Aging of the Earth: Kichwa and Western Science “End of the World Thinking” in the Amazon Rainforest

I hold my breath and think about all the women before me—grandmothers mothers, sisters, cousins. I wonder what their lives were like. What did their laughs sound like? How did they cry? I grew up with strong mothers, yet they always had this fear when they watched us kids go to the river or play in the forest. I always wondered what they were so afraid of. Was it poisonous snakes? Getting swept away by the river? It was something else. I recall my mother yelling from the cliffs of the Napo River in Kichwa “If you disappear, I won’t miss you. If you drown, you’ll be found thrown up by an anaconda and I won’t go looking for you”. These were common phrases said by mothers as they fearfully watched their kids swim down the river. I imagine we looked like tiny ants along the horizon where the water seemed to touch the heavens. I always knew that my mother yelling on the cliff was her way of saying “Be safe, I love you, return safely”. For a mother, the “end of the world” is to lose her child.  

So tell me this, in the creation of the earth as we know her today: Why did Tayak Warmi, the first woman send all her children away?[3] (Project video here)

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/b72ab0_9dff1af5831840c7bb7289e05ad4e841/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

This project involves a creative audiovisual poem reflecting on Kichwa stories of creation, aging of the earth, and stories from the heart. In this paper, I will reflect and address the following key themes that have inspired this project and research:

1)Land, Kinship, and the Aging of the Earth

2)Treating the Earth with Respect

3) “Two-Eyed Seeing”.

Land, Kinship and the Aging of the Earth:

The Napu Kichwa People. The province of Napo, Ecuador is home to more than 46,000 Kichwa people and where the headwaters of many Amazonian rivers are born. The Napo basin has transformed significantly since the 50s as a result of deforestation, mining, and development which has had a simultaneous effect where Kichwa culture, language, and way of life are at a loss. In this context, assessing the health of the natural environment as well as restoring animal populations is key to the long-term health of the Amazon Rainforest. While many practices are sustainable many are increasingly becoming unsustainable because of global impacts that are driving the Amazon Rainforest to its tipping point and drastically changing Indigenous peoples' way of life. In the Kichwa way of life, traditional ecological knowledge is more than observation, it is active participation. For the Kichwa people, using and activating the senses is not only a critical part of being part of nature but also key to survival. Kawsak sacha man –”the forest is alive'' a phrase often said by elders in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Inspired by this notion that land is alive and the activation of senses, my project aims to understand and contextualize Kichwa ITEK. This project builds on the foundation of my research and I hope to connect it to future projects in my community. This is one of the first steps to evolving investigation and research on wildlife and forest restoration through Amazonian Kichwa cosmology “end of the world thinking” and Western conservation science. 

Chingarishka Bartolo—a boy goes missing. In 1971, my mother, Josefina Andi was a child and was part of the first generation to attend grade school. This was the first time a missionary “school” as many know schools today was founded along the banks of the Napo River. One day, Bartolo Andi, my mother’s cousin, did not make it to school. He had taken that Monday off to go on a hunting trip with his father Manuel Andi as school was important but not as important as knowing how to survive and feed your community. Tragically, that day he walked into the forest and never walked out. He was a 10-year-old boy just about the same age as my mother. Men in our community formed a search group and they looked for Bartolo for three nights. They couldn’t find him during the physical search so decided to turn to the elders and medicine plants. A group of elders sat and drank Jayak Waska “Bitter Root” to look for Bartolo. Through this medicine plant, they activated their relations with the Sacha Runas, forest spirits. There the Sacha Runas guided the elders to a mountain where humans cannot enter. Bartolo was found–He was with a Sacha Warmi, a woman forest spirit who had chosen Bartolo as her husband [1].  I tell this story for it was the end of the world for Isabela Cerda, Bartolo’s mother, my mother’s aunt—this moment reshaped the way of life for generations to come. For my generation, it meant the end of a way of life as my mother and generations before knew it, drastically changed. Mothers became extra protective of their kids and relations with land, rivers, and especially forests began to break. This breaking of relationships is a sign of the aging of the earth. Through the experience and story of Chingarishka Bartolo, the boy who went missing, we begin to understand why current Kichwa generations are facing a larger disconnect from rivers and forests today. The mountain where Bartolo now exists as a forest being is called “Santu Urku”. This mountain is a sacred site for our community and it is my understanding that there was once a period when we had a strong healthy relationship with it. I wonder what a world where we heal our relationship with Santu Urku would look like—that is one of my goals, if it’s still possible. 

