Ancestral wisdom
Acknowledgment of ancestral wisdom in Abya Yala continent:
community-based ecological & sustainable initiatives as tools for personal and collective healing.
《▪There is no food shortage when we consume local.
▪Remember your roots, use troc/ barter.
▪Sow, grow and harvest!
▪Oaxaca, culturally rebellious. 》
Oaxaca is a region with millenary history of wisdom and resistance 💜
I believe that many of us are reluctant to change habits facing the pollution of nature not because we do not care, but because we do not really know how to do things differently. It is not only a matter of nature’s but human’s mental and physical health. In this respect, I believe that we have a lot to learn from ancestral wisdom.
Original habitants of Abya Yala Territory (incorrectly known as American continent) share an ancestral philosophy where alimentation, organisation, reciprocity, solidarity, and complementarity, are some of their inner values that are not fully acknowledged by an occidental racist culture.
While some uneducated people still believe that our ancestors were savage/ uncivilized people, others start to make uncolonized, non-patriarchal interpretations of the ancestral cosmogony. Then, they promote the art of living well philosophy, to live in equilibrium with ourselves, in equilibrium with others, and in equilibrium with nature.
Installation of solar heaters, bio-digestors, dry toilets, reforestation, rainwater harvesting, and waste management, collective sustainable agriculture, are some of the projects that are being implemented.
Alimentation and clothing have been closely related to land caring for thousands of years: corn, squash, and beans, the so-called three sacred sisters, are the base of a sustainable agro-ecological system. Fibers for clothing have been obtained from plants, employing natural dying. Similar to hemp, maguey and other organic fibers are very resistant. Being organic, they are compostable, contrary to plastic oil-based textile.
Facing pollution and lack of water due to industrialisation, the community makes inspiring efforts to offer popular education programs to create awareness, as well as workshops or collective work campaigns to solve any issue concerning the community, just the way they have done ancestrally; and thus building a way to self-determination.
This photo documentary aims to show how communitary ancestral practises are vindicated in different regions of the continent, living their respective liberation and healing process, in addition to rebuilding the social fabric with ancestral wisdom based ecological and sustainable initiatives.
Cooking pots
Frijolitos (beans), tortillas & salsita
Corn sprout 💜 Corn has been cultivated for almost 10,000 years throughout the Abya Yala continent. Together with beans and squash they are the basis of permanent agriculture. The so-called three sacred sisters.
Pozole, a traditional soup made of ancestral large corn grains called cacahuazintle.
Organic grapefruit tree
Organic banana tree in a sustainable crop field
Emilia. Handloom weaving as ancestral vindication.
José. Land cultivation is sacred
No carcinogenic pesticides or fertilizers. Only natural.
"Tequio", word from the ancestral language Nahuatl : #tekiyotl that describes collective or community cooperation efforts.
Dried river. The community proposes to implement rainwater harvesting ASAP.
Organic banana tree in a sustainable crop field
Popular amaranth based energy bars. An ancestral tradition ( < $ 0.1 USD)
Gathering after Tequio to share food, drinks and experiences.
Dried river. The community proposes to implement rainwater harvesting ASAP.
Drought worsened by industrialization
Solar heaters, rainwater harvesting systems and photovoltaic cells are being implemented in the community.
Some mountain water set aside in a well. Clean water for cultivation
Adobe (clay based bio-construction material) use revindication