The Indigenous Peoples in Colombia symbolize a wealthy cultural and ancestral range that has existed within the territory of Abya Yala lengthy earlier than the arrival of European colonizers. The folks right here have inhabited these lands for millennia, preserving their traditions, languages, ancestral data, and techniques of social group.
It’s estimated that there are round 115 Indigenous Peoples in Colombia, every with its personal cultural identification, worldview, and methods of existence derived from their deep reference to the land, which is taken into account not solely a way of subsistence but additionally a non secular and cultural component of their lives.
The Indigenous Peoples of this nation, as in your entire area, have confronted numerous challenges all through historical past, together with neo-colonization, discrimination, the lack of their ancestral lands, and State and paramilitary violence. Regardless of this, they’ve resisted tenaciously, adapting and preserving their traditions and methods of neighborhood life.
Via a Keepers of the Earth Fund, Cultural Survival supported the Inga Peoples in Colombia via a grant to the Runapacha Collective in 2023, a bunch of Indigenous youth belonging to the Inga neighborhood of Santiago, Putumayo. Via the challenge “The Inga mom tongue and the Chumbe artisanal material, two components of life for the Inga neighborhood,” the Collective started relearning of their mom tongue and artisanal material for the survival of their authentic philosophy and tradition.
Runapacha dialogue
The challenge started with two intergenerational data dialogues between Elders and youth from the neighborhood. This course of confirmed them the extremely symbolic language and the huge historical past of tradition and identification that the Chumbe material incorporates inside its kinds.
In the course of the improvement of the challenge, 10 of the neighborhood’s most necessary and regularly used weaving symbols had been recognized, decoded, and translated into Inga, Kichwa, and Spanish. As well as, information playing cards with QR codes had been developed with the details about every image, accompanied by small audio clips containing phrases and ideas derived from the conferences with the lecturers. The clips additionally include ambient sounds from the atmosphere, changing into poetry and prayers.
To complete the challenge, Chumbe weaving workshops had been developed to enrich neighborhood studying. The digital playing cards used for the method had been a novelty for the Elders and academic for the youngest. This challenge harnessed know-how to permit data to be disseminated extra shortly, with permission from the Elders as caretakers of the that means of their tradition.
Under are some ideas from our companions.
Illapa Taruka Ruiz: “I used to be struck by the magic and concord of the tales and traditions of the Inga neighborhood. The data we discovered concerning the neighborhood could be very sacred and it has been essential to doc it in three languages within the playing cards elaborated within the challenge. All of it is a nice contribution to the neighborhood and we should proceed on the lookout for methods to proceed recording, writing, and making music round this data. Yupaychani (Thanks) in Kichwa.”
Sofia Tobar Tisoy: “This challenge leaves me with an amazing understanding of the meanings of the symbols of the Chumbe, some fully unknown and others I discovered in workshops and conferences. This leads me to need to proceed studying. Grandmothers have so much to inform us and we should take heed to them as a result of time transforms and we are able to lose this beneficial data. I’m very grateful for this challenge.”
Gabriel Tisoy Alpala: “I had the chance to accompany the recording of the audio clips and I appreciated what might be carried out to doc data via microphones and music. Colonization in our neighborhood impacted us and informed us our language was ‘not price it,’ however I believe that it does have a variety of worth. I comply with the knowledge of taking an ambiwaska or ayahuasca drugs, and whenever you reside this expertise, you may perceive that the language of our neighborhood has a reference to the universe and has a particular that means with life.”
Digital playing cards
Prime image: Throughout a “Chumbe” weaving workshop. All photos by Runapacha Collective.