“Two-Eyed Seeing”, Indigenous and Western Sustainability Science Meet:

The boundaries we break through the multiple visions we hold. I’ve always felt that my vision came from the heart rather than from my eyes. At times I even feel that I can “see better” by closing my eyes, especially when a difficult decision needs to be made. As I close my eyes, I think and I feel and I let all parts of my body decide. Now this way of “seeing” and decision-making is not something I came to know on my own, rather it was something learned from my culture. I learned from our elders as I observed the way in which they felt, thought, and made decisions or how Yachaks (medicine people) did this through relationality with the more than human world. Through my experience of growing up within this world and the Western education system, it was difficult to explain the worlds I held within myself. I was officially introduced to the “Etuaptmunk: Two-Eyed Seeing” framework when I made it to ASU. “Two-Eyed Seeing” is a framework that allows for multiple perspectives and is often used by Indigenous people to express that one eye holds Indigenous knowledge and experience while the other eye holds Western knowledge and ways of knowing [2]. This helped me understand two-eyed seeing as a tool rather than an experience. The more we embrace and honor the multiple eyes, visions, perspectives, or worlds we hold the more boundaries we break and the more relations we build. This framework is important to my work as I carefully weave our future along with my community.  In the audio-visual poems I create, two-eyed seeing is important as it allows me to communicate our daily lives in the Amazon to an international audience in a way they can feel and relate to our world and more importantly communicate in a way that my community feels loved and seen. 

Kichwa ITEK–Emotion as a driver of Speciation. Western Science is built around the idea that the evolution of species is not emotional. We are taught that our origin is a small amoeba and through time it evolved into different beings referred to as “species”, where one of the key differences from one species to another is that they cannot reproduce together. I also understand Western Science as a knowledge that has been braided alongside Christian ideals, where the world is believed to be created in God’s perfect image—but it’s interesting how often Western Science and Christianity are also seen as opposing and contradicting each other. 

Kichwa ITEK gives us a different perspective where there is no one creator of the world, but rather multiple, and the evolution of species is emotional. In the earliest stages of earth, the world was immature and so were humans meaning that humans had to mature and evolve. In stories such as “Tayak Warmi”, one of the first women on earth sends her children off to become animals. It is said that at the beginning when the world was still immature, Tayak Warmi realizes that many of her children began to act in odd ways. Instead of performing normal human activities such as planting manioc, one of her daughters begins to earth raw manioc. Tayak Warmi sees this immature behavior and decides to send her daughter off to become an agouti, an animal that is often spotted eating raw manioc. On another occasion she sees her son planting seeds that will not grow into human food and so she decides to send him off and become a toucan. With time she has sent all of her children off and they become the Wooly Monkey, the Squirrel Monkey, the Capuchin Monkey, Squirrel, Snail, Crab, Woodpecker, Turtle, Paca, and many more.“You will go fill all the empty forests and carry many languages” Tayak Warmi says as she sends her children away [3].

As humans become animals, the earth ages and begins to mature. In contrast to Western Science where humans are the highest form of evolution, Kichwa ITEK informs us that animals and plants are the highest form of evolution. In Kichwa oral narratives, the transformation from human to animal or plant is marked by an emotion such as resentment and so emotions are linked to the evolution of species. As mentioned before one of the tenets of Western Science’s definition of species is that there is no interspecies intercourse but the lines are blurred in the Kichwa ITEK perspective because animals were once human and so they carry remnants of human emotions and memories from the time they were human. 

