'Los Derechos de la Pachamama' is an emotional and inspiring video that was created as a joint project between five indigenous communities in Peru with the message: 'We wish from out hearts that these rights we are proposing will be added to and that people across the world recover their harmony with our Mother Earth.'
In April 2010 InsightShare's Latin America Director Maja, and community video facilitators Balvino, Primitivo, Irma and Rosio participated in the exciting People's Forum on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights, in Cochabamba, Bolivia that was attended by 35,000 people.
The Peru Hub ‘Cuyay Wasi’ is located in Vilcacoto, an Andean peasant community in the Mantaro Valley. Making videos in a participatory way has supported community movements by reaffirming their cultures. Having produced beautiful videos in which they see themselves they reflect upon what they can do with their own material resources and cultural ways.
Kuna Indians are using Participatory Video in their struggle to conserve their forests, which are their main source of food and medicine. As their traditional island territories are threatened by rising sea levels, they are using video to ask indigenous youth to reconnect to agriculture and invite industrial countries to cooperate in the conservation of biodiversity.
The Apus, or sacred mountains are the guardians of the climate and the source of all pure water and thus have the power to protect or devastate communities living on them. The clip was made as part of a campaign to resist evangelical authorities and this video has resulted in local people taking up again traditional practices to nurture Mother Earth.
One Quechua family follows their grandmother and local shaman to the top of the sacred mountain. Ritual, deep respect and love are shown to the local mountain deity in order for us all to enjoy pure water and a beneficial climate for growing crops. Beautiful imagery combines with direct commentary from Angelica, local shaman, showing us the way to perform the rituals to nurture our Mother Earth.
'Kuna Conversations with Mother Earth' was created during a Participatory Video during which the Kuna Indians of Panama documented their struggle to conserve the forests, their main source of food and traditional medicine.
'Peru Conversations with Mother Earth' is a powerful film relating the Andean cosmovision. Quechua videographers documented seasonal changes, hail, melting glaciers, christian fundamentalism, and other threats to their culture, livelihoods and landscapes.
In this article Nick Lunch (InsightShare Co-Founder & Co-Director) describes how the Biocultural Portal (currently working under the project name 'Conversations with the Earth), functions as a web based resource for Indigenous Peoples and other stewards of biocultural diversity to share participatory video promoting local solutions to preserve the worlds biocultural diversity. He argues how the project - as a process at grassroots level - challenges power inequality but is simultaneously empowering for government officials, UN officers, civil servants, donors, NGOs, activists and communities alike.
'Kamayoqs' was created during a pilot initiative with potato and alpaca Kamayoqs, in the high Andes of Peru, exploring the potential of Participatory Video for pro-poor market development and farmer-to farmer technology transfer.
