The Arhuaco stay within the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast, which they take into account the center of the world. They’re so revered that in recent times it has grow to be custom for every new Colombian president to be sworn in twice: as soon as within the capital, Bogotá, and as soon as within the Sierra with the Arhuaco.
The Sierra, the best tropical coastal mountain vary on this planet, is a biodiversity hotspot, in pressing want of safeguarding. This yr, the Arhuaco, who’re key to its safety, have been awarded the UN Growth Programme’s Equator prize for rewilding and agroforestry for his or her work.
The Sierra, biogeographically, belongs to the Caribbean in addition to the Andes. It has been recognized by scientists as one of many world’s irreplaceable pure areas.
Latest experiences of collapsing wildlife populations within the Caribbean and Latin America, the place in some locations common populations have fallen as much as 95%, convey a brand new urgency to conservation efforts.
Indigenous communities such because the Arhuaco are essential to defending huge forest reserves. The success of the undertaking to this point has been in supporting each ecology and the Indigenous economic system.
The Arhuaco take into account the Sierra to be a sacred, dwelling being. Peaks characterize its head, the lagoons its eyes, rivers and streams its veins, the layers of soil are its muscle groups, and the grasslands, crops and bushes are its hair.
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Mamo Victor is the non secular elder of Busin village, which is 2 hours by off-road motorcycle from Pueblo Bello, the closest city
From the closest main metropolis, Santa Marta, it takes over eight hours in a 4×4 to succeed in the final frontier city, Pueblo Bello, then a two-hour motorcycle journey and mule to reach in Busin.
Their mythology and lifestyle revolve round a imaginative and prescient of the pure world as a dwelling, interconnected entity. Coca is taken into account a female entity. Males roast it and chew it as a method to maintain their ideas and mom nature’s intelligence in tune. Ladies choose the coca leaves for them.
They imagine the Sierra communicates to them via the language of the land, its tons of of sacred websites and the mamos (sages) who’re educated from early childhood to speak with nature via meditation, session, non secular funds (pagamentos), and singing, dancing and music.
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Marcela Villafañe, an Arhuaco movie director and drone pilot for forests monitoring; Jean Carlo Molina, a Colombian film-maker; Judith Torres, chief of Arhuaco feminine entrepreneurship; and Gareth Broadbent, a artistic director for Sacred Forests work collectively on a brief movie a few day within the lifetime of a weaver
Story and mythos are on the core of the tradition, however they, too, are underneath menace. To maintain them significant and compelling within the twenty first century, the Arhuaco based the Yosowkwi movie firm. Its movie director, Marcela Villafañe, the tribe’s first feminine Indigenous film-maker, will quickly launch her brief movie, Seymuke – the Ancestor We Will Be, documenting the lifetime of a mamo.
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The Arhuaco current their conventional meals grown from ancestral seeds or kia that they’ve used for generations, together with agave, pumpkin, heritage potatoes, yam and yukka
Neighborhood gardens with native seeds permit them to proceed reclaiming and rewilding their ancestral lands. They’ve been defending their seeds for hundreds of years.
This week at Cop16 in Cali, Sacred Forests and the Arhuaco folks signed a memorandum of understanding with the Colombian authorities to workforce as much as shield the Sierra, recognising the unimaginable work that has already been performed.
This work was made attainable with the assist of Sacred Forests and Asoarhuaco.