Delicia Dagua, a Kichwa elder from the Pastaza province, tells us the origin story of anacondas and how these remnant human emotions played a part in the evolution of species. It is said that there was a man who would often go hunting and one day he came across a woman in the forest. This woman was not just any woman but rather his ex-wife who had left him and become a frog. One day these two ex-lovers end up having sex and during intercourse, the woman turns back into a frog and jumps to a tree. As she jumps she ends up stretching the man’s penis. On the branch, she brings out her machete and cuts the man’s penis into dozens of pieces. As each piece falls towards the earth, they turn into anacondas and flee into the waters.[4]

In the context of evolution of species, Kichwa ITEK and Western Science are in conflict as Kichwa ITEK presents emotion as a driver of speciation and interspecies relation is rather a common occurrence, Western Science presents the opposite. Although at first they seem to be in conflict, once a third perspective such as Christianity is involved, Kichwa ITEK and Western Science seem more similar. Where Christianity rejects evolution, Kichwa ITEK and Western Science do not. Although the definitions of species and speciation differ, these two knowledge systems seem to find alignment through the idea that species evolve. 

Aging of the Earth & Sustainability. When we think about the aging of the earth and the “end of the world” people have varying perspectives on how and when it will happen. I posed this question to my classmates in our Sustainability Perspectives class: “The world is aging, what does the end of the world look like to you?” It’s a lot to think about as one would have to reflect on the current state of the world today, their personal religious or cultural beliefs, or figure out how to mathematically calculate it (if possible). One of my classmates responded, “The world ends when sustainability begins”. So what is “sustainability”? In Western Science “Sustainability” grew out from the 1980’s Sustainability Movement and its popularity in academia has its roots in the field of ecology[5] nonetheless, today it has become of “buzzword” with over 150,000,000 hits within a Google search engine [5]. Humanities researcher, Dan Shillings, begins to address the “Soul” of sustainability in the opening chapter of “Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability” and reflects on historical instances where Indigenous people have chosen to care for beings rather than exploit, he called it “an act of spiritual restraint and ecological reverence”[6]. 

Through Kichwa ITEK, we understand that this restraint and reverence comes from an intimate social-emotional relation with the world(llaki). Ultimately the the long-term sustainability vision in the Amazon, is a thriving ecosystem that supports all life from the small leaf-cutter ants to human beings–and in kichwa belief the balance of “amus” non-human beings the true “owners” of land. Harmony is acquired over time through mutual respect, reciprocity, and accountability. In Kichwa thinking  there are two broad notions that support what is known as “sustainability” today. One is the belief and understanding that land is alive and the second is the acknowledgment that we are part of a complex ecosystem where we are interconnected. This is an important focus of my project and research as it will advance the understanding and practice of sustainability transformations by evaluating how traditional practices and perspectives of land-use, change and management align with or complement Western science and sustainability frameworks. By focusing on methods of managing natural resources, conserving biodiversity, and adapting to environmental changes this project also contributes to my research and thus to the broader discourse on Indigenous rights and environmental justice. 

Treating the Earth with Respect: 

Understanding the Socio-Emotional World through “Llaki”- Who owns the land? manages it? In Kichwa Amazonian thinking it is not humans who manage the forest but rather “amus”, beings that embody the non-human natural world, who manage forests themselves. Although “amus” are often nonhuman, there are cases where certain human beings who have deep relationships with the forest are referred to as “amus” as well. In these special cases, human “amus” have a grand influence on an ecosystem and its health. Although humans can be referred to as “amus”, they alone do not manage a forest but rather the strength of their bond can influence management outcomes.[7] In Western thinking, institutions have been created with a focus on human control meaning humans are the only thinkers and decision-makers in conservation and resource management. When thinking of restoration and wildlife management, Western Science may include data on reintroducing animals, predators, and creating food environments for them whereas Amazonian Kichwa thinking and cosmology believe in earth cycles and hold a delicate intricate web of relationships. In Kichwa thinking, once an “amu” is disrespected or annoyed it disappears never to return during Earth’s current cycle. In this way of thinking, the Earth is viewed as “aging”, old and ending and to be “rebirthed” or “recycled”. So what happens when animal populations decrease? In Kichwa thinking, these animals leave only to return in the next cycle after we are all gone–key to this is “llaki” deep empathy, love and sorrow. [8] Language analysis is also crucial to this project and so words like “llaki” among others used within Kichwa ITEK and Western Science in relation to land will be further examined in my research. As Robin Wall Kimmerer puts it “To be Native to a place we must learn to speak its language”[9]. In a similar way to be Kichwa and treat the Earth with respect…it means we must act and speak through “llaki”. 

