“Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s lovingly drawn characters work hard to preserve their innocence in a world where irony and cynicism would be easier. They spend a lot of time travelling: on land, on the water, through space and time–in cars, trucks, fishing boats, canoes, and in their minds: between bars, forests, reservations, curling rings, kitchens, lakes, and highways. These exquisitely rendered journeys become symbols for our desire to understand and never stop learning, no matter the cost. There is heartbreak here but also many moments of fleeting grace, and a wry humor that promises to keep us safe”
–Ursula Pflug
“indinawemaaganidog / all of my relatives”
i am standing on the wharf in cap saint louis just wondering, when a guy i’ve never met shows up. you should know i make it a policy not to talk to people unless absolutely necessary which is judgmental and damaged and yes i miss out on possibility, but at the same time tricky people do manage on occasion to penetrate my aural perimeter. it all works out in the end. sort of.
so etienne shows up and says allo and obviously he knows i’m not suppose to be there so i’m suspicious of what he wants. i tell him i want to see the seal colony even though that’s not what i want and that’s not what i am looking for. he immediately says he’ll take me. i ask how much. he says for free.
fine.
nothing in life is free. the best things in life are free. there is no such thing as a free lunch.
we walk down the dock and he offers his hand so i can step down onto the deck of the boat. of course i refuse and step down onto stacked broken plastic bins on my own because we need to get a few things straight right from the beginning and this is one of them.
he starts the engine and i’m in the back with the gear so we can’t talk. it’s sunny and it’s windy and it’s perfect and as we drive away from the shore i think about dexter and all the possible scenarios. he interrupts, offering me a coors light iced tea and i take one on impulsive even though it’s only ten thirty in the morning and coors light is always gross. Suddenly we’re a mile off shore in the atlantic.
we drive past a kayaker and kumbaya plays in my head and i stand up and wave like a happy person so he’ll remember me when the cops question him later.
it’s only a few more minutes to the seals which are herded on a sand bar so they can catch the fish moving into the river with big tides. we get close and they stampede into the sea reminding me of dogs and sheep and buffalo and etienne ask me if i want to go farther.
with the same impulse as the coors light iced tea, i say yes and he says he knows this place where there is a school of mackerel. we could fish because last night he was there and he caught a thousand pounds just jigging for them. i decide he is mi’kmaq because he could be and even though that probably means nothing it makes me feel less nervous.
on the way to the mackerel, etienne tells me how the feds kicked his family out of the park and paid them three hundred and fifty bucks for their land in 1968 and then they bulldozed the house. i tell etienne that i know how that feels but i don’t think he believes me because he thinks i’m from toronto and i’m rich and judgmental and full of shit because that’s what people think when you say the word “ontario”.
etienne gets out the lines and in two minutes we know we’re on the school because we’re pulling in mackerel easy. he watches as i hold the hook and snap the fish into the garbage pail, which is my reveal. it’s sunny and it’s windy and it’s perfect and the arms of the day are wide open and no one has to be anywhere. i see a northern gannet and i love gannets because they can disconnect their wings before they plummet into the sea after a fish. imagine disconnecting a body part! the gannet swims over to the boat smelling the fish blood and etienne hands the gannet a fish and says “the bird is my family, all of this, the fish, the seals, the water–this is my family,” which is his reveal.
our eyes meet because now he has my attention. i walk over and hug him and he is the kind of person that can give and receive a real hug and i’m not one of those people because my alarm system goes off when people touch me and i freeze up and shut down. this time that doesn’t happen. i decide to kiss him and it’s perfect and easy and we make out void of awkwardness but with a clearly defined beginning and a clearly defined ending. then he drives back to shore while i gut the fish in the back of the boat using his terrifyingly sharp knife, feeding the guts to the gulls and the gannets. he drops me off on the dock. we thank each other. we say goodbye and i pay attention to each step, instead of looking back.
~~~
For more about Leanne Betasamisake Simpson and her art
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist, who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Her work breaks open the intersections between politics, story and song—bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.
I first met Eliana Muchachasoy during a trip to the high Putumayo region, as I was climbing the steep street that led to the Indigenous town center and following the path that went alongside the graffiti of a grandmother and a Camëntsá chumbe (woven belt). I ran into Eliana, more out of luck than by chance, in the central plaza of Valle del Sibundoy, standing just in front of a little house on the corner that was covered with images of plants, animals, and portraits filled with colored paints. It seemed as if she emerged from the painting; in effect, she did, because I learned later that this was Benach, the gallery that she, together with Alberto Velazco, had founded. It was a place where Eliana could make known her own work as an artist, bring forth other cultural and artistic work from her community, and open a learning/pedagogical space of exchange between the children and youth of the valley. For Eliana, all of these activities form part of a common effort to strengthen the identity of her Camëntsá community and to heal and protect the territory. A recurring theme in her work is the feminine universe, a theme which she has strengthened over the years with her lived experience weaving, planting, and practicing traditional medicine among her grandmothers, I invite you to continue to read a bit about her experience as a Camëntsá woman, artist, and cultural organizer.
Eliana Muchachasoy has participated in multiple collective and individual exhibitions in places such as Mexico, Ecuador, and the United States. She makes her visionary objective known throughout the territory of Abiayala as well as in Brisbane, Australia, where, in 2018, she was invited to participate in an artists’ residence.
PM: I suggest that you begin with a memory from your infancy that you consider to be meaningful to your experience as an artist…
EM: I carry with me memories from childhood of the house where I grew up in the company of my mother and my grandmother who are both weavers. Through weaving, I came to know the stories of my community as well as the magic of the colors between the threads. When my grandmother began to teach me to weave, she explained to me many forms, but it was complicated to understand the sequence of the line required to form figures, so complicated that I gave up weaving. I am not sure for how long I gave it up for, I think several months might have gone by before I returned to try again. To my surprise, my mother and grandmother came to me with the very same work that I had begun earlier, because that was where the learning process lay. I had to finish what I had once begun. What’s more, my Mama, then and now a mother to the community, would give me crayons and tempera paints for me to share with the other children who were in her care. We would paint on cardboard and posterboard, imagining stories that we came up with together. In the same way, when I went with her to meetings for her work, she would take a notebook and crayons so that I could paint whatever occurred to me in the course of the meetings. I remember some of my sketches as well as the voices of her companions saying that I was doing it all very well.
PM: After completing your studies in Art at the Bogotá Campus of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, you return to your community. What was it like to come back to your origins and what importance does it have in your work today?
EM: At the time I completed University, I had stopped painting for a while because I felt a bit frustrated in that area within the Academy. The painting classes didn’t go well for me. I returned to my community with various expectations and connected to a photography project to help tell some of the history of the community. After a year in my territory, I had the opportunity to enter the teaching profession, where I taught artistic education for more than three years in the public school in La Hormiga, Putumayo. It was a learning experience, but the moment came when I needed to change my work. I didn’t feel a thorough calling to the vocation of a teacher, so I decided to quit and return to my community without any clear view of which path or project I would continue.
In this stage, as I contemplated or planned what to do with my life, I returned to weaving. I completed several woven bags, and some of my grandmother’s stories came to my memory between the colored threads. It was precisely in these days when I found some oils and a small piece of canvas that I had brought back with me years before from the University. The question and answer came to me at once, “Why not try again?” In truth, I felt the hunch as a sign, a message in color, but more than anything, as a gift that the land was giving to me. Taking up painting again meant returning to life; reviving the spirit of color that was sown within me, finding meaning in my path, understanding that this was the lifelong project that I wanted to undertake. From that moment forward, I have never abandoned the colors.
“When, from the ashes, memory awakens, we remember that our roots are sown to strengthen our spirit and continue the weave of life.”
Elíana Muchachasoy
PM: Is there some ritual or activity that precedes the realization of your paintings?
EM: Medicinal plants have always been present in my family and in my community- I have learned to make an offering whenever I am going to give expression to something on canvas. I like to light a candle, apply natural plant essences to the surroundings and on my hands; I give thanks to all of the spirits of the elders, the territory, and the elements of the universe for having, once more, given me the opportunity to flow through color. Painting is in itself a ritual that allows me to see the magic of color- this is the way that I feel in harmony with the space and with what I am doing.
PM. In what manner are your visual works linked to your family’s traditional medicine?
EM. I feel as though my work is influenced by the land, the community, the medicine , the grandmothers, the grandfathers, their plants, their animals, their birds, their dances, their stories and chants which have come to form my memory and reached me in different moments during the realization of a piece. I have brought forth some pieces in the Malokas, where the medicine, or yagé, is shared, and have been able to see how people feel connected to the image- some say that they have had similar visions, others feel the magic within the work and dream within that magic.
PM: How prevalent is self-portrait in your visual work?
EM: On two occasions I painted self-portraits, but I found them very complex to paint faithfully. At times, I take pictures of myself with some gestures that I would like to express and I choose these gestures as references.
PM: It seems significant to me that you, yourself, serve as the reference in some of your paintings, whether or not as a faithful or realistic representation. How tied are the themes in your work to your own life?
EM: Often people ask about the artist’s signature in a work of art although, really, the signature is on one and all of the brushstrokes expressed on the canvas. This is the way I often feel when I am painting. It is as if I am writing or painting a story; I feel as though I give all and make all of myself available in this ritual, so I do represent myself, not necessarily as an image that is faithful to my portrait as much as it is to my essence and my feeling. Sometimes I feel as if I am in blue or green rays that vibrate with the vibrant or fluorescent colors that dance in the dreamlike forms that I am creating.
PM: Do you consider your painting to have been part of your personal healing?
EM: Painting has allowed me to reach other worlds, to feel free, to be happy, to remember, to dream, to pay homage to different plant spirits, grandmothers, elements. Every work has allowed me to heal, to balance my world. The feeling of satisfaction I have with my creations has been marvelous- it brings me great happiness to be a messenger through my works. I truly feel that art in all of its forms has a healing mission; it allows us to weave the beautiful thought and feeling of the heart.
PM: The hummingbird is an animal that appears regularly in your paintings. Can you tell us something about this animal and the importance it has for you? EM: Hummingbirds are abundant in my territory. Every day they come around my workshop where I paint. Their colors are very attractive. There are different stories and good omens that surround the hummingbird- a visit from one brings messages. The grandfathers say that they are the great messengers because they can communicate with the beings who are no longer around us on this planet,, and because of this I like to have their presence in my work.
EM: There is a series of works called Botaman juabn, “thinking beautifully,” that is dedicated to the hummingbirds. The woven colorful headbands or crowns represent the colors of nature, of our contact with the medicine and the Earth Mother, the thought that is woven between colors. The hummingbird is the messenger from our ancestors and the path of our elders remains woven in every territory- It is up to us to continue with this weave of life. Think beautifully, the ancestors say, because we are writing our own story in this universe.
“Nettle is a healing plant, for teaching and learning. It is used to heal the body, relieve the nerves, improve circulation- In the Inga community, nettle is used in some of their celebrations, such as the Atun Puncha. This plant has been present in the process of the transmission of the values of the Indigenous communities: when the time comes to reprimand someone, nettle is used as a plant of authority.”
Eliana Muchachasoy
PM: Can you speak to us a bit about the medicinal plants that appear in your paintings? EM: The medicinal plants that I have painted have held a close relationship with me; some have always been present in the garden, along the paths within the territory, within the sharing with the grandmother and grandfather wisdomkeepers, in the need for some cure. I have painted medicinal plants such as the yagé vine, bella donnas or protector plants, calendula, elder, nettle, chamomile, frailejones, and water willow,among others. Also, I have painted the better known plants in our vegetable garden such as corn, cradle potato, tumaqueño, chayote, and kale. I’ve used the leaves of some of these plants as templates and to achieve different forms and textures in my work.
“Woman life, woman healing, feminine power,
wise grandmother who sowed your knowledge
with the hope that it would flower in our generations. Today your seeds weave themselves in our Earth Mother.”
Eliana Muchachasoy
PM: There are various symbols in your paintings. Could you tell us a bit about them?
EM: Some of the symbols that appear in the paintings emerge from the figures that are expressed on the loom, such as the diamond shape, which for us is the origin of life. For example, in the work “Flowers-We Will Be,” the sun is represented by the diamond and its radiating lines. In this work, I paint about the way that our territories will bloom again, because we are roots.The thought which our elders sowed in every plant, every food, in every lunar phase has not lost its roots. The new generations have to allow them to be born again in the Tamabioy Territory. This diamond figure also appears in the piece, “Bëtsësangbe Benach,” the path of my elders, which shows that the territories are the fruit of the struggles of our elders, and that caring for them, protecting them, and knowing them is our duty. The fruit of the future has its roots in the past. Our gardens maintain the living memory of our grandfathers and grandmothers.
… Lately I have been working on muralism and I really like to capture symbols through stencils, it is a way of showing a little bit of what is captured in textiles by community weavers.
PM: The garden is a frequent theme in your work. Could you tell us about the path of learning that you find there?
