Eve Wright reports on a conference in Bolivia where Indigenous Leaders from across the Americas come together to preserve and share ancestral wisdom.

In the Quechua tradition of the Andes there has been a prophecy that the eagle shall fly with the condor in the same sky at the same time’. It is understood that different peoples and different cultures will unite for one purpose: to live in a more humane way, a way of life that respects Mother Earth and all life upon her.

Last year I spent seven months in an ecological community in Bolivia. They believe strongly in the importance of preserving and honouring such ancestral wisdom. This wisdom, as handed down generation after generation, is exactly that: of living in harmony with all that is.

In October, this community hosted a conference: the First International Forum on Ancestral Wisdom. Indigenous leaders and teachers of ancestral wisdom from different parts of the Americas came in dedication to a call to preserve and disseminate the wisdom of the ancestors at a time when it is sorely needed everywhere.

One such indigenous leader was Don Alverto Taxo of Ecuador. In a recent interview, conducted by the Global Oneness Project, he said that since he was a little boy, the elders in his community have been telling him of the necessity to communicate the ideas of living in harmony with nature. They told him that technology, as represented by the eagle, must act in service to a harmonious relationship with nature, represented by the condor. In other words, indigenous peoples everywhere need to use the methods available to them now. They must use the global media to teach us the wisdom that will enable us to live in harmony with Mother Earth.

‘Modern people have lost the quality of finding wisdom in simple things,’ Don Alverto said. ‘The culture of the big cities aims to complicate their lives and their thinking, so they’re not able to understand things as they are. Wisdom is simple but they don’t see it because they have adopted a rhythm that complicates everything.’

In Bolivia the election of the first indigenous president in the history of the country has given many native people a sense of greater strength and pride in traditional ways. Don Luis Espinosa, the Bolivian founder of the Janajpacha Community, near Cochabamba, where I stayed, sees this time in Bolivian social history as a tremendous opportunity. It will, he believes, strengthen the Andean traditional way of life and go to forge links with peoples all over the world that value a similar way.

We are living at a time when many secret teachings held by native peoples of both North and South America are being revived. They reveal a practical wisdom and a clear insight into the paths we must take if we are to survive the coming changes. We have a responsibility to listen and to welcome the open arms offered to us. The second Forum on Ancestral Wisdom will take place in October.

For Don Alverto Taxo Interview:
www.globalonenessproject.org
www.fsmsabiduriasancestrales.com

Image: the Janajpacha (meaning Paradise) Community members.