Airu Ahuero Foundation

The Airu Ahuero Foundation (Selva Abuelo) is an initiative of some members of the Siona Gaoya Indigenous Council of Puerto Leguízamo to promote, protect and put into practice our identity, thinking and ways of life that our grandparents taught us to revitalize the Mai Coca language and the culture of songs.

For us, as Siona, it is important to encourage oral learning of the mother tongue and to improve the quality of life of the indigenous communities of Colombia, South America, Abia Yala and the entire Mai Yija (Pachamama or Planet Earth), because indigenous communities around the world are the possessors of very ancient traditions that will be very useful in these times when the Western world, with its ways of treating Nature, the natives and the poor in general, is leading us all to a global crisis. It is no longer about saving the Amazon, but the entire planet. It is no longer about defending the life of only our indigenous peoples, but of the entire world.

We firmly believe that the contributions of the Western world to science and technology are important for the evolution of humanity, but the planet cannot be saved and preserved only by Western knowledge, which has shown that it cannot stop wars, has not been able to end world hunger and has caused nature itself to begin a process of degradation unparalleled in the history of humanity. If we do not do something today, there may be no tomorrow.

Every person in the world and every people must assume their responsibility and seek in their own ancestry the answers that were left to all of us, our grandfathers and grandmothers. We, indigenous people, are aware that we must continue to defend our ancestral treasures, our language, our customs, our medicines and our territories. This is the time indicated by our ancestors. Although in the past some people despised us and put our honour and our lives in danger, through complete campaigns of destruction, colonisation, exploitation, enslavement, humiliation, contempt for our ancestral thought, contempt for our medicine, imposition of other philosophies without asking us for our opinion, today we raise our heads and, without rancour, we do it not only for ourselves, but for all the other peoples of the earth, even for those groups that have not yet acquired consciousness, who still follow a colonialist culture, who still believe that their religions are the only authentic ones or that their ways of seeing life are civilised or that their food is the best even though they unleash the spirits of diseases that kill them day by day without being able to even understand it. For them too we continue our resistance, as older brothers, defending your life, our life (Mai ba'iji). I love you because you are my brother and I know that even if you do not understand it, in your human heart, you love me too and when you know it, peace will be born.

This foundation is a tribute to all our grandparents of the Siona people of the Putumayo basin. We are the Siona, the people of the wild cane, the inhabitants of the Mother Forest (Mai Airu). Although we have been victims of forced displacement for centuries, of the incursions of the conquistadors, of the ancient action of missionaries who tried to destroy our thinking, of the murderous rubber tappers who tried to enslave us, of the action of the drug barons who try to turn our forests into plantations, making the sacred coca plant a consumer product, of oil companies that want to take the blood of the Mai Yija without asking permission from her or from the peoples who are the legitimate owners of these lands by law of origin, taking resources without permission to enrich with billions of dollars the pockets of unethical barons, who enjoy a life of banality in industrialized countries without worrying about our daily sacrifice, even with all that, we recognize ourselves as the descendants of the ancient nomads, hunters and gatherers of our beloved Amazon, of the western toucans, heirs of very ancient peoples, of the first settlers of South America and Abia Yala, of the authentic discoverers of the Americas more than 100 years ago. 40 thousand years old according to archaeology, anthropology and genetics.

Our Primordial Mother is Mai Airu (Mother Jungle), the Amazon, a space of ancestral wisdom, which we want to protect, promote and heal so that it can also protect, promote and heal us. We connect to Mai Airu (Mother Jungle) through our ceremonies and hunting, fishing, chagra, gathering and ancestral medicines. Especially through the sacred plant, yagé, the liana of life and death, with which we find physical, mental and spiritual healing to find answers or guides for making significant decisions for the community.

Protecting this ancestral knowledge is our duty. For us, the grandfathers and grandmothers are vital, because they connect the community with the ancestry and with the spirits of the jungle. Of these, the healing taitas, medicine men, the yai, the men of knowledge, the spiritual guides of the community, are fundamental. Westerners give them the generic name of shamans , but we use that word carefully, because it comes from another culture and from other brothers and in Colombia it has a meaning more like witch . The yai are not witches or shamans, but men of ancestral knowledge, who guide us in the encounter with the bain of the jungle.

For this reason, we have given the name Airu Aguero , which means Mother Jungle (Airu), who is our earthly Mother, the beginning of life, the representation of Creation, a gift from the Creator, and Aguero, who is the Taita, the grandfather, the Yai Bain (man of knowledge, literally Jaguar Man) who connects us, connects the community with Mother Jungle.

This Foundation is inspired by the grandfather Taita Yai Hector Fidel Yaiguaje, who is currently one of the oldest Siona Taitas there is, and his family. His son William Yaiguaje, Flor Angela Pino Martinez and Alexander Henrique Sanjuan and other Siona and non-Siona people, who join our projects to pave the way for our presence as an ancestral people, an original people, a people by law of origin, in the Colombian, South American and world context. We are grateful for the motivation and for walking with us of Inca Moyachoque Albeiro Rodas, whose encounter with his indigenous roots has brought him closer to our people and whom we consider part of our community, even though he lives on the other side of Mai Yaija (Pachamama).