Plants of Resistance: Full documentary

The SËRA Foundation meeting the renowned Sarayaku

Whilst the BCC team are with the Siekoya Remolino in the Ecuadorian Amazon we are delighted to share the full length documentary detailing the story from our first contact in 2021.

After a year of fundraising watch the SËRA Foundation travel to other communities where similar projects are already underway, so that they can learn from experience, be inspired and take this knowledge back to Siekoya Remolino to teach old and new generations to live in harmony with the rainforest.

SËRA Foundation (Fundación SËRA) was founded by Jimmy Piaguaje and a group of young Forest Defenders from the Siekoya Remolino community of 53 families who live on the banks of the Aguarico River in Northeastern Ecuador. The community is part of the endangered, indigenous Siekopai Nationality (which literally means ‘multicoloured people’), who live in the fragile Amazon rainforest ecosystem.

Their language is Paai koka and they are renowned for their use for over 1,000 different medicinal plants. There used to be over 30,000 Siekopai living in an immense territory that stretched an estimated 7 million acres from Ecuador into Colombia and Peru.

Currently only around 1,600 Siekopai remain, 900 in Peru and 700 in Ecuador, where they live in a 50,000-acre fragment of rainforest, surrounded by oil exploitation and oil-palm monoculture plantations.In response to this existential threat, the group of young Siekopai leaders developed innovative projects to document ancestral shamanic knowledge and created environmental youth workshops to ensure this wisdom is passed on from their elders.