EM: The garden or Jajañ is the place where food and medicinal plants are sown, the connection with the Earth Mother, the space of sharing, of listening to the voices of the birds and the spirit of the plants. The garden is the place for learning and the transmission of knowledge. In this space, I learned to feel the textures of the plants, to see the constant miracle of life that the Earth Mother offers us, to contemplate dawns and dusks observing the way in which my grandmother explained the hours of the day according to the location of the sun, and the sowing of plants according to the cycles of the moon.
EM: I once did a piece called “Woman Corn.” Since the dawn of time woman & corn have survived, both seeds of life that cyclicly weave themselves to the lunar rhythm. Within the womb of time the seed of corn nourishes the spirit of the Indian people; the hand of woman transforms the sacred seed. Thanks to her the corn is eaten, drunk, laughed, sung, woven- the corn is dreamt. Woman-corn, woman seed, woman moon, woman-mother-daughter-grandmother, woman who sows and teaches to sow, woman who weaves her ancestral culture in the daily art of living, Woman Corn.
PM: In your work, there are certain elements from Nature associated with the cycles of women. Can you speak to us about the presence of these cycles in your pieces?
EM: In my work, I constantly refer to woman as seed. In the poetic language of Nature, woman is the carrier of life, the seed that at once germinates and gestates life within. She is the way through which we come to know light, through gestation, and in art, the symbolism of death and life are constant forces within which we should move, we should create new worlds, new gazes, and this is where the gaze of the artist becomes relevant. The artist should look, observe, see, and it is in Nature where we find the correct motivations to reveal ourselves, in the observation of Nature, held, detailed. In Nature we find the questions and answers that have accompanied us since time immemorial, and perhaps art might help us to understand the questions and answers -to feel them- interpret them.
EM: The Camëntsá Indigenous woman–represented through different spaces as the protagonist of the living culture of her people–is the one who weaves and sows with other women celebrating life and joining their steps in a single walk. In this way, Indigenous women weave our Camëntsá territory ancestrally, through thought and word.They are grandmothers who weave the path, and till the land, day after day, accompanied by the guidance of the moon and the sun. They who have survived and maintained their customs despite a process of colonization, they who have fought for their life and territory–the women who inhabit my colorful space. This is perhaps the reason why women are protagonists in my work, women as territory, the feminine as the sacred and the human, Earth Mother as a feeling, a dream, both as struggle and hope. Women and territory in unity.
EM: We are all interwoven. We are constantly weaving thoughts together, weaving words. We are a single universe. My grandmother wove her beautiful thoughts and words in my heart, and showed me the magic of colors through the threads on the loom, the miracle of constant life in her chagra (garden), and the dreamlike spaces through stories around the fire. Her beliefs and medicines are memories that fill my universe with gratitude for having her presence and company in my upbringing as a woman and artist. Her legacy remains in my mother, in my family, and in my hands. In the work “Sowing good thoughts” she is the woman at the center who shares the colored threads with other women. In several paintings I have paid homage to the grandmothers as knowledgeable women, sowers. In a piece entitled “Mama Mercedes”, I painted my grandmother as a way to thank her for her legacy.
“Camëntsá woman, you are the most beautiful flower among flowers, knowledgeable about medicinal plants, your wisdom is full of love. Your mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart, ancestral Mother. Aslepay ainanokan, Mama Mercedes, for healing our paths and harmonizing with us so we think beautifully.”
Eliana Muchachasoy
PM: Can you tell us about the link between the images you create and the visions that arise in the Yagé ceremony?
EM: Traditional medicine, specifically yagé, is part of the collective lifelong project of the community. Since we were children, the elders have shared this medicine with us to have a greater connection with the spiritual, with plants and everything that surrounds us. For me, this medicine has been a bridge to myself, to self-reflection, healing and spiritual strengthening. In my work I have not depicted yagé visions; my work is rather a vision with my territory, with the memory that I have been restoring and in which this medicine is also a part. My work is a contribution to the collective memory of my community.
"I dream among your mountains,
I dream among your roots,
I dream within the seed that germinates,
I dream on the calm water,
I dream in the day and at night,
Contemplating the miracle of life.”
Eliana Muchachasoy
PM: In your work, how do you build the view of the territory from feminine thought?
EM: This is a constant challenge to myself and my honesty. When reviewing my history, my body, my territory, I discover all the traces of my ancestors, my aunts, my grandmothers, my sisters, and the hands of my mother resting. Sisterhood –as it is known in the West– is part of our lifelong project. There is a feminine feeling in the Camëntsá sense of collectivity; there is a knowledge that is transmitted from generation to generation. Camëntsá time passes differently, -the time planting in the chagra (garden), and the time in the kitchen-fire. The woven time leaves its traces on the chumbe (woven belt), which we always or almost always wear in our clothing. Our songs and dances, in which all voices, the old and the new, are repeated over time, sound together . My work is part of this fabric, I feel that I am just one more voice in this territory.
… The Indigenous feminine gaze is a collective one among both the elderly and the new seeds-the girls. In these ever-changing territories, in the face of new challenges, my body is not only inhabited by my ancestors; there is also a permanent risk of the extinction of my people. I believe that it has, to a large extent, to do with the loss of identity, and this Indigenous feminine identity fights for survival in the face of the excess of information that overwhelms us today. The media, in its globalization, places the differences that are ultimately our essence at risk. We still have to break these “mirrors,” and focus more on the reflections in water, fire, wind, and within, deep inside.
“Starting anew as when we leave behind bad energies under the light of the full moon, with the power of water that heals and gives us life. The sacred plants rise up to heal and protect the woman who awakens today and allows the heartbeat to guide her consciousness. Love will be light on her path . ” Eliana Muchachasoy
EM: From the Indigenous perspective we consider our bodies as our first territory, and that is where we need to continue sowing self-love, the good living, the memory of beautiful thoughts, the meaning of being Camëntsá. I would then define my work toward one goal: to raise awareness around the feminine, and the Indigenous female territory as a social, political, aesthetic, economic and above all spiritual position.
PM: In what way does your work contribute to transmitting the traditional Caméntsá women’s thought?
EM: My art is the result of a permanent curiosity. Academia was only the continuation of a process that I had already begun in my territory, at home, with my family. My mother and my grandmother provided the tools, the spaces, the motivation, to be able to represent my indigeneity, my free feminine. Although I carry and represent them with pride and dignity– I am not merely the bearer of the arts of my community. I also explore academia, aesthetics, politics, spirituality from an Indigenous women’s perspective. I have managed to rebuild my symbolic universe with various tools. I am an Indigenous woman artist who paints, sings, dances, weaves, makes video, photography, performance, murals and who also leads cultural processes within her community without ever forgetting her roots. Taking advantage of the opportunity of being an Indigenous Woman, I show my Camëntsá universe through my work. I only hope that this path helps other women to walk toward the art of their territories, so that they can find a lifelong project based on artistic tools, so that the memory of Indigenous communities survives over time.
PM: What impact have your work and leadership had on the men and grandfathers of your community?
EM: When I started looking for spaces in my community to display my work, I witnessed how the technique of my artistic proposals had not yet found its place to be appreciated, so the task became bigger. At the time of my first exhibitions, grandfathers, grandmothers, children, young people, and the community as a whole hadn’t had the opportunity to appreciate contemporary art proposals, therefore many people did not last a minute observing my work, and the comments went no further than to say: “it’s very beautiful.”
"Sowing beautifully for harvesting beautifully
and thus flourishing in our passing through the Earth Mother.”
Eliana Muchachasoy
EM: Today there are different points of view, which differ by gender, because there are sexist perspectives that sometimes emerge from women, and I know men who manage to get closer [to my art] from their feminine-self. Therefore, I think that the gaze does not depend so much on biology, but on culture. If you ask me about the collision between the feminine models of thought and the hetero-patriarchal capitalism, then my answer would continue to be that my work is my lifelong project, and that in my territory, as in many others, there is an imbalance between the feminine and masculine, which is embedded in the ignorance of our rights as women, as Indigenous people, and even more so as artists. Culture is often a privilege, and women in my community have gained different spaces that allowed them to be visible. The fight for recognition is just beginning. My work is consistent with the nature of art, which is to generate changes, new paths must be sought; art is the vehicle of culture.
"Earth Mother, embrace me with your colors,
with sweet songs embrace me!
Yagecito, heal me with your colors,
with sweet songs heal me.
May the medicine survive
so we feel its strength in our roots,
for us to grow, heal, flourish, and live”.
Eliana Muchachasoy
PM: There is a fascinating exploration with color and fluorescence in your work. Could you tell us about these experiments with light and color?
EM: I define myself as an endemic-artist, and this particularity is explicit in my work. Every detail that I paint is familiar to me, it is close to me, and not just physically, but in the dreamtime, the spiritual and, above all, in the worldview that belongs to Andean Amazonian peoples. It is within these visions where I clearly perceive my universe of colors, and I might say that this is limited because there are colors and shapes that I cannot represent in my art but still live in my life-experience. Well, the medicinal plants that are part of the ritual celebrations of my people are accompanied by dances, songs, and music. It is a whole experience that transcends reasoning, and it is from this abstraction that my light overflows over senses. Then, what I paint resembles a memory, a dream. What I paint in my being, I later translate it to the material, music, image.
(…) On the technical side, my time in the university –at the hands of mentors and artist friends who still accompany me in this exploration of color–has been my foundation for consolidating what I already knew since I was a child, which is that the Camëntsá colors are more vivid and vibrant. How we use colors is something that characterizes us from other peoples. The pinta [the yage vision that heals] has a lot to do with the way we perceive the world.
"A vision that heals,
a vision within the medicine,
with the spirit of plants,
the melodies of each being,
the blessing of the universe,
you're here, I'm here
honoring the land,
my body, my memory,
time and all the beings
who have built me.”
Eliana Muchachasoy
EM: In contemporary art, the works by Carlos Jacanamijoy, Luis Tamani, Alex Grey, Jeisson Castillo, Maria Theresa Negreiros, Olinda Silvano–to mention just a few examples–have influenced the way I work with the light as part of a vision, and the purpose that transcends the aesthetic. Painting the light, the inner light, painting it to see through, people’s light, their aura, their feelings, my own feeling- that is the magic that seduces me in each canvas. The fluorescence of the colors are like the dots shown at the beginning of a pinta [vision that heals] with yagecito. In these colors I have found a closeness to the ritual, an awakening that occurs when the image reacts against the ultraviolet light. When I feel that I have finished a piece, I love to get that divine surprise of the transformation of the colored lines when they are in the dark with an ultraviolet light.
PM: Is there a teacher who has particularly inspired you?
EM: When I saw the work of Olinda Silvano from the Shipibo people, I felt great admiration for her work, not just artistically but for her activism as a woman. The fabric that she has strengthened with other women in her community filled me with hope. Her work inspired me to continue in my own process with strength.
PM: Which other artistic mediums have you explored and how have they influenced your work?
EM: I acquired different tools in University that allowed me to continue exploring images. Painting, photography, video, muralism, illustration and music have been the fields with which I have found the greatest connection. This exploration has allowed me to connect with women, girls, mothers, grandmothers, and young people from my community. It is through photography and video that I have also managed to be the voice of other women through their bodies, facial expressions, gazes, dances, songs, fabrics; when they are caught in an image, or when they are moving through the lens, I have been amazed by recognizing myself in them, feeling as a Camëntsá woman, and acknowledging the need of strengthening our identity and taking care of our territory and bodies. Awakening other gazes through photography has allowed the community to reflect on images from different perspectives about, and to see the state of art within the territory in more depth.
(…) When people visit our territory, they appreciate how art keeps the essence of the communities who inhabit it alive. There are entire families that specialize fully in carving, loom weaving, threading, or music. In this story I would like to make a parenthesis to thank the universe and the territory for the beauty of music. For several years, I had been feeling a sonorous call and I tried to get closer to that call by learning an instrument: the guitar. I have found much healing in music which has allowed me to share these feelings with other women. In the last two years, we have been weaving melodies and songs in a band with some women from my community, the musical group JASHNÁN, which translates “to heal”. We thank Mother Earth for our life, the elements, our taitas (both medicine men and grandfathers) and grandmothers. We understand songs as a way of healing.
PM: How does your work impact the fabric of your community?EM: I feel that art is a constant sowing. It is the responsibility of continuing with the fabric that our ancestors started. Today my work has greater recognition in my community, and at the same time it has become a benchmark for strengthening our identity. There are many Indigenous-based artistic projects that need to be visible so that the world knows about our existence, worldview and social issues. This is why we felt the urgent need to have this space called BENACH ART GALLERY.
PM: Tell us more about the BENACH gallery project and its history…
EM: In my process as an artist, I have asked myself, why? For whom? Why do I want to make art? In my travels, I have seen art by many communities in the middle of museums in big cities where few people from rural areas have access; then art, the experience of art, is for the few. Based on these experiences, there is a need to show art within my territory, and give my community the opportunity to appreciate the different projects by local artists, nurture the public, and create a sustainable space through art in a community lifelong project. I believe that in this way we weave community and territory, and make a valuable contribution to the collective memory.
