Seeking to Retain Indigenous Identities

July 27, 2010

What would you be willing to do to protect your home, your family, your community? Would you travel to distant lands to protect the things you love most? Would you willingly separate yourself from your life and love?

There is a group of people doing just that. They are the members of Kipatsi, Kindred Pathways of Indigenous Significance, an organization whose mission is to protect and support the traditions, cultures, languages, environments and biodiversity of indigenous families and indigenous communities from South to North America. The Amuesha, calling themselves Yanesha’, and Asháninka are two ethnic groups of the Peruvian Amazon rainforest. Mino Eusebio Castro is the Asháninka leader of a village of indigenous Asháninka called Marankiari Bajo (La Comunidad Indígena Asháninka Marankiari Bajo, CIAMB-PERU), of the central jungle region of Peru, and is president of Kipatsi.

Emilio Salvatierra is the Yanesha leader of the San Francisco community of the Yanesha, and is advisor of Kipatsi. Katia Torrelli-Delgado (Mestiza/Quechua of Pisac Peru), coordinator, and Lily Bravo, secretary, are seeking to find protection for the way of life that they know to be true. They are seeking to find new methods to protect their communities, their indigenous identities and the earth.
They are willing to be separated from their families and communities to promote safety and the protection of a livelihood that is not only for their immediate loved ones, but for all indigenous peoples. They are indigenous ambassadors with a mission. The sacrifices they are making are for the betterment and protection against tyrannical governments that would gladly—without pause—take not only their lands and way of life, but strip them of their language and traditions, use their medicine plants without permission, and take away the outside world’s knowledge of their very existence.

Kipatsi means earth in the Asháninka language. I have had the good fortune to attend two presentations of the group; each one has deepened my understanding of not only others’ place in the world, but also my own. The group works at a local level, family to family. They are working to educate others and to support indigenous life and culture to build bridges of knowledge between indigenous people, with the hope that, in the knowing of each other, we will begin to place others in our hearts and see the necessity of all life.

The aspect I find to be different and amazing about this group is the approach. They have the desire to go into communities and find out what the community needs in order to stay self-sufficient without government concessions. Salvatierrra’s community is feeling the push of the migration that occurs during colonization, which has pushed his community back. His home includes 63 communities, of which he works with two. These communities are creating a coffee co-op that will operate as a fair-trade so that all will benefit. There are no roads that lead into the community. Consequently, they take the coffee out on mules to keep the footprint low and help preserve the land. Additionally, they do not cut down the trees to grow the coffee, but choose to work with the land and not against it. Salvatierra reported that timber companies have cut down much of the forest but are now beginning reforestation projects that include replanting trees. The companies will also replace all the plants that were lost.

Another issue facing Salvateirra’s community is the pharmaceutical companies taking away and patenting their sacred plants. In Castro’s community, they face many of the same issues and have responded to the challenges by developing eco-tourism. They have created a co-op and produce products such as soaps, salves, dried fruits and perfumes for export, so that all can benefit.

Castro helped develop the use of technologies that enabled the communities to learn to operate a radio that broadcasts in their native language (Asháninka) as well as Yanesha and Spanish. They also have the ability to provide action-alerts with wireless computers, and are using a combination of these technologies to archive and help preserve their cultural identity. Torrelli-Delgado reports from an email that, “Some of our work includes creating networks of collaboration, solidarity and support between indigenous communities of the North to the South. Some of our mission is to promote collaboration and solidarity in protest of the territories being threatened in the Amazon by multinational corporations: FTA = the free trade agreement between the USA and Peru, protection and support for traditional knowledge, spirituality, medicine and education and sustainable economic development of indigenous communities.�

Awareness of the group has recently begun to be visible in the last year due to a series of presentations. The communities understand that they need to become more public so that people will know about their challenges and needs. They want to provide public presentations on institutional levels but are also looking for allies, such as the Taos, Picuris and other Pueblos. The Taos Pueblo began a tentative step in this process last September. The hopeful outcome is an exchange of information that would assist the youth to succeed while keeping their cultural identity, language and traditions intact.

If you would like to like more information on the Kipatsi and their mission, or travel information for visiting Castro’s community, where he promises in his speeches that you will learn some of their language and dance, visit www.rcp.net.pe/ashaninka (currently only in Spanish).