the Dominican Republic, where her passion for exploring the ancestral wisdom of the Arawak Taino heritage runs deep. At the same time, she honors the profound African contributions that have shaped their shared identity. Irka’s calling is to share this rich cultural legacy and play a role in the evolving Caribbean identity that fully embraces both Afro and Indigenous origins. Her ultimate purpose is to preserve and nurture these values and traditions as part of their cultural and spiritual heritage.
For over 40 years, Irka has documented Afro-Taino ceremonial music and spirituality, drawing inspiration for her original songs. She has also woven the spiritual knowledge passed down by tradition bearers in her country and other Indigenous groups into her work, leading ceremonies and traditional healing practices that honor these ancient teachings. This journey into ancestral ceramics, sparked by her work in ceremonial and healing practices, has led her to create contemporary Taino art. Now based in Los Angeles, California, Irka remains deeply dedicated to this meaningful path, continuing to pour her heart and spirit into keeping these traditions alive.
MEDIA
VIDEO LIBRARY
MUSIC
Akutu Irka's Shamanic Music
We offer two shamanic songs to provide medicine music support for your personal journeys of tending to your ancestors. One recording features Akutu Irka playing the mayowakan, while the other incorporates her spontaneous chanting to the ceremonial Taino drum. Both recordings offer a spiritual experience for those seeking to connect with their ancestral roots.
Irka Mateo’s Music
Irka is a touring and recording singer-songwriter with a career spanning thirty-five years. Her current music showcases Dominican spiritual folklore, through original dance alternative music.