Benach Gallery
EM: In the Camëntsá language, BENACH is translated as path. As an artist my lifelong project is linked to art, so this is the path that has allowed me to be the voice of my territory. During my artistic career I had some difficult moments. Initially there was no recognition of my work and it was precisely because I had not had the opportunity to exhibit my work in Putumayo. These types of spaces that promote art did not exist. Benach Gallery allows us to promote local art. Nowadays, children and young people are receiving a lot of information through social networks and the mass media, and all this information builds their identity, their values and principles. Based on this reflection, Alberto Velasco and I decided to shape this initiative to continue weaving art with the community.
(…) Benach Gallery is a path that has made it possible to strengthen the artistic, cultural, gastronomic and economic fabric of our territory. Today we have different entrepreneurial projects that are being carried out in the territory, ways of managing a circular economy and supporting the local economy. We have organized several individual and group exhibitions with local and guest artists, and some institutions request our space to show their students the works that are being exhibited, thus understanding that art allows us to educate ourselves.
“Our territory always unites us.
We are the living memory of a community.
We are present, past and future."
Eliana Muchachasoy
EM: Likewise, art as a path of social transformation allows the lifelong project for children and young people from the communities to find a way to express and live through it in a healthy way. It is necessary to continue weaving the elders’ word and thought through art so that their legacy continues in the new generations. The dream of the Benach Gallery began several years ago but took shape two and a half years ago. There, we continually learn, explore, share, and appreciate other possible worlds.
PM: A year ago, there was a fire in the gallery, and as I understand it, there was a rapid recovery process due to the solidarity of many. Can you tell us about the learning behind this incident?
EM: On December 4, 2021, an electric malfunction caused a large fire in the gallery. We lost almost all material things and infrastructure. When we saw the whole space in flames, we felt that it was the death of the Benach Gallery. I had a nervous breakdown with the impact, and was left with only the clothes I had on. The nice surprise and the encouragement to restore the gallery again came from the energy of the people who had been part of Benach. Camëntsá people and peoples from other places demanded that the only art gallery in our territory return. I understood that a meaningful planting has been done in this space. We organized and carried out different activities to collect funds. Local artists, youth groups, relatives and the community as a whole supported us in many ways. Art itself helped to restore Benach Gallery. We did raffles for paintings, shared music, gastronomy, mingas (collective work), and barter. 34 days later, we managed to rebuild the space and open the doors to the public. We have not completely recovered from the material loss, but we felt a great satisfaction to be able to continue weaving art in this territory, contributing to the collective memory of our communities. Today, our social fabric has grown in the Benach Gallery; we have around 29 entrepreneurial projects in the region, and the name of Benach is renowned for its cultural value.
Paula Maldonado studied Philosophy at the National University of Colombia and graduated with a Master’s degree in Aesthetics and Art History from Paris 8 (Saint Denis Université). Her thesis: “Clichés of America, the impression of the imaginaries of power”. She has worked as a teacher, researcher, curator, and coordinator of seminars and workshops in different settings. She is particularly interested in the multiple links between art and cosmopolitics, pedagogy, community-based work, trans-disciplinary/collective creativity, Latin American art, Postcolonial Studies, and the anthropology of images.
The literary work of Fredy Chikangana (Wiñay Mallki, root that remains in time) is fundamental in the history of contemporary Indigenous literatures from Abiayala (the Americas). His verses and essays mirror his life experience between community work and “walking the word” within cross-cultural spaces. From Chikangana, we have learned that “returning to ourselves” is always possible, and that the ancestral territories continue to speak the languages of the land, in this case: Quechua. With his flutes, poems and koka leaves in his chuspa (bag), Chikangana has shared his message of memory and unity from Chile to California, and from South Korea to Italy. Aware of the migrations of his Yanakuna Mitmak ancestors, his verses speak of chaskis (messengers), chakas (bridges), and exchanges. (Juan G. Sánchez Martinez)
Dina Ananco is a Wampis and Awajun poet, translator, and interpreter. She has a BA in literature, and a Master’s degree in Peruvian and Latin American literature from Universidad Nacional de San Marcos, in Lima. She participates in poetry readings and academic events in Peru and internationally. She will be representing Peru at the Guadalajara international book fair in 2022.
Sanchiu (Lima: Pakarina Ediciones, 2021) is the first published book of poems in the Wampis language. The Wampis people are located between the south of Ecuador and the north of Peru, and they are part of the Jibaro linguistic family. The book is a bilingual edition in Wampis and Spanish, and the author translated her poems into Spanish herself. “Sanchiu” was the last name of Ananco’s grandmother, who appears on the book’s cover. This collection of forty poems is a tribute to the Wampis women which makes visible their strength and suffering, as well as current challenges inside and outside of the communities.. The poems follow the Wampis literary poetry form called “nampet” and their celebration of singing anywhere with nostalgic emotion, tenderness, humor, and dubious tone.
Katia Yoza is a Ph.D. candidate in the Spanish department at Rutgers University and a University and Louis Bevier Fellow. She is currently co-organizing the Andean and Amazonian Studies Working Group at Rutgers. Her research focuses on Amazonian textual and visual narratives on indigenous cosmovisions involving urban, public, and global audiences. She has a MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Paris IV–Sorbonne and a BA in Hispanic Literature at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. She has taught literature and Spanish courses to undergraduate and high school students in the United States, Peru, and France and worked in public humanities through local associations and NGOs in the United States. She also published a collection of short stories about animals from the Amazon rescued from illegal trade.
When living far from the place we are born, it is always heartwarming to encounter a person who, like you, knows the experience of migrating, and remembers similar places to those that we ourselves long for. On June 6th, 2022, we met with Byron Tenesaca, a Kichwa artist and educator, in the Botanical Gardens of Tokiyasdi (Asheville, North Carolina.) While we walked, we recognized some of the plants, making connections with the Andes. Thus it was proposed that we hold an interview about his creative process, among languages, territories, and techniques. The following are some excerpts from the interview.
Byron Tenesaca is a visual artist and bilingual educator who resides in Western North Carolina. He was born in an ancestral community in the Ecuadorian Andes, to a family of basket weavers and farmers. He was raised there by his grandmother, with whom Byron learned the system of reciprocity that exists between human beings and the mountains. At 11 years old, he journeyed with his grandmother to the United States to live with his biological mother (both of them fundamental in his work). After graduating from Western Carolina University (WCU) in 2015, he was selected for an artistic residency in The Bascom in Highlands, NC. His passion for art and education has brought him to take on roles such asSpanish language interpreter, children’s art teacher, Spanish teacher in secondary school, camp counselor and, most recently, HiSET instructor. Byron has a Master’s degree in Comprehensive Education from Western Carolina University. Recently, Byron was one of the 50 artists selected to be part of the inaugural exposition Appalachia Now! of the Asheville Art Museum.
Juan: I always ask guests to introduce themselves, and to tell us the name of their territory.
Byron: My name is Byron Tenesaca, I come from a Kichwa-Kañari community in the Andes, from a region that is today the South of Ecuador. I come from a family of weavers, farmers that have preserved tradition through food, and through being in harmony with the environment, dedicating their life to the good living for the future.
Juan: I was looking at your website, and I saw that you work with painting, photography, drawing, and digital design. What is your relationship with art, with creativity? How is it connected to your being, with your life?
Byron: Since I was little I’ve been drawing. When I went along with my mamá-abuela (mother-grandmother) to sell baskets in the city, I remember I collected little drawings, magazines that I found on the ground, or graphics that caught my attention. Then I went home, and on lined paper from my sister’s school, I drew them, I passed them to the paper on the window. I had a collection, already big, of comics. I also grew up tugging my mamá-abuela’s skirt, and when she weaved I was there at her side, always cared for by my mamá-abuela.
As children are in many transnational families, Byron was raised by his grandmother in Ecuador and later joined his mother in the United States, who had migrated North earlier. Byron told me that his mother used to send back packages with clothes for her children, games, sometimes important residency documents, and a video cassette…
Byron: And this cassette we put on the TV and we saw a woman talking in the mirror. At that moment, we didn’t know what this really big machine was that she had on her shoulder. She spoke and told us things. My grandma told me: “Look! This is your mama. One day, you are going to see her. Tell her hello!” But in my mind, I watched this video and all I really saw were hands and a really big machine, and in my child’s mind I said: “Well, my mama is part robot. I have a mom like a robot…” (laughter…)
Between laughter and heaviness, Byron told me how difficult it was to arrive in Turtle Island (North America), a place unknown to a child of 11 who had until-then lived with his mamá-abuela in the Andes. Byron did not first end up in the mountains of North Carolina, but in the piedmont. Soon, the routine of going to school and staying cooped up in the afternoons contrasted with the liberty that he’d grown up with: going to the river to swim and fish. The years passed, and he finished studying at the University of Western Carolina, a great opportunity to meet the mountains again. He had wanted to be a doctor (from the influence of his mother), but soon he was reintroduced to art.
Byron: Through art, I can learn more of anything, philosophy, math, anything. I began going to exhibitions at the university, and I joined the art program, and I don’t think my mom liked it (laughs…). Painting called to me strongly, and later photography, and from there came design. But I focused more on a dreamworld, and worlds in between here and the reality in which I grew up. Maybe a purpose of photography is that of going and taking pictures and speaking with and meeting different perspectives.
In this search, now in the last years of university, Byron goes to live further into the mountains and meets some of the members of the Cherokee community.
Byron: I remember in high school, we learned about Native peoples, but it was different, I hadn’t learned about the Cherokee community. So I went and talked with Cherokee friends of my age, and it was interesting that I found more connection with this community than the Latinx or Hispanic community with which I had grown up with. I liked their weaving a lot, because when I saw them I said “it’s as if I was still watching my aunts, my grandma, weaving”. So this curiosity called me to learn a little more about the Cherokee culture. And the more I learned, the more I went back to my childhood. (…) The concept of “latin” and “hispanic” is something new and created here, and I’m not against it because I appreciate how it creates dialogue among organizations, but also it leaves out indigeneity. It’s like building a church on top of a huaca (a sacred Andean place), right? It’s as if we were only here since your country became independent, but if you go further, you learn that no, I am not what they call an “alien” (laughter…). Learning beyond the Aztec, for example, my Kañari culture which goes further than “the Inca,” this gives you more strength. Colonization has erased a lot, but where feet touch the earth, there we belong.
As we see in Byron Tenesaca’s photography included here, there are series that capture events here in North Carolina (landscape, forests, overlays in Photoshop), but there also are series from the Andean communities of Ecuador. This double gaze of photographer and artist makes this work unique because it comes and goes between the solitary and the community. Thinking of this, I asked Byron: “from the eye of a photographer, how is this experience? Do you feel that the light, or the relationship with the camera, changes by being here or there?
Byron: Maybe I have a bit more confidence when I feel comfortable there, for the familiarity. Here, what I have photographed is people, who at first are strangers, but after dialoguing with them, if there is the opportunity, I create a type of documentary photography of my experiences. I have also photographed places, above all during the artistic residency in The Bascom in Highlands. (…) And in this solitude, when being in a place so immense, natural, I went to places always documented by tourists, whose photographies have a certain type of light, a certain type of angle, so I went to these places during the rain or when no one was there, or after the rain, or at sunset. It is a different space (…)
Byron: There is a series that I call “Human Mounds”. I was reading a little about the mounds here in North Carolina, a mass of dirt, shells, and so many things that Native peoples here used to make these mounds. And this idea stayed with me, because also in these places there were remains of people, so I focused on this, in the human being as organic, as another knot in the fiber of nature, pachamama, so I represented it as a fruit in a fetal position, and I only photographed the back because it has a certain shape that is like an echo of the mountains, and then I overlaid this image in different places. This made me remember where I saw this shape before, why this idea was born, and it is where we call zambos (squash). I was also reminded of my aunt, who had a disability in her body, and my grandma always had to bathe her, as she could not stand up straight but always had to be in this shape (hunched over). So she bathed her, so I remember from an early age this image of the rounded back of my auntie. (laughter)
Juan: This exhibition, “Human Mounds” is related to the one titled “Kay Pacha”, which also has the same shape of the naked body in the fetal position, but now as a drawing.
Byron: Yes, this image goes from photography to drawing and later to printmaking, and I overlay it with the foods I grew up eating, and that are present in our region, creating a type of visual harmony, but also a harmony between the human being and plants. In cultivating your own nutrients, there is reciprocity between the body and the plants and the mountains. From mountains, water is born. There, we cultivate, and it feeds us. We eat a little bit of the mountain, and we transform ourselves into the mountain, and when we die we return again to the mountain (laughter). It is this space of living beings, that is Kay Pacha.
Juan: From what you are telling me, it is as if the encounter with the Cherokee community, and your exploration through art, has taken you back to the Andes. Do you feel that art has guided you toward remembrance? That the Cherokee territory has opened space for you to remember?
