Aluna: The Enlightened Ones By Alan Ereira theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_comments/2084082/aluna_the_enlightened_ones.html Film-maker Alan Ereira explains why he was called back by the Colombian Kogi people to send out a new warning of the hidden damage we are still inflicting on our planet...... When the Kogi said they wanted me to help them make a film, they had a very clear idea of what they were after. They needed to break through the fact that we see them as exotic and mysterious. They needed to be taken more seriously than that The Kogi, for those who dont yet know about them, are the one surviving high culture of pre-Colombian America. By surviving, I mean pretty much as they were in the 17th century. Some 20,000 Kogi live high in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, on the worlds highest coastal mountain. There are no roads into their territory, and to get there is a fairly tough walk lasting about three days, in territory which is occasionally occupied by FARC guerrillas. You need to be invited and guided. They live in traditional self-sufficient towns of circular thatched mud-walled single-room dwellings, making their own traditional clothes, speaking their own language which only they can translate. No electricity, of course. No piped water. No T-shirts or baseball caps. The towns are for meetings. They live on their farms; husband in one house, wife in another. They treasure their inherited knowledge, passed through generations of Mamas (Enlightened Ones - Mama signifies the sun) who are educated from infancy in the dark. It is based on a profound knowledge of the birds, animals, plants and land of this rich environment, and they understand the world itself to be alive and conscious. Aluna, which became the title of the film, conveys thought and consciousness, the stuff from which, they say, the world is made. They are deeply frightened that we are destroying the capacity of the earth to support life. When I first encountered them in the late 1980s they were trying to find a way to warn us. I introduced them to the idea of television, by which they could be seen and heard at a distance, and so they made a film with me for BBC television. But in 2009 they summoned me back to ask why, having been warned, we have not changed our behaviour. They decided they need to try harder, more urgently, and in a more compelling way. The problem, they decided, was that we did not take them seriously because they do not have the same kind of education as us, so think in a different way. And there is a problem of translation. We see them as unscientific, and translate their ideas into mystical and religious language. They needed, they suggested, to do two things: to be seen to engage with our scientists, and to present their information in as clear and un-mystical language as possible. The result is a series of quite remarkable encounters, the first of which is with one of the worlds leading astronomers for a discussion of the structure of the cosmos and the significance of what we call Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and they call The Darkness. The fundamental thesis which they set out to demonstrate is that places on earth are invisibly linked so that damage to one is damage to others. The linkage is through lines of Darkness, Black Lines which they set out to illustrate with 400 km of gold thread! The places they connect are what we call sacred sites, but the word and concept sacred does not exist in their language. It is a conventional translation which they used to find useful because although it means nothing to them, it conveys a lot to us. Sacred means Dont Touch!. The trouble is, it also means not really important compared to development and the production of wealth. It has no rationale beyond some kind of belief. So the Kogi needed to abandon the word sacred and show exactly why these places must not be touched. Aluna represents their struggle to teach us to see the world in a rational and coherent way, as they do. They dont think we do that. And when they ask me What do your experts think will happen if you continue plundering the world? I do feel - humiliated. The final message of Aluna is that the perceptible link that binds the world together is water, and we must learn to take care of it. Not just conserve it, but be understanding and sympathetic to its flow, on and under the earth, through the seas and the atmosphere. The Kogi speak as though they know the history of individual raindrops. We have a lot to learn, and not much time left. Read a review of the film here : theecologist.org/reviews/films/2088264/aluna_columbias_kogi_people_fight_against_ecocide.html
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 18:35:14 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015