The Call of Life Itself
By Jon Symes
Pachamama
is a word in
the Quechua
language of
the Andes
that some
translate
as “Mother
Earth ,” but
which more
acurately
encompasses
the sacred
presence of
the Earth,
the sky, the
universe, and
al time.
(Editor’s Note: As you read the following
article about Pachamama, be aware that the
Achuar are an indigenous people who, for
generations, raised their families, built homes,
and maintained communities – all without money.
After their contact with the modern world,
all that changed. The Pachamama Alliance is
committed to empowering indigenous people to
preserve their territories and way of life; thereby
protecting the natural world for the entire human
race. Pachamama provides rainforest people with
the resources necessary to support the continued
vitality of their communities and culture, thereby
contributing to sustainability for all mankind.)
We live in a dream . . .and the dream we choose
to live in determines how we see the world.
And, to continue in this analogy, the dream
we choose shapes our actions both individually
and collectively. So when we look around at a
changing climate, our extinction of other species of life, warfare in
the Middle East and Africa, poverty on our doorsteps and starvation
abroad, we conclude that the dream we’ve chosen isn’t working for us.
We’re living a dream that cannot sustain human life as we know it on
Earth; but can we change the dream? And how?
In the early ’90s, a group of North Americans made contact with a
remote tribe in the Amazonian basin of Ecuador, led there by a series of
dreams. Following the trail of the distinctive yellow and red headdress
they had seen in their dreams, they found the Achuar, a proud forestdwelling
people who had previously shunned all contact with outsiders.
The Achuar elders were aware through their own dreams of the encroaching
threat to their lands and their way of life from oil companies
and loggers. They were called to reach out for partners from outside
their own territories in a brave bid to avoid the devastation that was
being visited on other parts of the rainforest. Perhaps this call (heard
in dreams by the Achuar; heard in dreams by these North Americans)
was issued by the spirit of all life, Pachamama, for the preservation of
life itself. And perhaps the call was not just to those few people present
as this alliance was formed, but to all people everywhere.
These were the events that brought into life the Pachamama Alliance,
a unique alliance of peoples from two very different societies, north and
south. Ever since those earliest days, the Alliance has worked to educate
and empower the Achuar to represent themselves in Ecuador’s system
of government. They
have learned to map
their own land in order
to lay legal claim
to it, they have developed
their schools,
improved healthcare
and communication
networks to help
them coordinate better
against the everpresent
threat from
the outside world.
The Achuar were grateful for the fruits of this alliance but said that
this was only half the battle. That in order for their partners from the
north to be able to protect the rainforest permanently, they would need
to go to work in their own part of the world, to “change the dream of
the north,” to change the culture of our modern world.
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