|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
COLOMBIA:
Indigenous Women
Help Preserve Biodiversity
Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, (IPS) - Indigenous
people in Colombia's Amazon
jungle region use a garden for
just two or three years before
abandoning it to clear a new one
somewhere else, thus practising
sustainable agriculture in an
exuberant but fragile
environment where the soil is
extremely poor.
This was explained by Rufina
Román, the daughter of a shaman
- traditional healer and priest
- of the Uitota-Nipode
indigenous community, who for
the first time spoke in public
about some of the secrets she
learned from her mother, the
shaman's wife.
Her audience included women from
the Guambiano, Arhuaco, Kokama,
Waunan, Bará and Wayúu ethnic
groups from different parts of
Colombia, where indigenous
people belonging to 90 different
ethnic groups make up one
million of a total population of
44 million.
Five years ago when she was
studying in Bogotá, Román, who
was 23 years old at the time,
told IPS that she had decided to
return to the jungles of
southern Colombia to learn from
her mother the wisdom shared by
indigenous women.
Araracuara, on the middle
stretch of the Caquetá river,
one of the largest tributaries
of the Amazon river, is the
traditional home of the Nipode
clan of the Uitoto people.
Román felt a strong call to keep
the generation-to-generation
transmission of indigenous
knowledge alive. ”That's when I
started learning,” she now told
IPS with a smile, although she
pointed out that ”only the
preservers of culture,” shamans
like her father, ”are familiar
with the code of life.”
Before that, Román had been at
school in the capital. She
thought that when she returned
home, she would be able to teach
her community many things. ”I
thought I would sow there what I
had acquired here. But they
rejected what I brought back
with me.”
She used a large coloured pencil
drawing on construction paper of
a woman's body dotted with
plants and fruit as an
illustration during her
presentation at the
international conference on
indigenous women and
biodiversity, held the last week
of June in Bogotá.
The event was organised by the
Fundación Natura, the
governmental Colombian Institute
of Anthropology and History (ICANH),
and the World Conservation Union
(IUCN).
It was also attended by women of
the Ashaninka people of Perú,
the Mapuches of Chile and the
Kuna of Panama.
Román explained that each plant
had its corresponding place in
the body of the woman in the
drawing, who symbolised the
”chagra” or traditional garden
covering one or two hectares
cleared out of the forest by
indigenous peoples in the Amazon
to grow their food and medicinal
and spiritual herbs.
The sacred plants of coca and
tobacco are at the woman's head,
and drawn across her waist are
people bringing in the harvest.
”The work on the chagra gives
order to human life,” said Román.
The majority of indigenous
families in the Amazon jungle
region live today in ”bohíos” or
wooden, palm-thatched huts with
dirt floors in small isolated
villages located in the large
indigenous reserves. The chagras
are even deeper into the jungle,
sometimes as far as a two-hour
walk away.
Studies show that communities
only return to their old plots
three generations later, when
the jungle has completely grown
back and recovered. ”The chagra
sustains the pollen of life of
the primary forest,” in Román's
words.
In this manner, indigenous
people avoid depleting the soil
in the jungle, where the land
cannot withstand continuous
farming. ”The soil turns tough
as leather,” say the people of
the jungle.
But due to this semi-nomadic
lifestyle based on ancestral
knowledge of their surroundings,
the indigenous peoples of the
Amazon need large territories in
which to move about.
The spacious wooden hut where
Román's parents live is on the
banks of the powerful Caquetá
river, at the point where it
narrows to pass between two
imposing rock walls, forming the
Araracuara rapids.
Across the river is the Predio
Putumayo, a 6.5 million hectare
indigenous reserve, located in
one of the regions of greatest
biological diversity in the
world. The reservation is shared
by seven ethnic groups,
comprised of a total of 14,000
people.
Román's mother taught her that
”we must plant for the animals,
because we hurt their forest. We
must replace everything that we
cut down.”
Indigenous women thus grow more
than the community will consume,
based on the idea that the ants,
for example, have a right to
devour part of the harvest.
”The secret of receiving wisdom
and keeping it alive is
contained in the work on the
chagra,” Román told the
participants in the seminar.
”Each plant sown has a live
spirit, and represents food,
healing, education, song, rites,
marriage and baptism.
”The chagra is where knowledge
takes material form. This means
food is sacred and transforms
our thinking and our hearts, and
educates the human being,” she
added.
She also said that ”The wise man
may have all of the knowledge,
but if he doesn't have a wife,
he doesn't know anything,”
because according to tradition
it is women who ”help men's
words flourish and come alive,”
and ensure that knowledge is not
lost but is passed from
generation to generation.
But Román and her mother are
also aware of what is occurring
around them in this civil
war-torn country.
”We know that there are national
politics and international
politics and interests, and that
all of the sights are now
trained on the Amazon jungle
region. That a lot of stealthy
stuff is going on with respect
to indigenous knowledge, and
that there is biopiracy and oil
prospecting in some parts of the
jungle,” she said.
”These are strange issues for
us,” Román added. ”I am not an
academic, and I don't know about
these things. But now, what I'm
learning from my grandmothers
and grandfathers is for me the
best university, and I will
never speak in the language of
another people, because it is
another way of thinking.”
”I live there with them, I
suffer with them, I talk to
them, I chew (sacred coca) with
them, and right now I am happy
because I can come out with this
strength, with this staff of
knowledge which, as I was
taught, allows us to manage the
two principles, to understand
good and evil in-depth, in order
to live in harmony and
equilibrium with oneself and
with one's surroundings.”
”Today, anyone can have a chagra.
But if the work code that is
written in the law of creation
is not put into practice, the
human being's spirit will not be
sustained, and it will only
sustain the material part,
providing food, but not
nourishment,” said Román.
”That is why we say we are the
essence of everything we plant
in the chagra.”
The conference participants
decided to create a network for
indigenous women to maintain
contact among themselves and
with ”white” women as well - the
women who organised the event:
well-known environmental
activists, anthropologists and
indigenous rights activists who
promote a gender perspective.
Anthropologist Astrid Ulloa,
with ICANH, described the
gathering as ”successful.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
