The SËRA Foundation: Modernity Meets Tradition

The story of the Siekopai Remolino is a long and fascinating one, it dates back beyond history and into mythology, and we find ourselves well into our third year working alongside such wonderful people as they navigate a particularly turbulent chapter.  Their land and culture face new threats, and while the tide of Ecuadorian politics appears to be turning, their fight to secure a future for their people requires new and innovative ideas.

A Sacred Ceibo Tree in the Siekoya Remolino Territory

What first caught our interest in the Siekopai was their vast knowledge of plant medicine, and the seemingly endless uses their elders have for the abundant flora that grows throughout the rainforest.  This knowledge of medicinal plants is held with great value amongst the Siekopai, with knowledge passed on from generation to generation, from elders to the young, to ensure that their people can live as one with the rainforest, surviving as an indigenous nationality well into the future so long as the forest remains their home.  Despite the considerable reduction of their land, in both size and biodiversity, and the diminishing number of elders, the Siekopai are still holding on to this ancient knowledge. 

Throughout their history, communal wisdom of all things of value was passed down by oral traditions, through ceremonies and by actively making use of the teachings, but with existential threats ever-present it is more important than ever to take action.  This is the initiative that the SËRA Foundation have embarked upon, and the reason for their formation. 

The key aims are to ensure that the words of their elders, built upon countless generations of Siekopai traditions, are retained well into the future, as well as to set up an alternative economy to resist the monetary offers from encroaching oil and palm oil industries.

Recent developments in Ecuador’s politics gives us all great hope that the threat of oil industries will become less prevalent in the coming years, and in tandem with this the Siekopai remain as optimistic as ever that an alternative economy can be successfully established for their people, so long as some lessons are cautiously taken from the modern world, and space is given for taking on new and innovative ideas.  In recent years the community have put together a number of ways of generating food security and some means of monetary income to better sustain themselves.  Their fish farm project has been a step forward in their efforts to overcome one of the detrimental impacts that pollution from oil fields upstream have caused, and they have recently set up an internet connection for the community to use. 

This has provided them with a means of communication to the wider world, and they can now have regular communication with lawyers and environmental allies without the need to use up fuel and resources travelling to the nearest town.  Even opening the territory up to tourists has been a huge step forward, generating some income and telling their story first hand to those who truly value the fragile landscape in which the Siekopai live.

During our expedition we are teaching 8 members of the community, a mixture of men and women, how to safely and sustainably harvest fruit from the morete palm without the need to fell the tree.  Once our 2023 fundraising is complete, work will begin on the very first indigenous-owned rainforest medicinal laboratory.  By expanding upon the distillation equipment that the community currently has set up, this initiative can work hand in hand with the abundant morete harvests going forward, providing suitable facilities to create products that meet the health and hygiene standards required for selling further afield.

Indigenous communities have made use of the morete fruit both as a source of food, and to utilise their nutritional properties. 

At present the demand for this fruit grows, with its considerable vitamin A content and for its renowned benefits to skin and hair when distilled into products.  Naturally, this high demand has created problems. 

The safest way to harvest the fruit is to fell the tree, and unfortunately new trees do not produce fruit until they are about 20 years into maturity, such a high demand will not accommodate this growth period. 

The Siekopai have ceased felling these trees, as part of their work to preserve the ecological wealth of their territory, and so have taken the initiative to learn alternative ways of harvesting the fruit. 

With the fruit growing year-round, and each tree able to supply a harvest of approximately 290kg, the morete fruit can become a key source of food for the community, and the products created in their lab can become another significant step towards sustaining themselves financially for the foreseeable.

The SËRA Foundation have been working tirelessly to establish an alternative economy to financially sustain the Siekopai community, but their main priority is to retain their culture and values to ensure that they remain true to who they are as an indigenous nationality.  For this, initiatives of a different kind are required. 

Their newly established forest school is one key initiative, where young Siekopai can learn the ancient wisdom of the forest alongside modern classes, crucially taught in their own language, Paai Koka.  Language is foundational to any culture, as is the passing on of traditions and generational knowledge. 

While it remains important that the young Siekopai learn Spanish, retaining the language of their elders is vital to what the SËRA foundation is working towards. 

Hand in hand with this, retaining the community’s ancestral wisdom is an ever-present concern. With the number of elders diminishing, teachings through the spoken word and traditional ceremonies have become an increasingly fragile way of retaining this unique knowledge.  An answer to this problem came from two young leaders of the Siekopai Remolino, Jimmy and Ribaldo Piaguage, proposing that the teachings of the elders could be retained in a digital format, both of them having expertise and qualifications in audio and visual media.  By recording the teachings of the elders, those within the community who choose to follow in the shamanic tradition can learn the wisdom of their people, and become a custodian of knowledge within their community.  If this happens within the lifetime of the current elders, then this is the best outcome, but if not then at least the teachings are not lost.

It is thanks to Jimmy’s videos that we happened upon the story of the Siekopai, and were inspired to help their Plants of Resistance project in whatever way we could.  Jimmy has been integral to spreading story of the Siekopai internationally, and one way in which he has done so is by uploading his videos online, showcasing a fragment of the community’s vast herbal knowledge.  BCC’s Bex Tough found these videos and, being an avid herbalist, was quick to see the value of Jimmy’s work.  It became clear just how much dedication Jimmy, Ribaldo, and the other members of the SËRA Foundation put into their efforts to secure a future for their people.  The ambition and innovative thinking behind their initiatives and projects has made the SËRA foundation a success, and has already brought the Siekopai far more hope and assurance than they had previously as they come ever closer to the future they had imagined for themselves when the foundation was first established. 

Both the tree climbing workshops and the plans for the laboratory are examples of how the Siekopai are merging modern techniques and equipment with their ancient knowledge and values.  Much like Jimmy and Ribaldo working to capture audio and visuals of the elders in digital formats, or their forest school teaching lessons on subjects vital to engaging with the outside world alongside lessons geared towards keeping alive the values and wisdom of their community.  The 2023 expedition, and the fundraising for the laboratory, will aim to become another big step in this journey that the Siekopai are taking to integrate modern equipment with the core values of their community and ultimately establish themselves as self-reliant and to ensure their land and culture remains intact well into the future.

Image Credit - Erin Creo

While the main aim of the expedition is to teach the Siekopai tree climbing skills to safely harvest the morete fruit, an exciting addition to this is our plan to begin work on a feature length documentary where we can continue to tell the story of resistance from the community.  

During our two week stay with the community our videographers plan to film the daily lives of the Siekopai, as well as following our team of arborists as they run the tree climbing workshop. While the focal point will be the lives and story of the Siekopai, the workshop days and discussion of the laboratory plans will be excellent examples of the adaptability of this incredible community to integrate modernity with tradition.  With all that's going on for the community right now, we will be in a prime position to showcase the sort of projects that the Siekopai and SËRA Foundation are undertaking to establish their alternative economy.  In our third year raising funds for the Siekopai, we also wish to show the ways in which the unwavering support from our BCC community has helped such an incredible cause.  By using the words of the Siekopai themselves, we hope to tell this stage of their story as authentically as possible, showcasing how such an ancient and resilient community is seamlessly adapting to overcome the ever-pressing threats upon their way of life.