Alok Institute and Associação Sociocultural Yawanawa (Sociocultural Association Yawanawa), work together to value initiatives that strengthen cultural and spiritual manifestations of the Yawanawa groups, which includes education based on traditional knowledge about the forest, hunting, fishing, customs, arts, songs, paintings, etc.
In 2021/22, Alok Institute will support initiatives focused on young Yawanawa people:
- Yawanawa Art Week – expression of the cosmovision in painting on fabrics, canvas and murals.
- Mariri Yawanawa – Song Festival, Yawanawa music
- Yawanawa language
- vine basketry
- Traditional clothing
- Cultural Exchange with other indigenous peoples of the state of Acre (the Poyanawa, Huni Kui and Katulkina).
Art and Income Generation
The drawings/paintings produced by the indigenous youth during the Yawanawa Art Week held with support from the Alok Institute last year were reproduced by Sheep.Inc, the first carbon negative clothing brand, based in London, to produce a limited number of beautiful 100% ultra-fine Merino wool blankets.
The profit goes to initiatives by the youth of Yawanawa people / Acre (Yawanawa Sociocultural Association).
Each symbol narrates a fragment of the Yawanawa spiritual heritage. From the representation of the two snakes, Jiboia and Sukuri, which manifest themselves as guides in the ceremonies of the Yawanawa Uni Medicine to the wings of the Awavena butterfly that carries the feminine spiritual power.
To purchase SHEEP INC. X THE YAWANAWÁ go to:
sheepinc.com/collections/sweater?gender=male&collection=25
The Yawanawa People
The Yawanawa people, after years living under mental and spiritual slavery imposed by rubber tappers in the 1970s, broke free in 1984, expelling all non-indigenous invaders from their territory. This revolution happened thanks to the youth.
Since then the Yawanawa people have resumed their cultural and spiritual practices supported by their elders and by the sages who still keep with them the tradition’s knowledge and the worldview of their ancestors.
Much of the customs were left behind, to give value to Western education, even with the determination of the old people who said that, even if the younger ones spoke the language of white people, if they dressed like white people and if they “walked” like white people, “our people would never stop being Yawanawa. “Our culture and our traditions were rooted in our soul, that nobody would ever take out of us”, says the leader Tashka Yawanawa.
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