Byron: Yes. I think it is in a line of one of your poems where you say “Andes Apalaches”. Because of this, I stayed here after studying. It reminds me of where I was born, beside a river, together with the mountains (…) And there are many similarities. The more I learn about Indigenous communities from here, it becomes more remarkable the wisdom and the way of life from my childhood (…) Right now, I am learning more about weaving. The project I recently finished was 12 little baskets of paper, with my drawings, and on the base, which is the most important part of any basket, is the portrait of my family, which represents what has kept us together, the women of my family. And on the sides are some drawings of corn, or choclo, how we say it there, and also beans, which we call poroto, and potatoes, and zambo. The rim had to be shown to me by my aunt via Zoom. Really, one learns by seeing, they never tell you like this, like that, so it was hard for my auntie to guide me through the camera: “Grab with your left hand and with this finger, and you have to take it up or behind.” (laughs) it took me about six hours to weave one from paper, and I didn’t like how I’d done it, so I tried it again. And the third time, yes, I finally liked it. And the fourth was the first one completely finished. And now, I can make a basket in two and a half hours.
Juan: Weaving is very present in many of your projects. Sometimes it could be a weaving of lines, sometimes a weaving of materials. And of course, I see that you are weaving a bridge between the Andes and Appalachia. How is this process of weaving for you?
Byron: Weaving is not only art or handicraft, but a moment for reflection, and for creating a space for your own and your family. I realized that here in Cherokee, just like in my family, we weave in community. You don’t weave alone. You are always with your aunts or your mother. And the children are around, playing. Here you create a space for reflection where you talk of ideas that maybe you can’t speak of when you are in other spaces. I was reflecting on how my grandma loaded so many baskets on her back to sell in the city. And how smart she was, going from house to house. The goal was to sell them in the city, but she began selling them as soon as she’d left the house, and when she reached the place she had to sell them, she was left with only one! (laughter) So we bought the essentials: lard, sugar, salt, panela (a block of cane sugar), because the rest we did not need. So I reflect on all of this while I weave, and in the connections with the communities here, after discussing with the Cherokee weavers Mary Thompson and Faye Junaluska.
Juan: I’d like to close this short conversation with a question about the future. How do you see this rebirth of many young people, who like you have grown up in the North but are reconnecting with their peoples? How do you see the future of these exchanges between the South and the North?
Byron: I would say that the future is in the past, as some elders say in some conversations I’ve heard. In order to create a future we must keep the past in mind. Of course things change, but learning from our errors and from the history of the first peoples (…) For instance, something like Indigenous justice. Here in the United States, prisons poison humans instead of healing them. Education that is focused on capitalism also does it. So as a teacher, I have an important role, in some way or another influencing the next generation. (…) Before, the governments held a certain control over our peoples because they couldn’t read, and they had them sign documents and things like that, including the father of my grandma, who was chosen to get some land for having lived all of his life working there, and the day he was going to receive it, the landowner told him to sign some papers because the laws had changed, and he made him sign. He gave him a little money and told him not to come back. Today there is resistance. To fight the system, we need to know about the system (laughter…). I feel optimistic for the changes, but being conscious about where we are.
Byron ended our chat with the following message against machismo and patriarchal sexism: “The woman always has the role of keeping everything together (…) For this, I thank all of these women, mothers, grandmas, warmis that like the mountain, the Apus, nourish us so that we may continue with a future.” Illuminating with his art and his ancestors, Byron walks and creates today in Tokiyasdi (Asheville, NC) and reminds us of the importance of women: her stitch in the communal fabric and her strength to sustain family. His invitation is to plant from the seed, throw it some soil, compost, water, accompany its process with our hands and intentions, to finally harvest when the cycle closes. So we can see it with our own eyes and appreciate the miracle and the abundance of life on the Earth Mother.
More about Byron Tenesaca, Cherokee weaving, and the Kichwa community in the United States
From the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, Anya Skye Tucker only hopes to learn as much as she can from others. The Andes have been very kind to her.
If you prefer to read this selection as PDF, please CLICK HERE
MARY LEAUNA CHRISTENSEN
Inborn
[Published in Denver Quarterly]
The language in me/ is old/ though I feel new to it/ my palate warping/ a metal over flame/ I practice the sounds of animals/ their names/ almost ancestral/ like they know I am trying/ yona (1)/ the first word I ever knew/ bear/ some kind of witness/ to a sloppy rebirth/ I have told a lover/ I will name a child/ tsisdu (2) / because it is good/ to be quick & small/ & aware of your surroundings/ I will ink the animal’s likeness/ on the inside of my wrist/ a reminder/ my body cannot be trusted/ to reproduce/ anything/ but words
yo-na: bear [Cherokee, eastern dialect]
g-stdu: rabbit [Cherokee, eastern dialect]
~~~
Bifurcation
[Published in Puerto del Sol]
I split/ my tongue/ down the middle/ not like a snake/ but like two rods divining/ taste top
& bottom lip/ in unison/ find the water there/ the ore/ curse a lover/ & love him to death/
I want a little of everything/ heads & tails/ sides & sides/ of two languages/ my mother’s
tongue/ colonized/ & the tongue of her mother/ chased to mountain side & frozen stream/
really my tongue is the ouroboros/ marrying in a wet mouth/ trying to find some infinity/
where no words/ nestle under burial mounds
~~~
In Which I Am a Sum of Parts [Published in Southern Humanities Review]
2 corn seed necklaces
hang on the back of my door
along with 2 medicine bags
made of tiny glass seed beads
sterling silver & turquoise
bolo ties
(nothing crafted
by my own hands)
*
Another lesson
my ancestors hid in mountain
caves & confederate uniforms
my many-greats grandfather
was given the English name Nimrod
b/c aren’t we all mighty hunters
& it is likely my blood is altered
or diluted somewhere in Oklahoma
b/c not all ancestors were so lucky
(if that is the term we’re using
& the fact cannot be ignored—
I am diluted down to the card
in my wallet which states
my blood as a percentage)
*
While I was cleaning
my grandmother’s house
I found a box of tears
*
I was barely a teenager
the first time I remember
visiting the reservation
my grandmother left
decades prior
her brother & brother’s
wife tried to educate me
commented on my lack—
how that was the first time
I tried & gave up beading—
disillusioned when
the belt I made broke
*
My first lesson was corn seeds
their grey hard form imperfectly round
how they were solid manifestations
of every Cherokee tear rained
along the trail
*
The scientific name for corn seed
is many syllables but here
we’ll call it Cherokee Tear
it is easy to string onto necklaces
but should not be confused
with seed beads which come
in varying degrees of tiny
plastic & glass
*
The last time I was on the rez
it was not for an introduction
but a burial
& I bought beads in colors
I found comforting
along with needles
thin strips of leather
waxy manmade sinew
On my way to you
I pass a field full of sun,
gold on gold,
and remember your saying
you are descended
from Mayans
Sun/sun dance
I grasp at happiness
as if for bright coin
from a well for wishing
You tell me instead to hope
and say to follow the sun
like these flowers in lambent light
~~~
Heimweh
I am far from
mound and mountain
On these Northern Plains
the wind never ceases,
susurration like the ocean
Astonishment at pelicans
white, not the brown ones last seen
over Atlantic waves
Dissonance of familiarity
in strange place
Light insinuates late, aubades early
Wait til winter, you warn me
I learn new language
for this landscape: coulee and kettles
badlands buttes and bluffs
An eagle dives for prey
grander than ever imagined
Bison trundle over earth
A lone horse stands backlit on a rise
My mouth tries to form the word
for horse in your language: xaawaarúxti’
but I still face East to sing
my morning song in Cherokee
On dusty road framed by primrose
I find three yellow stones
tiny jewels of sun I pass on to my son
before his flight Northeast
Pelican in pond extends enormous wings
as if to put on coat or cast off cape,
or rather, as if measuring span
between its existence and my insistence
on not entirely imagined kinship
both of us between homes
and on the way
to somewhere else
~~~
Ventus
This wind whittles down to essential form
Riderless horses returned from Little Big Horn
Always we are pulled towards the idea of home
Water and wind form cannonballs of stone
We trade words of greeting: NAheesa atistit/osd sunalei
Wind loosens our hair, growing out after grief
Shame burns like flares on the Bakken
Wind tosses flames like horses’ manes
In Germany, sirocco from Spain a soft caress
Distances deceive in this vast space
Palms almost touching, energy palpable
To track Aurora, I download an app,
imagine us lying magnetized under neon skies
You say the Missouri is called the Great Mystery
I introduce myself as I would to any person
You point out strong current’s direction
under what I perceived as only swirling surface
We remember flooding of ancestral
homelands, dams built to harness force
while river and wind keep adjusting course
KARLA CORDERO
ABUELA IS A MACHETE WRAPPED IN HER FAVORITE APRON
a man once slammed a fruit bowl against the kitchen wall & abuela learned how glass can give birth to small daggers. she replaced her husband for knives. holds a blade like a loaded gun. enjoys the chop of cilantro-bundles for caldo & people swear she got lawnmowers for fingers. in the backyard the trees shed fruit-baskets but abuela dislikes the rind. can scalp a pear’s skin in seconds. clean. you can see the sugar bleed off the slice. each hand a steady butcher. never once nicked a thumb. & for thirty years pierced meat. sliced basil. stripped salmon of its glittered-gills. then dr. gonzalez found her memory had carved itself pieces. she was handed plastic flatware. all her metal went dull. the good utensils for steak hidden. the house keys now chained to her apron & sometimes her mouth switchblades when the keys go missing. today at the grocery store i tell her stories about the palms she owns. how they once tricked a carrot to dance like bright confetti & abuela picks a fresh pear. the heavy end cleansed by the fog of her breath. she swears she’s always loved the fruit’s pale flesh. & her teeth a wooden drawer of machetes.
~~~
ALLISON HEDGE COKE
DRUNK BUTTERFLIES
Butterflies inebriated, sloshed
spiraling upward from pools of water
holding fermented foliage we
passed by while canoeing on the Neuse.
Orange, white, yellow, blue, black, brown
speckled, swallow-tailed, patterned,
mottled, webbed flash and quiver,
fluttering fine, fly, pit painted lady mating ritual.
Wrapping shyness with wing, undercover, under
folding blanket over lover.
Liquid courage emboldens beginnings, above
happenstance provision, easy prey for
prowling bird, turtle, fish, crawdad, frog.
The beauty of it all
in sunlightened wing shining, falling forward and
back, up and down. Frenzy fantastic
color gentle, feathered wing too delicate to touch
without removing glide barb. Metamorphosed
just for this day
a metaphor, relational,
for all that is good and will be.
Butterfly girl wraps her hair into braided wing
flaps for future. Turns herself
into the softest touch, lifting and rising
everything around her, all that is good—
this is good—
something they do so much
better than Human Beings
in natural accordance with traditional way
of the butterfly creation racing,
occurring in this way, for her and for those following her.
Kama, kamama. Catch her
in the morning and
again at night, at midday she just floats by breezing.
~~~
MEASURING UP
It wasn’t socks missing from his feet,
not elbow cloth unraveled unilaterally,
not equal displacement of chin and brow,
nor the eye that sat a bit lower on the right, it was his knuckle that made me weep,
clove corners gone wayside, like miniscule meat hooks clawed away bits of him each shift he made, invisible a timeliness unfurled. It was his muscle torn through, festering, the prosthetic hand, finger width dismay all across his attempted grin, left there just like that, for anyone to see—it was his mercy. In the end we’re rarely beautiful, mostly placed away from compromising situations into poses offsetting what has become of us in some gawker’s unnerving eyes. Yet, he was, is, still here in mine, and I’m human because of it. Maybe only. Maybe.
~~~
PANDO/PANDO
The Trembling Giant Aspen / Bolivian massacre site
Trembling giant
bulging under siege
Pando
/Pando
waving I spread
banned from streets
perpendicular to leaf blade
Pando/
Pando
havoc, natural gas
petiole flattened
opposition pushing right autonomy
rush, lift, breaking cover, tremble
on the fourth day of
yellow-white-grayish-yellow
Pando/Pando
hunger strike, assailants
lobbed a green grenade
forced to knees shirtless
peasantry
tree
Pando
/Pando
Pando/
Pando
aspen man spreads uprising
flowering, flower,
spreading root sprout
Pando
ambush
where Morales has stayed
biomass clone cross giant uprising deeply rooted Indigenous
growth prevent Bolivia from splintering apart Pando/Pando
visiting Santa Cruz
one hundred acres
dynamite blasts
fourteen million pounds
public humiliation
Pando/Pando
rooted eighty thousand years
fifty Indigenous mayors rooted thirty Andeans killed this
week paralyzed borders
Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay
Pando/Pando
clonal colony
colonial massacre
singular genetic individual
Morales, an Aymara Indian, Pando/Pando
organized opposition, university student conservatives, forced
terrified Indigenous people, to their knees forced refugee people
to
apologize for coming to Sucre forced chanted insults to their hero
Evo then conservatives set fire
to blue, black, white Aymara flag seized hand-woven Aymara
ponchos Aymara people
Pando/Pando
Pando/Pando
rhizome, basal shoot
shot, seven dead
shooting—genet/ramet
peasant farmers
organism overtaking
not supported by current evidence
Fishlake quaking
Amazon
Pando
aspen life in largest
singular germination
Pando/Pando
Pando/Pando
Pando/Pando
Pando/Pando
Pando/Pando
Pando/Pando Pando/Pando
~~~
WE WERE IN A WORLD We were in a world, in a world. Sure we had our glyphs, but we were providential. Once, some alphabet believ ers, glass purveyors, Ursus Arctos killers, sent all bailiwick on cursed course far faster gyration backspin, birling intrinsic angular momen tum—boson melts. Spinning, it careened away iceberg, iceberg, ice berg; glacier braced time traced yesterday unshakable base—all below flushed alluvion torrent, Niagara pour, special spate, flux, flow, until their coastal citadels moldered from cyclone, tsunami, hurricane gale. Tornadoes tossed turf wherever they pleased. Eruptions molded Her back into something She deemed worthy. Not to mention quakes. And the people, the people, the People, pushed into cataclysm, a few generations from alphabet book imposed catechism, soon were calamity tragedy storm splinters, fragmented particles of real past, in a world gone away from oratory, song, oraliteratures, orations into gyrations reeling. Soon hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. Hot, dying mangroves, disappearing Waimea Bay, dengue fever, butterfly range shift, meadow gone forest, desert sprung savannah, caribou, black guillemots, bats, frogs, snails—gone. What will sandhill cranes crave? Winged lay early. Reefs bleach. Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, snow, snow, snow, fires flaming fiercely, fascinated in their own re flecting glare. Marmots rise early. Mosquitoes endure longer, lasting biting spreading West Nile. Polar bears quit bearing. Robins, swal lows, enter Inuit life. Thunder finds Iñupiat. Here, it is said, glyphs left rock wall, stone plates, bark, branch, leapt animated into being, shook shoulders, straightened story, lifted world upon their wing bone, soared into Night, to place World back into socket eased sky— stilled us. Some say the soup leftover was worded with decolonized language. Some say the taste lingers even now.
