ECUADOR
Elder woman demonstrating traditional manioc planting.
The Sacha Warmi Foundation is an Ecuadorian grassroots organization that supports indigenous groups in Amazonian Ecuador to revitalize their local practices, know-how and institutions in ways that improve wellbeing, as understood and defined by indigenous people. Created in 2018 and run by a team of five, mostly indigenous, practitioners we draw on decades of experience developing the concept of intercultural health in ways that recognize and support its biocultural, holistic and dynamic nature. All of our projects are developed from the bottom up, in close collaboration and consultation with community members and institutions, through an iterative cycle that draws on participatory research, extensive discussions and peer-to-peer learning. Our work is organized around four closely-related and mutually re-enforcing programs:
Demonstrating ritual for planting manioc to girls.
The foundation and many of its programs, particularly those on capacity-building and communication, are run out of the Sacha Warmi Center, near the city of Puyo, Pastaza. We work and collaborate with a broad and diverse network of actors, including state and non-state institutions, but prioritize work with women and young people. Our role is mainly to support, connect and catalyze, helping communities prepare for and respond to a rapidly changing and challenging world. For a sample of videos relating to Sacha Warmi’s work, click here.
Sacha Warmi held a food festival in March 2022 at the headquarters of ACIA – the Association of Indigenous Communities of Arajuno – located in northwest Pastaza province in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The festival celebrated indigenous farming and forest management systems, and provided an opportunity for families to share knowledge and exchange products.
RECIPE VIDEOS
A series of recipe videos were produced in 2022 as part of an on-going educational program highlighting the links between food, culture and place, and threats to species and forests integral to important local foods. This video shows Rosa Canelos preparing mayto, a savoury and popular traditional dish, as a way of reflecting on the connection of the Kichwa to the forest and its cycles.
Our Work
Like other People and Plants partner organizations and projects, we see foodways as part of a larger nexus of social and ecological relations, and challenges facing indigenous communities living on the Global South’s rural-urban continuum. Our activities are framed largely around the deep relationship that women have with their chacras (swidden gardens) and home gardens, through which relations with plants, animals and kin are actualized in ways that are life and diversity-sustaining and affirming, and which draw on the tangible and intangible aspects of indigenous lifeways.
A Kichwa elder transmitting the ‘paju’ to a youth, Community of Arajuno. According to tradition women acquire the ability, the power and the knowledge (referred to as a ‘gift’) from an elder, in this case to be able to grow manioc, the staple food of the Kichwa. Until recently in decline, practices such as this are currently undergoing a process of revitalization as young Kichwa look to their traditions as a way to address their problems and assert their food sovereignty and security. (Photos: Didier Lacaze, 2017)
Sacha Warmi works closely with ACIA (Asociación de Comunidades Indígenas de Arajuno), an Indigenous organization representing twenty-five communities of Napo Runa people in the northwestern Pastaza region, whose current president, Diana Tanguila, has been an active member of the Sacha Warmi Foundation since its creation in 2018. Building on years of work with ACIA and its member communities, Sacha Warmi is facilitating a series of peer-to-peer learning exchanges between women from different communities to promote agro-biodiversity and indigenous foodways. This includes sharing seeds, know-how and experiences relating to Kichwa agro-biodiversity and customary management practices, especially those that have been undermined through processes of modernization and urbanization.
Naporuna Kichwa Food festival, community of San Jacinto. The women’s cultural revitalization process started by focusing on traditional pottery and from that extended to the other domains of Kichwa life underpinned by women, including planting, tending and harvesting plants, cooking and raising children. (Photo: Didier Lacaze, 2017)
Specific activities include:
Kichwa ceramicists women from Kawsak Sacha.
Face-to-face gatherings and meetings attended by female delegates from all communities.
Establishing two traditional gardens to showcase, promote and encourage exchange and learning across generations, providing a space in which elders can interact with younger women and, especially, school children from Arajuno.
Food and craft festivals - Camari Ista - that promote and teach younger Kichwa about the broader context of foods, crafts and practices surrounding the gardens, including plant-based medicines, traditional ceramics and body art.
Production of two foodways videos to support the process of promotion, revitalization and discussion within and across communities.
More intensive work in collaboration with the community of Tzatzapi, the birthplace of Rosa Canelos and where Sacha Warmi has worked for many years developing local capacities relating to the use of medicinal plants, promotion of traditional ceramic making and the use of video.
Naporuna women in the Community of San Jacinto learning to make medicinal plant extracts and ointments as part of an ongoing effort to generate new income streams that draw on locally accessible knowledge and resources (Photo: Didier Lacaze, 2017)
Kichwa Food festival, Canelos Community. These workshops, carried out in three different Kichwa communities are part of a cultural revitalization process among women, focusing on traditional pottery making and associated lifeways. (Photo: Didier Lacaze, 2017)
Traditional pottery making event in, San Antonio Community. Dozens of pots were produced by the last traditional pottery makers in the community who demonstrated their skill and have started to teach their craft to some of girls in the community. (Photo: Diana Tanguila, 2021)
Tree nursery in the village of Canelos. During the past 50 years, due to its proximity to the so-called "frontier of colonization", Canelos has lost many of its natural resources (timber and non-timber), which calls for an urgency to invest and work on reforestation and ecosystem restoration.
The core team
Didier Lacaze and Rosa Canelos, Sacha Warmi
Partners
