This performance is a visual and epic poem that presents the foundations of "the first children of the Mother" and their paradigm of care and respect for nature. It is a mise-en-scène with the unprecedented participation of a group of Kogui men and women as the protagonists of their own story. The contemporary languages of the performing arts are the bridge to communicate their message, to amplify the voices of the native peoples of the sacred mountain.

This report summarises the main highlights, developments, and conclusions of the first official fieldwork for the project “Munekan Masha: Revitalizing Water in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta”. It is a collaborative, intercultural ecological restoration project endorsed by the international sustainability science coalition UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES.

The project is jointly developed and managed by the Kogi People, represented by their Indigenous Organization (Organización Gonawindúa Tayrona, OGT), and the Tairona Heritage Trust (THT), a British NGO supporting the Kogi for more than 30 years.

This study, published in 2017, is based on 2 years of field work with the Kogi and especially on several learning sessions with a few Mamas. It is the beginning of a long-term collaboration to help them better convey and explain the importance of the Sierra Nevada and of their traditions to non-Kogi audiences by establishing a conceptually more solid bridge of communication. In other words, the author follows the conviction that to better understand Kogi ecology, it is necessary to contextualize it within their whole cosmology as a complex way of being based on knowledge. Click the link below to access the thesis.

Zigoneshi: I give you, you give me; we exchange.

In the Drôme (France), Kogi shamans and modern scientists find themselves at the focal point of the Earth.

In September 2018, for a "cross-territorial diagnosis" in the Haut-Diois, thirty scientists came to share their expertise and observations with four Kogi shamans. The purpose? To live fraternally in order to recognize each other, a state for the emergence of a new "active" thought in the service of life and a common destiny, that of mankind.

At the end of the meeting in Dibulla all those present both Kogi and the representatives of the organisations signed an agreement to take forward a strategy plan for the protection and support of the Kogis and the Sierra.

For more than a century the Kogi people have been trying to transmit to us the urgent message of care for the water and the earth. Their message still hasn’t been listened to. Consequently, they have decided to dance and sing their message, in the hope that it will reach people’s hearts.