What we do

Teach Native languages
Record and interpret ancestral knowledge.
Collaborate in funded research
Host Study Abroad
Sustain community and forest

The Amazonian Social Relation to Nature

An Open Access Environmental

Humanities Digital Project

We envision a future in which indigenous communities work productively from their own territories using their own languages and knowledge to engage the global world on their own terms; a future in which the world also learns from indigenous ways of living relationally and recognizes the contributions they make toward sustainability.

Our mission is to build bridges for teaching and learning between indigenous knowledge and science leading to a greater integration of indigenous voices in research and decision making for a more sustainable future. By teaching Kichwa culture and facilitating the co-production of knowledge we create jobs for young people that slow migration and hold our community together.

Iyarina

Iyarina means to think about people and nature as a shared body. We create a place where academics, artists and scientists can join Indigenous leaders and knowledge carriers to learn together, reflect, and build a future.

Shayarina

We are actively taking action towards the goal of "Sumakta Kawsana" by taking a stand known as shayarina. By strengthing Indigenous Communities we also protect forests.

Sumakta Kawsana

Key to the Amazonian ideal of wellbeing, sumakta kawsana, is a convivial environment where relatives can live and work together, speaking their own language, respecting their elders and land.

By remembering (iyarina) that people and nature are socially related, in a shared body and standing strong (shayarina) to protect our common home, we adapt our traditional way of life (sumakta kawsana) to meet future challenges.

"This project presents the Amazonian relation to nature by linking short videos of testimonies, stories, and songs to the names of the plant and animal species that are the subjects of the narratives... It also links species and nature to the stages of the human life cycle through which nature is experienced socially."