For decades, indigenist anthropology has been considered indefensible in Mexico. Its conception of Indigeneity persists, however, as a resource for national heritage and identity construction. This article analyses works on Indigenous peoples by prominent Mexican scholars and traces their links to contemporary heritage narratives and practices. It discusses how a national anthropological historiography, embedded in a secularizing ideology and state project, has generated a popular, transhistorical view of Indigenous peoples as embedded in a world of religious belief. I contend that this gaze has a dematerializing discursive effect, dissociating Indigenous peoples, past and present, from material agendas and practices. This is a dispossessive narrative tradition that is being regenerated through the framework of intangible heritage.