Gathering "THE DAWN OF A NEW TIME"
18th to 22nd August 2011
IKARWA, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
Colombia
The Mamos and traditional authorities of the Wiwa and Arhuaco peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, along with representatives of various indigenous nations of the world, spiritual leaders and participants of the international gathering "The Dawn of a New Time" held in Ikarwa, Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, Colombia, between the 18th and 22nd of August 2011, recognize our spirituality as a source of life and proclaim the importance of our sacred sites, as spaces that represent the existence and places through which the order of all that exists is maintained.
This gathering has allowed us to identify our spiritual unity through the exchange of wisdom from different traditions and cultures around the world. We recognize our efforts to ensure the cultural and spiritual survival of our people and the dreams that harbor a prosperous, loving and harmonious present and future for our children.
We acknowledge our sacred places as the spaces assigned to maintain the order established since creation and also as spaces where the knowledge of cultures is registered. For this reason our spirituality speaks about the need to create awareness so that these sites do not deteriorate, and so we can guarantee the perpetuity of the existence of the means of communication with Mother Nature and the spiritual powers, giving them compensation for the benefits they provide us as a means of existence.
We conceive of water as the origin of creation. When we behold water in wells of stone, we find there the spirits of the mother of the seas, and in lakes we find represented the spirits of the world's waters. Since these spaces sustain life in the world, our ancestors and we have the mission of caring for them so as to not upset the balance on our planet and the universe.
From this principle the way of talking, communicating and interacting with nature is regulated and also the right of each people or pueblo to possess their own territory or nation, with all the elements of a culture. The strength of the spirits is manifested in what is visible physically, in different shapes and sizes, the largest to be protected by the smallest, and smallest to be protected by the invisible ones, that is to say, by the spirit.
The rules for each culture are distributed in this way, and these sacred sites exist in all territories, and the guarantee of the salvation of the Mother lies in the recognition and care of these spaces within the different pueblos and nations. If we only pay attention to the spaces of the Sierra Nevada and neglect the others, we would continue to miss opportunities to take action to protect the Mother.
Since we have had the opportunity to come to the place where the origin of the four elements of nature are represented: earth, water, air and fire; and which is also the place where the different lineages originated and where the spirit of the Mother lies, we hope this experience helps us to awaken our conscience so that we do not forget the energetic and spiritual connection of our Mother Earth with the different parts of the human body, so that these duties can continue to be fulfilled. Ikarwa represents the left side of the Mother, the right side is west of the Sierra and the Sierra itself is a whole body with all its organs.
With this symbolic representation, present in every people or nation, there must be the respective interest of caring for these sites, so the different representative spaces of the Mother maintain energetic connections between different peoples and nations.
We pledge that in the respective countries represented at this gathering, restoration and protective actions of sacred sites will be developed simultaneously with those done in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta.
The non-indigenous people that express feelings of reconnection with Mother Earth and that are aligned with the spirit of reconciliation, healing and harmony must maintain and carry this feeling, so as to help harmonize imbalances affecting the Mother.
As a result of this gathering, the Mamos have determined that the following issues are priority areas of action where international support is necessary:
- The strengthening of the spiritual and cultural formative processes of the Mamos and authorities from Kankurwas: Seykumuke, Numaka, Tirugeka, Seynimin and Seykwinkuta; are carried out to ensure order and the cultural and spiritual permanence of the Arhuaco people and their equivalents for the Wiwa people.
- Support for the process of territorial consolidation, giving priority to the recovery of land of cultural and spiritual importance, especially the regions of Gunmaku, Kankawarwa, Kuntinurwa, Seykun, Umuriwa, Jimaine, and Ikarwa, within which are different places of great cultural importance and which are part of an ancestral territory that make up the mother's body as a whole.
Now that we have dialogued for five days, and after we have come together to secure the permanence of our thoughts and understand our cultures a little better, we are committed to the dawn of this new time, and to continue, from our diverse traditions and territories, our work to restore the balance of our Mother, honoring our cultural diversity and recognizing ourselves as a spiritual unity and in this way continuing the feelings of caring, understanding and living together.
And according to our possibilities and scope, we pledge to continue supporting the process of strengthening the spiritual, cultural and territorial permanence of the indigenous peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