The Birds who call for Rain (aka the water cycle). In the video poem water is ever present, through wind, rain, and river—it is clear that water is not only needed for physical health but also for spiritual health. In the video we are introduced to a group of women who are tickling each other and laughing. This was the first time my Rukumama (grandmother) Estefania returned to the river after years of being away. It was her first return to a place she had spent almost every day of her life, the river and garden. In that shot, Rukumama looks out over the river and towards her “isla”, a sort of river island where we grow our food. Women are key to the island’s ecosystem as they are the primary caretakers and relation builders to elements such as water, both of the earth and sky. In a rainforest, it rarely ever stops raining and it is understood that rain is good, rain means a healthy relationship with the sky and sky messengers. Pedro Andi, a Kichwa traditional knowledge carrier and storyteller, tells us the story of “Suyu Pishku”[10]. This story takes us from Pachamama(earth) to Awapacha(sky) through “llaki”. In times of drought, Suyu Pishku (birds) fly over rivers and forests and come across human and animal beings. During the droughts, they feel empathy for terrestrial beings in need of water and so they spend three days dancing in spirals between earth and sky. The intention behind this spiral movement is to intensify the feelings of “llaki”. After three days it is said that the sky feels empathy for terrestrial beings, through the messages amplified by Suyu Pishku and their dance. On the third day, rain falls and all terrestrial beings rejoice. For us, “llaki” also serves as a tool for resource and land management. In my video poem, I evoke the feeling of “llaki” through an immersive audio-visual journey where the viewer is invited closer into an intimate water world. 

Conclusion-The Return of the Dead, the world Ends and Begins again. 

“Alive” is a precious and powerful thing to be and while we embody it we ask ourselves, what lands and people are we responsible to? “Dead” is also a precious and powerful thing to be, as we regenerate and heal the earth. “After we return to the earth, they will rise” says Luisa Cadena[11] as she shares the “end of the world”. “The earth will age, “ the soil and earth will turn”, and the animals and the dead return–this is when the world ends and begins again. 

I feel great “llaki” as I write these last few lines. I think of all the women in my life and how much they have fought for a better world. In my opening audio-visual poem I reflect on the “end of the world” as being similar to the feelings of a mother losing a child. Now I think of my cousins, I think of their cries as their world fell apart when they found out their mother, my aunt, passed away as she was leading a protest for the protection of our home. She was a strong leader who often said, “if someday I die, I will die fighting”. She sacrificed her life in many ways so that we would live and similarly Tayak Warmi, the First Woman did the same as she sent her children away so that they would become plants and animals. This sending-off is the reason we live in such a beautiful, complex, and biodiverse world today. 

References: 

1. Iyarina. Andi, Carmen. “Chingarishka Bartolo”. 

2.Etuaptmumk: Two-Eyed Seeing | Rebecca Thomas | TEDxNSCCWaterfront

3. Iyarina. Cadena, Luisa. “First Woman Sends Children to Become Animals”.

4. Iyarina. Dagua, Delicia. “Frog Lady & The Birth of Anacondas”.

5.Caradonna JL. 2015. The historiography of sustainability: An emergent subfield. Economic and Ecohistory. XI(11):7-18.

6.Shilling D. 2018. Introduction: The soul of sustainability. In: Nelson M, Shilling D (Eds). Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability, pp. 2-14. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

7.Swanson, Tod. “Relatives of the Living Forest: The Philosophy Underlying Amazonian Quichua Ecological Action.” In Evan Berry and Robert Albro, editors, Churches and Cosmologies: Religion, Environment, and Social Conflict in Latin America.  New York: Routledge, 2018. 123-44.

8.Swanson, Tod & Reddekop,Jarrad. Feeling with the Land: Llakichina and the Emotional Life of Relatedness in Amazonian Kichwa Thinking.  Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 2022 Issue 90:4.  Forthcoming.

9. Kimmerer, Robin Wall.  “The Grammar of Animacy,” Braiding Sweetgrass, pg. 48 – 59.

10. Iyarina. Andi, Pedro. “Suyu Pishku Calls for Rain”.

11. Iyarina. Cadena, Luisa. “Return of the Animals & The Dead”. 

Eli Virkina | Venecia Derecha Kichwa Community | MA Sustainability student Arizona State University | Co-coordinator of "Reclaiming our narratives, Reforesting our minds" Cultural Survival