Carolina Bloem teaches Latin American Studies and Spanish at Salt Lake Community College. Her research focuses on present-day Wayuu oraliture and its impact both in local and international communities. Past research interests include travel writing in 19th-Century Colombia and Venezuela, and conduct manuals and their biopolitical role in society.
Paul M. Worley is a settler scholar from Charleston, SC. He is Professor of Spanish at Appalachian State University, where he serves as Chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Co-written with Rita M. Palacios, his most recent book, Unwriting Maya Literature: Ts’íib as Recorded Knowledge (2019), was given an honorable mention for Best Book in the Humanities by LASA’s Mexico Section. He is also the author of Telling and Being Told: Storytelling and Cultural Control in Contemporary Yucatec Maya Literatures (2013; oral performances recorded as part of this book project are available at tsikbalichmaya.org), and a Fulbright Scholar. Together with Melissa D. Birkhofer, he is co-translator of Miguel Rocha Vivas’s Word Mingas(2021), whose Spanish edition won Cuba’s Casa de las Américas Prize in 2016. He has also translated selected works by Indigenous authors such as Hubert Matiúwàa (Mè’phàà), Celerina Sánchez, Manuel Tzoc (K’iche’), and Ruperta Bautista (Tsotsil).
Fernando Urbina Rangel is a philosopher, poet, photographer, and educator. For decades he has worked at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia where he has conducted classes, seminars and research regarding comparative mythology, orality, rock art, Amazonian petroglyphs, and ceremonial plants. Urbina has authored ninety-five academic articles, eight books, twenty-five individual photography exhibits, two educational television series, and two radio series. Today, books such as Las hojas del poder (Leaves of Power)(1992), Dïïjoma, El hombre serpiente águila (The Serpent Eagle Man) (2004) have become classics in Amazonian literature. Sown with mambe (coca powder mixed with yarumo ashes) and ambil (tobacco paste mixed with vegetal salt), and based in the art of picto-poetry, rock painting, and rafue (powerful speech for the Murui-Muina) these works were visionary publications that wove image, poetry, essay, and ancient stories, destabilizing the urban word-centered hierarchies of Colombian universities. In Urbina’s work, the book is the coca tree, the elders Don José García y Doña Filomena Tejada are the library, and the university is the ritual dances and the mambeadero (the place where men sit to share mambe and words). Fernando Urbina speaks with La Gente de Centro, the People from the Center (Múrui, Okaina, Nonuya, Bora, Miraña, Muinane, Resígaro and Andoque), children of the tobacco, the coca, the sweet yuca, whose original territory is found in the interfluvial Caquetá-Putumayo region (Colombia). These people have survived the Casa Arana genocide and continue to resist the siege of the petroleum industry, mining companies, narcotraffickers and Colombian Civil War.
Fortunately, the vitality with which Fernando Urbina’s books retrieve the word, gesture, and rites of the Gente de Centro, and celebrate them in philosophy, poetry and art, has cleared pathways for the textualities and oralitures of Abiayala’s peoples. His interdisciplinary work recalls that for many generations on the Caqueta river, and still today, there are stone-books beneath the water, petroglyphs that emerge when the floodwaters recede to tell the original stories. His work also recognizes that “myth is the word revealed”, neither chimera nor anachronism, but instead, the present that sustains us and “in which one must suspend and linger”(Las hojas del poder).
The photographs and texts that make up the video below are part of Urbina’s work, MÁS ALLÁ DE LAS MONTAÑAS DE UYUMBE (BEYOND the MOUNTAINS of UYUMBE)(“San Agustín”), sponsored and exhibited by ICANH in 2019 (Universidad Nacional) during the celebration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Konrad Theodor Preuss, the founder of scientific archaeology in Colombia. This exhibition was based upon the notions of Preuss, the German linguist, archeologist and ethnographer, who proposed a study of religion and mythology of the Murui-Muina in search of keys with which to interpret the culture of San Agustín (Alto Magdalena). The exposition signals the Andean-Amazonian confluences between the ancient cultures of the high and low regions. It is worth noting that the Caqueta River’s headquarters are less than 100 Km away from the Magdalena River Basin in the Almaguer Knot (Colombian Macizo), the spot where the Andes divides into three mountain ranges.
The following excerpts were selected from the exhibition, BEYOND the MOUNTAINS of UYUMBE)(“San Agustín”). Established in the paradoxical language of the ancient stories of the Gente de Centro, Urbina finds a technique to weave his own basket: the synthesis (Serpiente-Águila, Vigilia-Ensueño, Anaconda-Espiral)(Serpent-Eagle, Vigil-Dream, Anaconda-Spiral) Because of this, the reader of these vignettes will note that nouns appear insufficient, and that the use of the hyphen or capital letter is a strategy to emphasize mutuality. In this poetic imaginary, no word (i.e. emptiness, point, firmness) has only one meaning, because each word is what it is and also the opposite: the creator is the created and vice versa, and whoever owns silence also owns speech.
Aracuara Canyon from The-Balcony-of-the-Stone Witch
Everything was there and seemed complete
but no… nothing had a name nor a history
it wasn’t even the stuff of nostalgia
When the primordial arrived
—climbing the rivers
from the shores of the immense sea
it marked the place and made it the world,
multiplied it into myth.
recreated it into ritual
donned it with the one hundred faces of remembrance.
Lorrie Jayne, a collaborator in Siwar Mayu, teaches Spanish, Portuguese, and Personal Narrative in the Languages and Literatures Department at University of North Carolina Asheville (USA). She lives with her husband and daughters in the Appalachian Mountains where she enjoys plants, people, and poetry.
Translation from Japanese and Spanish into English by Yaxkin Melchy
Copy-editing by Sophie Lavoie
Translation from Spanish to Japanese by Chizuko Osato 大里千津子 and Mitsuko Ando 安藤美津子 with revision by Yasuko Sagara 相良泰子
Japanese version below ↴
Interview with Tokūn Tanaka, head monk of the Dōkeiji 同慶 寺 zen temple in the town of Minami Soma in Fukushima, Japan, and Pedro Favaron, poet, researcher, and medicine man of the Nishi Nete clinic in the Indigenous community of Santa Clara de Yarinacocha in the Peruvian Amazon. The photographs were taken in Minami Soma, Fukushima, and in the Indigenous community of Santa Clara de Yarinacocha, Ucayali, Peru.
South: Pedro Favaron, Santa Clara Yarinacocha Native Community, Ucayali, Perú
Yaxkin: Please introduce yourself
Pedro: I am a humble man on earth, who tries to keep a healthy body, a well-formed and active mind (simple and without entanglements), and a sincere heart. I was born in the city of Lima, the capital of Peru and, since I was a child, I felt the necessity to return to the earth. Also, from very early on, I sensed that Indigenous people kept a fundamental knowledge for reconnecting with the sacred network of life. My dearest moments during my childhood and adolescence were when I swam in the Pacific Ocean and when I walked its beaches at night during our family trips to the Andean desert and coastal valleys. Although I was lucky enough to get a Ph.D.-level academic education at the University of Montreal in Canada, my soul still thirsted for something that mere intellectual education could not give me. That is to say that I have no complaints about academic education in itself (except, of course, about the primacy of materialist positivism); but, in my understanding, current universities cannot meet the genuine necessities of our self-being. So, when I finished my studies, I came to live in the Amazon and married Chonon Bensho, a wise and beautiful woman artist from the Shipibo-Konibo people. She is a descendant of medicine men and women (Meraya) who, for many generations, have maintained the links between our world, the spiritual Owners of medicine and the ancestors. I have been able to learn at least a little of that ancestral knowledge and the spiritual connection that my wife’s grandfather (Ranin Bima) carefully preserved. My entire being has been renewed through the perfume of medicinal plants and the radiance of the Jakon Nete (the pure land, devoid of evil). Despite being a person of this time and experiencing, like the rest of society, the antinomies of modernity and the prevalence of cybernetic logic, I try to live in harmony between heaven and earth. It is from this harmony that we receive patients who ask for our help with humility and whom we attend to in the traditional way. Likewise, maintaining a dialogue with the forests and with the sacred network of life, I write poems, narratives, essays, and academic papers. I also make videos and films, trying to make a contribution to the world, sharing beauty and clarity to help these times marked by violence and confusion.
Yaxkin: Since you began to live in Yarinacocha, what is the current situation in the Peruvian Amazon?
Pedro: The lifestyle of the ancients has permanently disappeared from this world. There is no turning back. The media and new technologies have a profound impact on our lifestyles, on our aspirations, and colonize the unconscious of young people. Indigenous languages are being lost and with them all their sensitivity: their intimate relationship with the territory, and the knowledge implicit in the language. On the other hand, deforestation and excessive depredation of lakes and rivers continue to advance, as well as violence. This is a point worth mentioning, since both assaults with weapons and house robberies have grown worryingly, in time with the rage in people’s hearts and witchcraft. People do not want to make the sacrifices that the ancients made to purify their hearts and learn how to bond themselves with the spiritual Owners of medicine and the Jakon Nete in the ancient way. Formerly, the few people who followed the ancients’ initiation paths did so to help their families and protect them. Now, on the contrary, the knowledge of plants is learned only for business, to give visionary plants to drink to foreigners, thus likening our sacred medicines to any other drug. When one wants to learn motivated by selfish desires, that person will twist their way and only learn the negative, thus becoming an antisocial person who fosters disunity. In the heart of the medicine man, generosity and spirit of service must prevail. If one starts in the traditional way, it is still possible to bond with the Jakon Nete. The world of the ancients has disappeared from this existential dimension in which we live, but it still lives in a parallel time-space to ours. If we keep our hearts pure, its light will awaken in us and it will give us strength and wisdom.
Yaxkin: In your vision, what will be the challenges for the community of Santa Clara de Yarinacocha in the coming years?
Pedro: I believe that the greatest challenge of Indigenous families, in general, is how to survive while maintaining our cultural and spiritual differences, in the midst of the overwhelming homogenizing trend of globalism that wants us all the same, consuming the same, thinking the same, and wishing the same, disconnected from our own being and from the soul of the world. Is it possible for Indigenous peoples to participate in the market economy in a differentiated way, without losing their ancestral knowledge, their art, their language, and, above all, by preserving a harmonious relationship with the sacred web of life? I see that this is a major challenge, very difficult, but not impossible. I believe that this cannot be achieved if Indigenous peoples do not obtain a solid academic education. The problem is that almost all modern education is being used to eradicate peoples’ cultures and to discipline students so that they become functional to a system of exploitation of other human beings, and the rest of the living beings. It would be necessary to open up academic spaces: new technologies, modern sciences, and ancestral knowledge could be put into dialogue on equal terms, focusing on love and compassion towards human beings, the earth, and the rest of the sentient beings. I see, however, that, at the moment, the Yarinacocha region is very far from this possibility and that makes my heart grieve; however, I do not consider it entirely healthy to cling to that sadness, but rather we must look to the future with hope. Despite all the challenges and threats that stand against life in this time, there are also many people, from different cultures, who want to learn ancestral knowledge, and to seek more harmonious and beautiful ways of inhabiting the earth. What gives meaning to our lives is the service we provide to others. The light of wisdom shines for all those who sincerely seek to change their lives and heal their wounds, for people who work for the good of the sacred web of life.
Yaxkin: How could the spiritual vision of the peoples of East Asia enrich native communities and the mestizo Peruvian society?
