South America.

Collaboration initiated 2010. Funded school construction initiated 2022.

For the last twenty years, Vicente, a Q'ero medicine man, and his wife Felicitas, an ancestral Q'ero weaver, have dedicated themselves to preserving and transmitting the traditional knowledge of their people in the high mountain Q'ero communities of the Peruvian Andes.

Observing that many of their people have abandoned their ancestral connection, Vicente collected and documented the medicinal plants and healing practices of the five communities of the Q'ero Nation. On his own, he established a natural medicine laboratory, greenhouse, gardens, and seed bank.

Recently, Vicente and Felicitas initiated Ñaupa Yachay, a Q'ero School of Ancestral Tradition, Medicine, Arts & Agriculture in Chaya, near the base of the sacred mountain Apu Ausangate.

Collaboration initiated 2010. Cultural center funded construction initiated 2022.

Within the larger Uwọttüjạ (Piaroa) tribe of the Venezuelan Amazon, the Bolívar family is headed by the married couple Don Juan Bolívar, recognized by the Venezuelan government as the tribe's chief, and his wife Doña Julia. Don Juan is the son of the late Don Bolívar and the still-living Doña Elena, who, as chado (grandfather) and chada (grandmother), were the heads of the Uwọttüjạ Piaroa lineage. Don Bolívar, a medicine man and peaceful leader, was well known throughout South America and beyond for his unparalleled knowledge and visions for humanity.

Their spiritual practices encompass a complex cosmology, shamanism, and medicinal plants. Their primary ceremonial work involves the medicine "yopo," and their lives are centered on serving the healing and visionary capacities of this medicine.

A project managed by Nancy Correa Payaguaje of the Siona People.

The 12 communities of the Siona people extend over ancestral land surrounding the Putumayo river in what is now Ecuador and Colombia. Politically imposed borders, generations of colonization, and extensive outside extractive practices (gas, mining, coca, illegal poaching) have fragmented the 'cross-border' Siona people and greatly diminished their capacity to maintain their cultural, spiritual and basic subsistence.

For 30 years they have defended what remains of their ancestral territory and with it, the fortalization of their autonomy, well being and cultural survival. Defending their territory is defending their life.

This project proposes a five year initiative to establish elder-led training programs for the Indigenous Guard across the Siona's 12 communities. Beginning with Buenavista on the Colombian side and in Cuyabeno, Ecuador, the aim is to recover family ties that have been fragmented, strengthen their capacity as defenders of their territory, and capacitate inter-generational education and protection of Siona ancestral culture.