Message from the past

This may have little to do per se with the general topic of this blog, but I was moved, and I feel that I should share it.

Last night I went to see a presentation about the Kogi, a pre-Columbian people in South America who were not affected by the Spanish conquest. Their civilization has remained largely unchanged for 3,000 years. They live communally, their language has no word for "I" or "me", and it is unthinkable for them to allow someone to be indigent or lonely.

They have a message for us, the "little brother" who is busily destroying the planet we all live on. They say their mountain is sick, and since the mountain is a microcosm for the earth, our "mother", she is sick too.

So I am here conveying the message of the Kogi that was given to us:

In Kogi Words

If we know the past, we can live well in the present and prepare the future. The little brothers think we cannot write; the little brothers have books and maps. We have no paper; we work with the heart and the soul. These thoughts are more alive, more real than what is on your paper. That is how we live, that is how we will continue to live. All forms have a father and a mother. Each family has its responsibility, with its own language and culture. We are all brothers, but we have different languages and we work differently. We must learn not to fight and argue over these different forms, but to take advantage of what the Sierra, Nature has left us.

Each of us has a territory, a piece of land where they can live well; each with their own way of doing, of talking … living together. We are all sons and daughters of the same mother, the same father. The little brothers have forgotten their work, the responsibilities, that their mother gave them. They look only for money to live well … they have to recover the memory of what they need to do. All that, is written on our maps. They give us all the details as to what we need to do to respect life, to live well, to respect the rivers, the plants, the trees, the forests and live well together. We won’t fight, we cannot fight over what the Mother has bequeathed us. We must learn to respect Her and live together in respect of the Mother. Each community, each family is responsible for a part of the territory. Each family must do what is necessary, the offerings needed. For that, we need memory. The maps help us…”


“It is up to each of us to search in our memory to find who they are and what they must do. We still have the memory to start the journey.”

Miguel DINGULA. Mamu

It has been said that one of the reasons there is so much cancer in our society is that we have removed ourselves from all that is natural and poisoned the earth. Maybe coming back into harmony with the natural world as the Kogi suggest would be just the beginning of the healing we need.