Thank you for your visit. Let’s enter our space so that our Mother receives us. Since we were received by our Mother, our Father, our people, our knowledge, I feel that we can talk, learn, share.

At this moment we are in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, in the Arhuaco territory, an Indigenous tribe. We are here working, conserving and caring for the Mother, fulfilling a law that our ancestors left us. This is an old mandate in which we have to take care of the Mother, and search for a balance between the negative energies and the positive energies.

The whole territory has everything. The Sierra Nevada is an ancestral land that is the Heart of the World. Everything in the world is found in this territory. And I invite you to learn about it and share this idea, this knowledge, this wisdom, in order to transmit it to those people who have not yet been able to connect with Mother Earth, with Mother Water, the source of life. We live with Water, we sustain ourselves with Water, Water is life, Water is the spirit that gives strength and wisdom.

Let’s take care of Water. Let’s not destroy Water. It’s beautiful to take care of a spring, a stream, a ravine, where Water is born, where Water flows, where there is a small waterfall in which the Water that is our life inhabits. Without water, we cannot live. She is one of the energies that we have to take care of and conserve and always keep present.

If we take care of Water, we are taking care of ourselves, we are taking care of our body. If we destroy her, it means that we are destroying ourselves without realizing that the blood in our body represents Water. Therefore whoever does not take that into account and wants to destroy Water, is killing himself. That’s the message I wanted to convey so that we can reach a reflection, and share many more ideas.

The Sibundoy Valley is located in southwestern Colombia, in the Putumayo region. The highlands surrounding the Sibundoy Valley are part of the Colombian Massif and the Andean-Amazonian piedmont where the tributaries of the Amazon River (Putumayo, Caquetá, and Guamuéz) originate. The Kindicocha area is part of this world’s water source; its rich ecosystem favors water regulation and the sustainability of a high biological, landscape, and cultural wealth that supports the great biodiversity of the Andean-Amazonian territory.

We believe that the transmission of ancestral knowledge through music is important to preserve a legacy of commitment and responsibility for the next generations. As artists from Kindicocha, we cannot forget the responsibility that was inherited by the Ancestral Chief Carlos Tamabioy, who fought for these territories in the 1700s and left the following words written in his will: “I leave these lands to my native Indians of the town of Santiago and those of the town of Sibundoy Grande, and it is my will that they enjoy and defend them if there would be a concern from any malicious person.”

Motivated by this responsibility, we exercise cultural resistance through music, seeking to heal the land, and understand this as the restoration of the well-being of its mountains, rivers, gardens, and the beings that inhabit it. Our brothers and sisters in Mocoa, Putumayo, are fighting to defend water against the Canadian corporation Libero Copper. This is why, in October 2023, we joined their fight by participating in the mobilization of the Juntanza process for water, life, and land. Within these experiences, the song “Agüita” (“Lovely Little Water”) was born, reflecting the thoughts and feelings of our grandparents, celebrating the value of water over the value of copper and gold, acknowledging that the tapir and the bear are the guardians of the mountain, and the Colombian massif is the heart of the most important tributaries of the Colombian Amazon.

Juan came to visit us, that is why we are talking. We received you since you came from far away. We are talking and sharing the ayu leaves so we are able to defend our knowledge. Water benefits us all, and for that reason we are here before our Mother and Father to be able to continue contributing and exchanging the ayu.

Well, as José just mentioned, we must always pay attention to ourselves, how we live, how we grow, and how we reproduce. So we, at the core, are the owners of Water. Why? Because when we create a life, we are inside the mother. And what happens? When we are inside the womb, we are in the middle of Water. What is Water? Water represents the sea. What is the sea? The sea is amniotic fluid. So, what do we have to take into account? We have to cleanse Water at her roots, make offerings to her, so that she can share with us, help us. We always have to give her an offering, cleanse her so that she can help us.

I would like all the people to understand this and to proceed in this manner.