Pedro: I have always sensed that there is an intimate relationship between the Andean-Amazonian cultures and the East Asian ones. In particular, in Peru, we had Japanese and Chinese migrations that were integrated into local cultures and whose contributions are evident in many ways (starting with cuisine). I feel that there is a kind of resonance and continuity. However, without being conscious and explicit about it, we cannot fully benefit from that relationship and what the spiritual traditions of the East Asian people have to teach us. I believe, for example, that the basic notions of Taoism are very close to the ancestral Amazonian sensibility: they seek humility, allying oneself with the movements of the cycles of nature without opposition, contemplation, and distancing from the National State. The Confucian ethic, on the other hand, that promotes selfless service to the State is quite absent in the Amazon (where nations without a State have prospered), although it is possible that something similar existed in the ancient Tawantinsuyo of the Inkas. Likewise, I believe that Chan and Zen Buddhism, with the emphasis on the return to our original condition, and understanding “satori” (comprehension) as an awakening to our inner truth, are close to the indigenous understanding of personal realization called “meraya.” The Buddhist emphasis on compassion and generosity is very close to our ancestral ethics: legitimate human beings (known as “jonikon” in the Shipibo language) should not be dominated by selfish desires, appetites, envy, or jealousy, but by a vocation of service and self-sacrifice in favor of their network of relatives and loved ones. At the same time, the Shinto’s understanding of nature’s spirits is really close to ours. My wife and I have a fondness for Studio Ghibli’s animations; we really like the intersection between modern and ancient Japan. I believe that this helps us to truly imagine our Amazonian modernity, one that can embrace the best of science and technology without losing its cultural and spiritual roots. Even Japanese painting and poetry are close to our sensibility. I think it would be very enriching to engage in a cultural, intellectual, and spiritual dialogue that does not need to be filtered through Eurocentric scholarship but rather can take place sincerely in an atmosphere of trust and understanding.
Yaxkin: Do you believe in Mother Earth? For you, what is Mother Earth, and from the point of view of the Shipibo-Konibo spirituality, how can we approach her?
Pedro: It is evident that the Earth behaves like a mother: her atmosphere embraces us like the uterine waters, she sustains and feeds us generously. In the same way, the Sun behaves like a father, who lights our way and fertilizes the Earth, making life possible. It is good to humbly acknowledge our debt to the founding elements of existence and our participation in the sacred web of life. We know, from the teachings of our ancestors, that all living beings, plants, trees, birds, the sun, mountains, stones, and rivers, have their own form of language, consciousness and spiritual life. The Great Spirit’s breath dwells in them and animates them. According to ancient narratives, in the past, all living beings shared the same original condition; therefore, we are all related and nothing is completely unrelated. Living beings participate in a sacred network and we complement each other. Humans cannot survive on their own, we depend on others. Therefore, we do not have the right to impose our whims or abuses on others, to the point of putting the continuity of life on the planet at risk. Health, in a holistic and comprehensive sense, requires us to live in harmony with the rest of living beings.
Yaxkin: How can we reconcile with Mother Earth?
Pedro: First, I think that we need to return to more austere lifestyles closer to land and plants. If one wants to reconcile with our mother earth, we have to slow down our worries and busy schedules, purify ourselves and return to the contemplative temporality of trees. We have to clean our retinas and recover our amazement by sailing the rivers in a canoe and walking under the green shade of the forests. In order to dialogue with the rest of living beings and experience unity with the sacred web of life, we must preserve ourselves in certain purity: eating healthily and lightly, renouncing the excesses of lust and selfish pleasures, breathing calmly, preserving the innocence of our heart, loving other beings, and letting our inner light to emerge. Our grandparents taught us precise words to converse with the rest of living beings. Our medicinal songs are like perfumed flowers that descend from the Jakon Nete to bless our world, calm sadness, and brighten hearts. Furthermore, I’m deeply convinced that the prayers of aints and sages are like invisible pillars preventing heaven and earth from mixing chaotically. We must preserve the balance and links between the visible world and the spiritual one. Human beings can only fully realize themselves if they receive strength, help, and wisdom from Master Spirits and the sages of the past.
Yaxkin: What is the role of poetry, songs, and arts in this reconciliation?
Pedro: The ancient Meraya were sages who healed patients with their medicinal chants. In other words, they were medicine-poets who healed with the vibrations of their voice. The suprasensible healing force comes down from the spiritual worlds and takes shape in the voice of the healer. This is a sacred poetry that purifies the body and mind, driving away evil spirits and fighting against witchcraft, restoring lost balance, and brightening the heart. We have been able to learn just a little about that heritage by continuing to practice it. These medicinal songs inspire the rest of our artistic practices. My wife and I believe in an art that, nourished by ancestral knowledge, territory, and the spiritual worlds, contributes to beautifying the planet, participates in the cosmic balance, and reminds us of having a good coexistence with the rest of the beings, showing us how to inhabit the earth in a beautiful, wise, and prudent way. I believe that at this time, when mental illnesses and the loss of our own humanity (under the primacy of cybernetics) are proliferating, art should lift us up and give us tranquility, love, compassion, and remind us about our own hearts. People are increasingly disconnected from themselves, from other beings, and from the sacred; our art seeks to be a medicine for these diseases and aims to provide relief to suffering.
Yaxkin: Please share your vision with a phrase or poem.
Pedro:
I spend my days
and nights
in a shelter
in the mountain
listening to
the liquid song
of the wild bird
and the deep and quiet
language
of the plants.
Alone, sitting
under a tree
by the creek
vain desires
dissolve
in the waters
that neither hurriedly
nor slowly,
run down into the big river.
How different
the world would be
if my brothers
listened
to the sweet rumor
of the creek
a spring
of love
at the base
of the heart.
East: Tokūn Tanaka(田中徳雲)
Yaxkin: Please introduce yourself
Tokūn: I am a monk in charge of a Buddhist temple in the city of Minami Soma in Fukushima prefecture. When I was in high school, I became interested in reading books about ancient Buddhist monks and began to study Buddhism. Since 2001, I have been living in this temple, dedicating myself to the practices that are part of our everyday life. Ten years ago, in this emblematic temple of our region, famous for its agriculture, fishing, and rich nature, everything changed enormously due to the accident at the nuclear power plant. My temple is located 17 kilometers northwest of this nuclear power plant [Fukushima Daiichi].
Yaxkin: Now, ten years after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster of 2011, what is the situation in Minami Soma, Fukushima?
Tokūn: Before the earthquake, the population was about 13,000 people. Many of these people used to live with three or even four generations under a single roof. The history and culture that had been passed down from the ancestors were also highly valued. In the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant accident, people were forced to lead a life as “evacuees” for a long period of time. The radioactive contamination that followed the nuclear power plant accident was an especially new experience for all and therefore it was very difficult for us to respond to the situation. This contamination is invisible to the eye, has no odor, and cannot be felt. However, it turns out that it is actually there. Then, the Japanese government downplayed the problem by limiting itself to following the national plan for nuclear power plants. As a result, opinions on radioactivity issues were divided within the local community and between families, for example, about things like letting your clothes air dry or not, or eating your own vegetables grown in the garden. Also, difficult decisions needed to be made such as whether or not to return to our homes; these ended up opening up a huge spiritual fissure. Today, counting the people who have returned and the people living in the town, we are about 3,500 people.
Yaxkin: In your vision, what will be the challenges for the Minami Soma community in the coming years?
Tokūn: We have a lot of issues. The first one is the issue of our decreasing population. Now, in the district of Minami Soma called Odakaku, the people who have returned are 35% of the people who were living there before the earthquake, and the vast majority are elderly people. Therefore, in the next ten to twenty years, it is estimated that the population will diminish significantly. The second issue is the environmental problem. For example, this 35% of the population is carrying out the cooperative work that the entire community used to do for the maintenance of the forests, but since most of them are very old, the work has become almost impossible. As a result, the mountains have become wild, and wild boars and monkeys come down to the villages to plunder the orchards. It is possible that one of the causes lies in the increase of this animal population during the time when people were evacuated from the area. However, it is important to think that this is also connected to the fact that there is no food on the mountain. I think that is precisely the reason why these areas require careful care. The third issue is the heart and mind problems. The children who witnessed the nuclear power plant accident will soon come of age [* in Japan this is at 21 years old]. They have grown up seeing how the government has not taken care of the population of their towns, and how it has lied to only take care of itself (and the corporations). This government has unscrupulously lied, using a double standard that covers its true intentions [“honne”] with a language of appearance [“tatemae”], pleasing the strong and trampling the weak. The children who have seen all this bear wounds and therefore have no hope in society.
Yaxkin: How could the spiritual vision of Indigenous peoples enrich the vision and life of the Japanese?
Tokūn: I especially believe that the spiritual vision of Indigenous peoples is important because I care about the future of our boys and girls. Also, because of their posture of respect towards the Earth, as if she were a mother who should not be hurt. This way of thinking was generally shared by the ancient Japanese. Because Japan is a nation of islands, anciently it was highly valued to thank nature, the sea, and mountains for the blessings received from them. Things from nature were not taken in excess and were shared. After the industrial revolution, capitalist thought entered Japan. Despite the fact that we have been losing sight of things and falling into confusion, searching for our immediate benefit, I believe that the genes that were asleep within us have begun to awaken. I see as a hopeful sign people who, tired of living in the cities, seek a life in the countryside, or the fact that more young people are trying to make their lives smaller and closer to self-sufficiency. I think that is happening not only in Japan but all over the world at the same time.
Yaxkin: Do you believe in Mother Earth? For you, what is Mother Earth and, from Japanese Buddhism, how could we approach her?
Tokūn: Yes, of course. I am one more part of the Earth. If we take an apple tree as an example, each one of us is a fruit and the Earth is our tree. It is necessary to awaken to the consciousness that goes from the fruit to the tree. Precisely this tree is the shape of our future. I believe that if our consciousness from the fruit to the tree awakens, then a metamorphosis occurs like that of the caterpillar that becomes a butterfly, and we will be able to naturally solve problems. I think that the emptiness [空 “kū”] explained in Buddhism explains these things too.
Yaxkin: How can we reconcile with Mother Earth?
Tokūn: Meditating within nature. Walking. Going into the sea and collecting garbage. Planting trees and caring for them in the mountains. These things allow us to listen to the voice of the Earth, and be able to “tune into it” by synchronizing it to our own being. Through this attunement, it becomes possible to hear the voice of the Earth. I believe that even with these little things, our mother (Earth) becomes happy and, as we heal from our wounds, we gain the opportunity to recover our connection with her.
Yaxkin: What is the role of poetry, songs, and the arts in this reconciliation?
Tokūn: The energy of the arts is very great. More than a thousand words, just a photograph, a single poem that makes a person’s heart resound is not a small thing. The Hopis have also written about this in their prophecies. It is known that the authentic Hopis are educated with clear thinking, good images, drawings, and rigorously chosen words. Education, in this case, does not mean education in White people’s sense, but true education for peace.
Yaxkin: Please share your vision with a phrase or poem.
Tokūn:
Soil for my feet
An axe for my hands
Flowers for my eyes
Birds for my ears
Mushrooms for my nose
A smile for my mouth
Songs for my lungs
Sweat for my skin
Wind for my heart
Just that is enough.
(Mexico-Peru) He is a poet, translator of Japanese poetry, editor and researcher of ecopoetic thought. Yaxkin has a Masters in Asian and African Studies from the Colegio de Mexico. He specialized in the ecological vision of the Japanese wanderer poet and environmental activist Nanao Sakaki. Yaxkin is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. He recently published Hatun Mayu (Hanan Harawi, 2016), Cactus del viento (an anthology of Nanao Sakaki’s poetry, AEM, 2017), Meditaciones del Pedregal (Astrolabio, 2019) y GAIA. Poemas en la Tierra (2020). In 2020 he wrote a column on ecopoetics and haiku for the magazine El Rincón del Haiku. Along with Pedro Favaron, they coordinate the “Cactus del Viento” ecopoetics collection of Mother Earth. He is a member of the Mother Earth Poetic Research Group. He publishes in his blog: https://flordeamaneceres.wordpress.com/
“Anishnaabe people, us, lived on these lands for a thousand years. Some of our brothers decided to walk as far east as they could go, and some walked west, and some crossed great stretches of narrow earth until they reached other parts of the globe. Many of us stayed here. We welcomed visitors, who renamed the land Canada. Sometimes things got real between us and the newcomers. Sometimes we killed each other. We were great fighters —warriors, we called ourselves and each other— and we knew these lands, so we kicked a lot of ass.”
The boys always puffed out their chests when Miig got to this part. The women straightened their spines and elongated their necks, their beautiful faces like flowers opening in the heat of the fire.
“But we lost a lot. Mostly because we got sick with new germs. And then when we were on our knees with fever and pukes, they decided they liked us there, on our knees. And that’s when they opened the first schools.
