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You can see the work of Gabriela Valencia, a Colombian artist who lives and works in Paris, France, here: http://www.valenciastudio.eu

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More photos of the Tule – Kuna:
Tule – Kuna people: Flash Gallery
Tule – Kuna people: HTML Gallery
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For a bigger view click on the photo (flash required).

Kougi village on the feet of the Sierra Nevada in Colombia.

I made this little video earlier this year while visiting a Kogi community for a photo reportage see here
see here). Sorry for the shaky hands and out of focus sequences but I just want to share some images of this Kogi community and the small interview with Mamo Juan, an amazing guy, wise and funny. The interview is in Spanish for now, but I will upload a version with English subs.

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Kogi community in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia from Alexander Rieser on Vimeo.

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They say if the mountain of the Sierra Nevada is dying so would the world. They try to prevent and safe the mountain, which indeed is slowly dying as the glacier on top of the Sierra Nevada is shrinking every year, thanks to global warming. The “Mamos” the spiritual leaders are meeting on a regular base to meditate and offer “payments” to the earth as a compensation of the damage humans caused, specially the “younger brothers”.
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The Kogis spend their lives learning the “law of the mother” and (only the men) meditating with the use of the “poporo”, a storage device made of a gourd for the lime they add with a little wooden stick they wet before with saliva and add when chewing coca leaves. Right after the lime got added to the leaves in the mouth they rub the stick with the lime-saliva-coca mix around the top of the gourd in a circle, which creates a thick crust after many times repeating this process. For the Kogi this is a very spiritual ritual and each step and item has its own symbolic meaning.
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The Kogis were one of the view indigenous groups of South America who were never conquered by the Spaniards. Instead of fighting against the intruders they decided to move further up the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Like this they could continue to live in peace and keep their traditions alive until today. In the near past colonizers and later coca growers and the paramilitary occupied their territory. Now the government is in the process of giving back some land to the Kogi community, but they told us, they still have problems with the nearby farmers who are not willing to give up the land and hand it over.
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Here is the video to the story of my 1st posting.
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La enfermedad de las locas – Colombia from Alexander Rieser on Vimeo.

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I was visiting an Embera community a couple of months ago who got displaced from the Chocó, a region in the North-West of Colombia, about 600km away of their native grounds. There are about 10 families living now at the edge of a National Park in small stilt houses. There is no village, they all live with some distance between, but they do have a community house which serves as the school, meeting room and guesthouse for the rare visits.

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It’s a remote location, hours away from the next village or vehicle-access road, at the feet of the mountain range Cordillera Oriental in the Caquetá. This department is known for coca growing and guerrilla activities, but until now they haven’t had a confrontation with any of the armed groups.

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.It’s more then 10 years ago when they arrived to this area and also they live a tranquil life now, they are torn from their roots and only the elders still remember and know the traditions of their culture. They don’t live in the same social structure as their people in Chocó, don’t have a shaman anymore and don’t have social contacts and relations with other Emberas.

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If they have medical problems they can’t solve themselves they do ask local shamans from time to time to visit them. These shamans though use different plants and rituals as the Emberas back home in the Chocó. This lack of knowledge was the reason a shaman could perform a ritual in a sperate room alone with a girl and sexually abused her. The community reported the crime and luckily they could track down the guy. He is in a prison in Florencia now and about this time the young females of the community started to get the seizures.

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The girls all say they first get a headache and see a black dog coming to them. Then they loose control over themselves and the seizure starts. They get aggressive and violent and try to hurt other people around them. A lot of times they ran to the nearby river where they tried to drown themselves. That’s why now they get their feet tied up when having an attack, so they can’t run away fast enough to the river. During this seizures they sometimes talk a language which is not their native one and no one can understand them what they are talking or mumbling.

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Before these seizures in the video happened, the girls where normal and without any sign of being aggressive or having strange behaviors. Actually there was a meeting planned between the Embera community and the people from the National Park to talk about some agricultural plans. We brought some food with us and the women cooked a big meal for everyone. We talked, laughed and everything seemed normal. Suddenly the girl featured in the video started to moan and said her head was aching. All went really fast and they took her away from the fireplace and brought her to the community room, while she was screaming and hitting everyone. That’s when I grabbed the camera and started to film. An anthropologist who was part of our team tried to calm the girl down with his flute and some calming words and songs. The whole incident lasted nearly 50 minutes and after that the two girls were back to normal but exhausted. They couldn’t remember what happened, got their babies and continued with their day to day life.

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During this night some of the girls in the community had some more attacks. The next days when I was taking the photos all was normal and no other attacks happened.

Before leaving them the tribal elder asked me though if I can send a shaman from the Chocó, the region they are originally from, to help them. A lot of members of the community think the shaman in the prison put a bad spell on their female members which is causing the seizures. Only a shaman they can trust and preferable being from the same tribe could get rid of the bad spirits possessing the girls.

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He told me, that once 15 girls had an attack in the same time and they had to lock them into the community room, which they destroyed. They even brought some of the girls to a hospital, which is a far and expensive trip for them, as the next small road is about two hours away and not always accessible by car. The next small hospital another 2 hours by jeep. They did a check in the hospital but they called the police because the girls were too aggressive and they couldn’t see a serious health problem.

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The whole community is suffering and they don’t know what to do. When having a seizure the girls are violent and suicidal tendencies. Most of the girls have small babies or children. If there is someone who knows about similar cases, a doctor, a psychologist or an NGO who could help them I would appreciate to contact me at alex@alexanderrieser.com.

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