Forest keepers: Arhuaco balance modern and ancient ways – photo essay | Cop16
The Arhuaco live in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast, which they consider the heart of the world. They are so respected that in recent years it has become tradition for each new Colombian president to be sworn in twice: once in the capital, Bogotá, and once in the Sierra with the Arhuaco.
The Sierra, the highest tropical coastal mountain range in the world, is a biodiversity hotspot, in urgent need of safeguarding. This year, the Arhuaco, who are key to its protection, have been awarded the UN Development Programme’s Equator prize for rewilding and agroforestry for their work.
The Sierra, biogeographically, belongs to the Caribbean as well as the Andes. It has been identified by scientists as one of the world’s irreplaceable natural areas.
Recent reports of collapsing wildlife populations in the Caribbean and Latin America, where in some places average populations have fallen up to 95%, bring a new urgency to conservation efforts.
Indigenous communities such as the Arhuaco are crucial to protecting vast forest reserves. The success of the project to date has been in supporting both ecology and the Indigenous economy.
The Arhuaco consider the Sierra to be a sacred, living being. Peaks represent its head, the lagoons its eyes, rivers and streams its veins, the layers of soil are its muscles, and the grasslands, plants and trees are its hair.
Mamo Victor is the spiritual elder of Busin village, which is two hours by off-road motorbike from Pueblo Bello, the nearest town
From the nearest major city, Santa Marta, it takes over eight hours in a 4×4 to reach the last frontier town, Pueblo Bello, then a two-hour motorbike ride and mule to arrive in Busin.
Their mythology and way of life revolve around a vision of the natural world as a living, interconnected entity. Coca is considered a feminine entity. Men roast it and chew it as a way to keep their thoughts and mother nature’s intelligence in tune. Women pick the coca leaves for them.
They believe the Sierra communicates to them through the language of the land, its hundreds of sacred sites and the mamos (sages) who are trained from early childhood to communicate with nature through meditation, consultation, spiritual payments (pagamentos), and singing, dancing and music.
Marcela Villafañe, an Arhuaco film director and drone pilot for forests monitoring; Jean Carlo Molina, a Colombian film-maker; Judith Torres, leader of Arhuaco female entrepreneurship; and Gareth Broadbent, a creative director for Sacred Forests work together on a short film about a day in the life of a weaver
Story and mythos are at the core of the culture, but they, too, are under threat. To keep them meaningful and compelling in the 21st century, the Arhuaco founded the Yosowkwi film company. Its film director, Marcela Villafañe, the tribe’s first female Indigenous film-maker, will soon release her short film, Seymuke – the Ancestor We Will Be, documenting the life of a mamo.
The Arhuaco present their traditional foods grown from ancestral seeds or kia that they have used for generations, including agave, pumpkin, heritage potatoes, yam and yukka
Community gardens with native seeds allow them to continue reclaiming and rewilding their ancestral lands. They have been protecting their seeds for centuries.
This week at Cop16 in Cali, Sacred Forests and the Arhuaco people signed a memorandum of understanding with the Colombian government to team up to protect the Sierra, recognising the incredible work that has already been done.
This work was made possible with the support of Sacred Forests and Asoarhuaco.