“We suffered there. We almost lost our languages. Many lost their innocence, their laughter, their lives. But we got through it, and the schools were shut down. We returned to our home places and rebuilt, relearned, regrouped. We picked up and carried on. There were a lot of years where we were lost, too much pain drowned in forgetting that came in convenient packages: bottles, pills, cubicles where we settled to move around papers. But we sang our songs and brought them to the streets and into the classrooms — classrooms we built on our own lands and filled with our own words and books. And once we remembered that we were warriors, once we honored the pain and left it on the side of the road, we moved ahead. We were back.”
Minerva drew in a big, wet sniff, wiped her nose across her sleeve, and then set about chewing the fabric once more.
“Then the wars for the water came. America reached up and started sipping on our lakes with a great metal straw. And where were the freshest lakes and the cleanest rivers? On our lands, of course. Anishnaabe were always the canary in the mine for the rest of them. Too bad the country was busy worrying about how we didn’t pay an extra tax on Levi’s jeans and Kit Kat bars to listen to what we were shouting.
“The Great Lakes were polluted to muck. It took some doing, but right around the time California was swallowed back by the ocean, they were fenced off, too poisonous for use.”
I’d seen the Great Lakes: Ontario when we were in the city and Huron when we lived on the New Road Allowance. The waters were grey and thick like porridge. In the distance, anchored ships swung, silent and shuttered, back and forth on the roll of methodical waves.
“The Water Wars raged on, moving north seeping our rivers and bays, and eventually, once our homelands were decimated and the water leeched and the people scattered, they moved on to the towns. Only then were armies formed, soldiers drafted, and bullets fired. Ironically, at the same time rivers were being sucked south and then east to the highest bidder, the North was melting. The Melt put most of the northlands under water, and the people moved south or onto some of the thousands of tiny islands that popped up out of the Melt’s wake across the top of our lands. Those northern people, they were tough, though, some of the toughest we’ve ever had, so they were okay, are still okay, the takes tell. Some better than okay. That’s why we move north towards them now.”
Migg stood, pacing his Story pace, waving his arms like a slow-motion conductor to place emphasis and tone over us all. We needed to remember Story. It was his job to set the memory in perpetuity. He spoke to us every week. Sometimes Story was focused on one area, like the first residential schools: where they were, what happened there, when they closed. Other times he told a hundred years in one long narrative, blunt and without detail. Sometimes we gathered for an hour so he could explain treaties, and others it was ten minutes to list the earthquakes in the sequence that they occurred, peeling the edging off the continents back like diseased gums. But every week we spoke, because it was imperative that we know. He said it was the only way to make the kinds of changes that were necessary to really survive. “A general has to see the whole field to make good strategy,” he’d explain. “When you’re down there fighting, you can’t see much past the threat directly in front of you.”
“The Water Wars lasted ten years before a new set of treaties and agreements were shook on between world leaders in echoing assembly halls. The Anishnaabe were scattered, lonely, and scared. On our knees again, only this time there was no home to regroup at. Meanwhile, the rest of the continent sank into a new era. The world’s edges had been clipped by the rising waters, tectonic shifts, and constant rains. Half of the population was lost in the disaster and from the disease that spread from too many corpses and not enough graves. The ones that were left were no better off, really. They worked long hours, they stopped reproducing without the doctors, and worst of all, they stopped dreaming. Families, loved ones, were torn apart in this new world.”
Cherie Dimaline is a member of the historical Métis community of Georgian Bay in the territory now known as Canada. On her website, her biography states: “I come from hunters and women who told stories and made their own remedies when they weren’t purchasing salves from the ‘peddler’ who would come across the Bay once in a while. Some remedies used holy water from the Shrine in town, others used water collected from the Bay on Easter Sunday. Many were based around onions and pine. To this day, my family hunts and harvests.” Dimaline is the author of six books but The Marrow Thieves, published in 2017, was declared by TIME magazine one of the best books for young adults of all times, among other prestigious prizes that the novel received in North America. This science fiction novel for teenagers presents a future when Indigenous peoples are being hunted for their bone marrow. Dimaline presents an eclectic group of characters that get together and collaborate to hide from the danger; at the same time she presents the social and environmental problems that have led to the dystopian context of the novel’s reality. The second volume of this saga, titled Hunting By Stars, came out in 2021.
To be Gunadule is to be Gunayala and to be Abiayala/Abya Yala
Baba and Nana are supreme beings, our creators.
Abiayala/Abya Yala, known as saved territory and land of blood, is also as our brother, Dad Neba Nelson de León Kantule says, Abiayala/Abya Yala represents spaces “of fullness."
Abia - blood
It comes from the dulegaya language, dule language or also known as guna or Gunadule
Abe/Ablis is blood – and the word, Yala-land, mountain, continent, territory.
blood land; spilled blood and life blood.
Abiayala/Abya Yala is solidarity and collective, with collective solidarity we are similar to the earth, a land of fullness and life,
To understand the depth of Abiayala/Abya Yala, it is more than the four stages of the evolution of our worlds, it is the memories of our stories of Babigala, of Baba and Nana, of Ibeler and his siblings, they are stories of chaos and unification, of Biler and Ibeler, therefore, for us Dules, it is about relational positionalities.
Abiayala/Abya Yala exists.
It is not about ‘the Americas’. It is more.
Abiayala/Abya Yala, has always been alive and present.
Abiayala/Abya Yala is the evolution of development with collective solidarity, not the chaos of destruction, because as in the words of our brother, Marden Paniza, Gunadule musician and composer, it is to remind us that mer burgwega anmar namagge “we sing to not die” and in these we sing.
Anmar di, we are water
Anmar yala, we are land and mountains
Anmar ari, we are iguana
Anmar achu, we are jaguar
Anmar yaug, we are turtle
Anmar bansus, we are hummingbird
Anmar Abiayala
We are land of blood
Land of spilled blood, blood of life
We are a land of fullness
And we don't lack anything
Itogua.
~~~
Dad Neba Nelson De León Kantule*
Napguana Asociation
Indigenous peoples, development and Environment
After the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992, it was a historic event for indigenous peoples and their rights in relation to the environment, where it recognized the indigenous peoples and their communities to the care of mother earth that they have been doing and the use of the environment. The importance of traditional knowledge and practices of indigenous peoples was recognized and the international community (states) committed to promote, strengthen and protect the rights, knowledge and practices of indigenous peoples and their communities.
Indigenous peoples continue to be targeted by those who promote alleged developments with globalizing plans, which in the long run further harm our precarious living conditions. All this happens in a convulsed world, where internal wars or wars between states are becoming a habit. In the same way, wars between the powerful (transnational companies) are reasons for the displacement of indigenous peoples in subhuman conditions, when they discover minerals, when they want to build hydroelectric plants and others, in our territories. (There are plenty of examples in Abya Yala (Abiyala), (America), the case of the Kuna of Mudungandi, in Panama, the Bayano hydroelectric plant, and the construction of the Barro Blanco hydroelectric plant.
Talking about development for the Indigenous Peoples does not only mean talking about investments and cooperation brought from abroad, it means, first of all, the recognition of their culture and traditions, which also involves respect for the ancestral technology with which our Peoples have survived.
Faced with this reality of the great changes mentioned, we indigenous peoples face these challenges and we have to prepare for those to come, without renouncing our roots or the principles that our ancestors bequeathed to us. Taking up the teachings of the great sages of our history, our identity, adapting them to the reality of the present, to project into the future.
It is time for the indigenous peoples to plant their own model, based on our organizational dynamics, with political, socioeconomic, cultural, religious, territorial and autonomy approaches, in short, the claim of our specific and collective rights, based on solidarity, equity, historically underestimated by the Uagas (non-indigenous).
We are not against development, we want development and remain indigenous. What we do not share and we do not agree with are the impositions of the Western development model, which have proven to be inoperative, outdated, which have caused ruptures and considerable damage to our political and social structures of our peoples. These models imposed on our peoples, migrations, changes weaken our cultural identity. The Uagas (non-indigenous) will always see the indigenous peoples as an obstacle, a barrier to development.
The indigenous peoples, in general, have a long experience in the management of natural resources, since we have lived since time immemorial in direct contact with nature, obtaining from it the necessary benefactors to satisfy our needs. Even though they have not defined the concept of sustainable development, they have been putting it into practice for many years.
Indigenous peoples have lost much of their territories in the name of development, and are at risk of further losing ancestral lands and sacred places, many of which contain the richest biodiversity in the world. Governments that have joined the Convention on Biological Diversity have an obligation to enact domestic laws or amend their constitutions to ensure the participation of indigenous peoples in the conservation and sustainable use of their environment.
I wonder what forests, what biodiversity do our countries sell or negotiate to redeem their foreign debt? We have rich forests, minerals, fresh water, seas, if we sell everything today, tomorrow we will also be poor and we will not have them to bequeath to our future generations, therefore we cannot say whether to make any investment thinking about today's hunger.
We indigenous people are going to accept investments in our region without any problem, as long as the investors are honest people and want to share the profits with us, those who do not make our brothers work so as not to pay them later... those who do not hide behind the politicians in power to insult an indigenous culture, those who have the patience of the indigenous authorities in the negotiations. We are aware of the wealth we possess, but the world does not end tomorrow and there will come other relatives of ours who will thank us for not having exhausted everything at once of what our Napguana (Mother Earth) bequeathed to us, mother of all development if we love and preserve it, or simply from human misfortunes, if as their children we do not know how to respect them.
All the demands of our peoples are fair and legal in light of international and national laws, agreements, treaties and other instruments that speak about the rights of indigenous peoples. We can mention a concrete example with the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, art. 32. Paragraph 2. The States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free and informed consent before approving any project that affects their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, use or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.
But the full recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples is not given clearly in all countries. For this reason, true recognition and not only on paper or laws, is the essential starting point to change along the path towards full development. Which means that we indigenous peoples have the full capacity to carry out our own development and that we are given this opportunity.
We only ask for the opportunity to at least be given to chart and choose our own destiny, based on our principles and cultural values, which have so far proven to be valid in our communities.
The main characteristic of indigenous peoples, unlike Western society, is that social systems are based on help, mutual protection, brotherhood and solidarity. That they do not need to be written in voluminous codes that in the end are not fulfilled, it is in daily practice that our people make it a reality, it is our way of life. Both the social, political, economic and spiritual aspects of life are vitally linked forming a unity.
For all that has been said above, I continue to maintain the principle of my Kuna teachers, for our parents, naskued (development) means producing the land and learning traditional knowledge for the benefit of all and not of a few, not to be rich individually, but to share it with everyone.
This value has kept us going despite the many changes that are happening in indigenous society. The Kuna cultural identity is still alive, will continue to be alive, as long as our peoples live together. The strength of our culture has persisted throughout history; the entry of some imposed models in the region has changed some things in our communities, and even so, it has not been able to change our being, we will continue to be Kuna.
This path is essential, considering the active participation of indigenous peoples, such as the Ngäbe, Kunas, Emberás, Nasos, Wounaan, Buglé, Bri-bris people.
Thus the participation of women, youth, the elderly and others. Whose contribution will allow the construction of a more solid, harmonious, and representative legal basis, the result of which will be a fairer and more balanced society, in the same way, the political will and tolerance of all the actors, to understand and accept the existence of this diversity of peoples. indigenous in Panama.
For peaceful coexistence and the construction of a true democratic society, it is essential to recognize and give value to the existence of indigenous peoples with their different values and interests, as well as to respect and tolerate those historical values and interests that distinguish us from others. Logically, a mere moral recognition is not enough; in a country like Panama, where different cultures coexist, it must be reflected in its legislation, in the constitution. There should not be a group that imposes its own norms and values of conduct and behavior on others.
* Dad Neba: In the Kuna indigenous language, it means, "Grandfather of the Plain", with that name identifies Nelson De León Kantule, Kuna indigenous communicator / Director of the Napguana Association. E-mail: duleigar@gmail.com and napguanakuna@gmail.com
~~~
Photograph of a mola from Sue Patricia Haglund’s mola collection
Taira Edilma Stanley Icaza
KIPARA
I want to talk about the strokes
of my body
From the traces where I come from
From the source that drives
my starting point
Of my first spiral line
of my heritage as an indigenous woman
of my rebellion, my nahua and my mola
of the courage that runs in my veins
from Grandma Carmen and Mom
Let the strokes penetrate
my body
talk about heritage and our
footprints
From sisters Bertha and Marielle
let me scream and love
I want to trace my body again
and again
drink from the inna*
feel the holy river
get tangled up again in my strokes
plot and plot
until starting with the end point,
like spiral
*inna: corn juice, drink
El Luna 1925 and Wewe
Another night, one of those nights
Of love
where cries are whispered
sadness, tears and more tears
They shake and shake the sweat
Wewe*, try to flap the humidity
And with basil in their mouth
gives peace of mind
stop so cruel
action, outrage
and rape.
Their wings flap
And they calm the pulse
ears try to hear
forget, that one
Crescent moon
Their eyes when sinking give the message
the voice that comes from their wings
soothe the soul,
brother moon,
whisper to Wewe
Let's sing
*wewe: variety of small cricket that abounds along the coasts; sand flea.
Photograph of a mola from Sue Patricia Haglund’s mola collection
Cebaldo Inawinapi De León
1
An Di!
An Di!
Water we are. Water we will be!
