Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Postcommodity is a collective of American Indian artists from different backgrounds and mediums, combining to create giant musical instrument installations, video, sound and sculpture. Their Repellent Fence installation floated Scare-Eye Bird Repellent balloons over the border between Arizona and Sonora.
The Kogi People of Colombia, through two separate documentaries, delivered a message of a sustainable interconnection with nature and community as a way to avert climate and ecological destruction.
Prehistoric paintings on vertical rock faces in an Amazonian wilderness in Colombia were recently photographed and filmed for western eyes. The pretense of this British filmmaker as the “discoverer” of the paintings is of course ludicrous. The once populous Karijona Tribe most likely painted these masterpieces, and continue to live uncontacted in the vast rainforest, and anthropologists and explorers have studied the region for hundreds of years.
Jack Eidt of WilderUtopia spoke on the dangerous race for global control by the Chinese through mega-development projects such as the Gran Canal of Nicaragua and the Trans-Amazonian Railway, both with major human rights, ecological, and indigenous sovereignty consequences.
The amazing bison, revered by native societies, survives despite its continued sacrifice at the demand of the cattle industry. While slaughter continues at the borders of Yellowstone National Park, bison managers consider alternative management policies. Also watch the documentary, “Silencing the Thunder.”
Two documentary films chronicle the struggle of the Huichol or Wixárika People to protect their culture and spiritual connection with the ancestors, through the journey to Wirikuta, where peyote grows, now threatened by mining and development interests.
The Nukak People of Colombia have been forced from their homes by illegal armed groups, in the latest attack against the country’s most recently-contacted tribe. Mining, palm oil, cattle ranching and coca threaten the majority of the country’s 102 indigenous communities.