A sacred plant for the Yekuana, the Monkey ladder (Entada gigas) liana was used in Yekuana Mythology by the star people to escape to heaven - and become the small stars that we see at night.
Photo (c) Hans Spalholz.
Dave Rosane's outreach program in the Venezuelan Amazon
Backstory: I befriended the Ye'kuana community of Jodoimenna in 1998, visiting since on a yearly basis, alone, or with friends, or students, to help with a modest array of community projects. So far we've helped map the tribe's land with GPS & GIS, we're completing a database of local biodiversity for the school. We've introduced solar oven technology, consulted on malaria prevention, health and nutrition, horticulture, fair trade... No strings attached, no grant monies, personal savings only. The village is run by elder Isaias and his son Lisardo and daughter Torivia.
Mapping with Lisardo...
school house
local movie theater
a doctor shows up
headman Isaias and wife Isabel
Isaias, young, partook in the franco-venezuelan expedition that discovered the sources of the Orinoco.
Other stuff
Thought
People say we are destroying the environment. I beg to differ: I think we're destroying ourselves, and taking most of the environment with us. Example: Global warming is not the issue. Neither is 'biodiversity loss'. It's how we organize ourselves as a species that's the problem. Is our social reality sustainable? No, and here's why: smoke from a machine, 'development' and habitat loss, these are more the symptoms, the physical manifestations (or Entropy) of a deeper societal process which is to increase productivity and profit, i.e., to increase the concentration of power and energy in the hands of a few individuals - at everyone else's expense. Agree to change that imbalance of power, to modify the current power system and install a true democracy where power is shifted from the wallet back to the ballot, to be shared by all, and you will see a lot less smoke. Unknowingly perhaps, you will be agreeing to a sustainable world made of ecological, human societies - without anthropogenic climate change, without species loss. Without war? Onward thru the fog.
What?
'We are the environment. There is no distinction.'
- David Suzuki
- David Suzuki