In a Kuna village a girl is born, and the midwife sings, the grandmother sings, they sing: We come from the water and with the water. Born from the fertile liquid of the placenta, which will later be fertilizer and will be sown (placenta and umbilical cord) in generous land, blessed by rain.
The girl grows up. One day, her body tells her that life is fruitful and for several days, the women of the village will bathe her daily in a surba –a sacred house made of leaves, words and a lot of love-, water and her and the words of the accomplices. and her desires and her dreams traveling through this sacred territory: her body!
Water and Word, tattooing puberty!
The woman goes to the final journey, the poet sings to her of her days and nights, and she receives the perfumed bath of flowers and plants and the last journey will be in the river of her youthful loves and planted in the generous forest... and she begins to navigate the sacred river that will guide her to the final Matria.
Water we are! The Greater Poet sings
Water we will be! The village sings.
A fruitful liquid brings us - in loving waters we love and create - and in a generous liquid we travel to the Final House!
2
Our Great Poets sing that a fine and magical thread unites, sews the waters of the rivers, the seas, the trees, the forest, the earth and its inhabitants, building a great network, balancing and harmonizing the sounds, colors and the fruits of the earth.
We are all One!
Song and art that our greatest creators, the Kuna women, have understood in a wonderful way, when they sew their dresses, their molas with colored fabrics where they tattoo their dreams, their desires, their stories and charms that come out of the left side of their chest and glide to the tips of the fingers.
And they continue it today, in these urgent times, their children, their grandchildren…harmonizing sounds, colors and dissonant things.
It is part of the larger network, of the universal fabric, balancing sounds, colors and flavors, and if one day part of the network breaks, we must quickly fix it, sew it, so that we can continue walking and rocking in this Universal Hammock, our Great House, Earth.
3
who orders the time? It is not the clock, it is the Word, it is the Language (I know I read it in some enchanted page of a beautiful book or in a song in some marine village) and it takes me on this urgent flight, to my days in the Big House, in the marine village, when the Great Poet, the Sagla sings and counts the days of the village, of the tribe, of the Earth,
because what inhabits and tattoos us is the time of speech, of words, of enjoyment, of the verb...reinventing worlds, word by word, creating magic...!
Degiii!
~~~
Photograph of a mola from Sue Patricia Haglund’s mola collection
Atencio López
NOSTALGIA
I try to look
clouds and birds
at sunset,
but I couldn't.
my eyes blinded
delve further into
childhood memories
they won't come back
happy existence
in their laps
my future was formed
my hope.
Today,
of my life defoliate
flowers, dreams,
petting
to accompany me
forever.
From the beach, sea,
I feel that something
turns off
I go around the world
carrying love,
hearts
and about them
I have to sleep
cry.
I feel love
but it overwhelms me
deep sadness
I hope the tears
wash away that bitterness
and may dawn
by your side
making love…
GENOCIDE IN ABYA YALA
Nothing to celebrate
October 12th
start date
to genocide ever
written
in the history of mankind.
One hundred million human beings
led to the stakes
slaughtered and killed
in the name of god and the bible.
Kings of Spain
believing saviors of the world
inundated with human scum
our continent
human garbage
that wanted to delete
indigenous history.
From graves, forests,
rivers, seas and lakes
the slaughtered face
of grandmothers and grandfathers
they emerged to sully
Western pride, European pride
Abya Yala writes her own
history with an indigenous face
to the sound of the cry of
Liberty…
WOMAN
With music from ancient times
to the sound of flutes and maracas
I come drunk among fish
ocean smell
I bring before your altar
algae and flowers
that I pulled out
from the bottom of the sea,
I want to cry in your arms
And take your aromas and tenderness
to other worlds where I can
tell love stories
born on islands and beaches
under the raging sea
and a harsh sun.
Love of tanned faces
by saltpeter and starry nights,
loves,
memories and legacies
of our warrior ancestors.
~~~
From Sue Patricia Haglund’s mola collection, this mola is made by Rosa Lidia Gallardo, Sue Patricia Haglund’s cousin. The crab and fish mola is made by Gunadule mola-maker, Rosa Lidia Gallardo (granddaughter to Juan Gallardo, who is the brother of Sue Patricia Haglund’s grandfather, Ricardo Walker.)
Kinyapiler Johnson González
IT WAS IN ARINII (*)
Suddenly the rhythms of troupes are heard,
the tunas**, going up the street and down the street;
slippery ones come out on any street,
signal that the carnivals have arrived in Bannaba (1).
While, in the spirited and seductive Caribbean,
on the islands of the Tule Republic,
with pride the flags of the revolution are hoisted;
is the month of Morginnid e iba (2) is arinii.
I have my red cotton shirt,
the urigan (3) are painted “enraged achiote”;
the fangs and hearts of jaguars,
the claws and beaks of eagles came together.
The uprooted molas were stained with blood that day,
rings and winis (4) prohibited
and scattered throughout the archipelago.
Forbidden to forget that date, tattooed on our hearts.
The jars of gabir (5) kicked and broken,
the braziers extinguished by boots,
the forbidden rituals,
split hammocks…
Never forget us companions,
that this country cost us blood
and it was not a gift from any government.
Alert, alert brothers,
Gabidamalargeee... (6)
Today the jars of the revolution
are fermented on each island,
to toast peace
to the heat of the totumas de gabir.
Today like yesterday we share that joy
together with our people,
because our eternal young warriors of 1925
planted their old hunting shotguns with a single shot,
but accurate as Igwaoginyabbiler's arrows,
the archer of the best marksmanship, brother Venus;
so that today his children and grandchildren can enjoy
and enjoy what we have...
¡Noggasdde, iddomalando, sioggooooo…nagase! (7)
Let's shout and toast with our grandmothers and mothers.
* arinii = iguana moon (month of February)
** the tunas = groups of people with song and music who dance in the streets with a drum ; dance and other instruments during the Panamanian carnival.
1. Morginnid e iba = Red Shirt Month
2. kuna warriors
3. beads
4. strong fermented drink
5. do not sleep
6. Kuna Toast: We have the gourd, let’s try, cheers…bottom’s up!
DIIANAI (dulegaya)
“Iawala ganaggwa agdededi yalabali,
Dada Nagibelele bega ulusumba sie nasaye,
nue daggedi yalabali yee…”
(Inicio del verso de Aggwanusa adaptado por mí, en el original dice “Pato Diolele”, donde digo: “Dada Nagibelele”
y en parte me inspiro en ese tratado de Aggwanusa,
está dedicada a alguien muy especial).
Iawala gwenaddiye, bedi an idusad
nega sagla unni; andi bese gormaggenai,
be gammu ganse be ulusumba billinganba.
Inaulu dagge yobi bedi maigudeye,
gwena benunis nalleguemaisuli;
nii ulu obaggemaid ilaba nega duubali.
Nana Olonubdiigili, be ordiidina
aryomegisa, ber gungidagge yobi;
agddarmaggemai be ana gandi.
Nana Maninubdiigili, be maninisdii
suurmaggemai, ber maniale
ber manidaggeyobi.
Nana Inanubdiigili, be inadii
wawadiggi ber inabisebdili yobi;
goggedili, nunabdili bunnogemainie.
Nana Igwanubdiigili; be ganngued,
be sabed anga ugge;
bargaegala be nunis maniga sademalad.
Be inaulu wawanmaggemai nie;
suemola bedi yoemai,
be burba, Nan burba mogir inbaba.
Oloeaidiili be suggedi dinnaguemai,
anmar nuggi, gwenad an be daggsuli;
anai dii emi be ibagi, an bega soge Anna Diianai.
DIIANAI
Big brother river, you who are before me
since the beginning of time; I invoke you,
to your tributaries to your subterranean origins.
You who cross like a great medicinal canoe,
giving away your milk to everyone
in each trip of the moon in its canoe through the sky.
Mother Olonubdiigili, your golden liquids
they travel, and fall radiant as gold on their way;
in your shining tributaries.
Mother Maninubdiigili, your silver liquids
They run and shine like silver
like argentas on the road.
Mother Inanubdiigili, your fragrant
medicinal waters such as essences of basil;
breaths of goggedili, nunabdili.
Mother Igwanubdiigili; give me your strength
and your love; to stop the merchants
who profit from your milk.
Your trembling medicinal canoe is;
with a rainbow mola outfit,
your strength, spirit of the Mother among the clouds.
Oloeaidiili your stream is drying up,
because of us, I no longer see you as a sister;
My friend water today, I tell you Anna Diianai (hello friend water).
Poetry 01
Poetry
is the full moon
on your moon,
it’s your smile
in my sadness,
it’s dawn
in my sunset,
poetry is the blossoming
of the dilla at dawnby dillanii… *
* dilla [dil´la] in Kuna (language) is palo santo plant, and dillani [dil´lanii] is the palo santo moon or the month of March.
Poetry 02
Poetry is the delicate
Kuna woman’s hands
that transform the threads and fabrics
in multicolored verses in their molas
at sunset in Kuna Yala.
And in her early mornings
her calloused hands lift the hot pans
to prepare breakfast
to the future slingshot rebels,
heirs of February 25.
~~~
Maninaindi R. Roldan. G
Kipara
The universe and
their hugs manifest
in designs
in black symbols
in alchemical forms.
There are hidden truths
in its geometry / lines that join us
The recipient skin of legacies
serves as a fragile canvas
where they rest from their long journeys.
It is in it that they live/migrate/mutate
they return to being simple cosmic lines.
Next to my memory you are
You are the force that sustains my struggles
The hug that protects me from strangers
Your old war is today my shield
/ My award
Your flag ⎯symbol of rebellion and courage⎯ is my spear
That's why I thank you dear grandfather who inhabits my memory
That's why I thank you dear grandmother for your sacrifice
Today as children of February we fight to deserve your name
To rock the Matria that so many of us love
I wave the flag of rebellion
of the sacrifice
and life
Ephemeral
We have the season of the hummingbird.
A season of sighs.
A season of echoes and nostalgia.
Of jar and song.
And in that space where time sings
you are the point of this hour
the minute in the cloud.
About the Gunadule Authors
Dad Neba Nelson De León Kantule is a Gunadule essayist, scholar, and activist. His name, Dad Neba, in the Kuna indigenous language, means, “Grandfather of the Plain”, with that name identifies Nelson De León Kantule, great grandson of Nele Kantule, Kuna indigenous communicator / Director of the Napguana Association. E-mail: duleigar@gmail.com and napguanakuna@gmail.com
Taira Edilma Stanley Icaza is a Gunadule activist, poet and scholar. Taira graduated from the Bachelor of Science in Education with a Post-graduate degree in Higher Teaching. She is a member and activist of the Kuna Youth Movement (MJK) and other international indigenous organizations. She went to Bolivia to study for her master’s degree at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés and works at the Office of Indigenous Peoples at the University of Panama.
Cebaldo Inawinapi De León is an author, artist, poet, and Gunadule anthropologist born on the Island of Usdub, Autonomous Region of Gunayala, Panama. Inawinapi lives between Portugal and Panama and is the author of the book My First Tree: An Sabbi Iduged (2019). He is also the protagonist in the film, Panquiaco, and is part of the documentary, LucíaMor: La Mola de Lucía. Learn more about Inawinapi here.
Atencio López is Gunadule from the Autonomous Region of Gunayala, Panama. He is an author, poet, and attorney for Indigenous, Commercial, Criminal, and Civil Law. He studied at the Faculty of Law and Politics at the University of Panama and obtained his Master’s Degree in Commercial Law at the Universidad Interamericana de Panamá. For several years, Atencio has held various positions in Panamanian and international indigenous organizations. Learn more about Atencio here.
Kinyapiler Johnson González is a Gunadule poet, artist, and cultural activist. He was born on the island of Usdub, Autonomous Region of Gunayala, Panama. He studied at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Panama. In addition, Kinyapiler served as administrator of the Guna General Congress on a few occasions, is a member and activist of the Kuna Youth Movement (MJK), and a founding member of the Ibeler Wagan Theater Collective. Maninaindi R. Roldan. G. is a Gunadule poet, artist, and psychologist born on the island of Usdub, Gunayala, Panama. He studied at the University of Panama and has a degree in psychology. As an artist, he participated together with the Igar Yala Collective in the making of the film Burwa Dii Ebo (The wind and the water), an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival 2008. He is the author of the book, Demonios en mi desierto (2019).
Dad Neba Nelson de León Kantule, one of the founders of Panama’s first digital radio station, “Radio Voces Originarias Panamá” https://www.vocesoriginariaspanama.org/
She is a Gunadule poet and scholar from Panama and the U.S., and holds a PhD in Indigenous Politics from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She researches the works of contemporary Gunadule poets whose poetry reflect the cultural metamorphosis of the actualized transformation of Gunadule oral tradition and poetry that speak against colonialism and empire. Her poem, “Conversaciones con mi abuelo,” was published in the first anthology of Gunadule poetry, Antología de Poetas Kunas (Panama City, 2015), and she has published several book chapters in edited volumes, including Indigenous Interfaces: Spaces, Technology, and Social Networks in Mexico and Central America (2019).