Translated from Spanish by Juan G. Sánchez Martínez

Irati Dojura Landa Yagarí studied Audiovisual and Multimedia Communications at the University of Antioquia. She has experience as a director, producer and photographer. Her first short fiction film, Akababuru: Expresión de Asombro (2025), was the winner of the Colombian Film Development Fund, in the category of short films on ethnic populations. As an art director, she received recognition at the Equinoxio and Fulana Fest festivals. She directed a series of podcasts about Indigenous peoples in the city titled “Ijarabú, I remember you in my dreams”, funded by the City of Medellin. In 2022, she participated as a workshop facilitator and photographer in the second season titled “Ijarabú, the countryside travels with me”, which won the Youth in Movement Fund from the Colombian Ministry of Culture. In 2023, she received the Cultural Survival scholarship for Indigenous Youth for women’s empowerment and leadership. 

Social Media: @_doju_

My name is Irati Dojura Landa Yagarí. I am an Indigenous member of the Embera Chamí people. I belong to the Karmata Rúa town in the municipality of Jardín, Antioquia, Colombia. My town is called Karmata Rúa. The settlers decided to name our territory Cristiania, a word that translates to land of Christians, when in reality our Indigenous territory is named Karmatarua, which means land of pringamoza, a type of stinging nettle, a sacred plant for our people. Here live hard-working people who are supportive, fighting, vindicating, happy, and defending their territory, culture, language and identity. In this land, our native tongue is still preserved and there is a consciousness of caring for our Mother Earth and the life-giving Water, Bania in our language. In Karmata Rúa, we have rivers that provide nutrients to our crops and allow us to survive. We thank the spirits that we live in an area with lots of rain, we thank this water that always purifies us. Bania char: Sacred water.

I like visual arts. As an Embera woman, I consider that taking control of the camera is an act of vindication for my people because, in the history of communication, we have been represented from the non-indigenous’ point of view, so that is the reason why I continue to narrate from the roots. The women and children of my people are my greatest source of inspiration, because they intersect with nature, our Mother Earth. I present these two photographs as a manifesto of what I have just explained —the Mother and the Water, the primary source of life, childhood, pure and clear as a birth— because in the end we are all one.