The problem with modern politics is that it excludes nature in its planning. Then, nature imposes her will—as she is doing now with the COVID-19 outbreak. What is the message and the learning in the emergence of the virus at this time? The spiritual elders of Colombia, the Mamos, are some of the few people who address the underlying causes to today’s crisis. What does the virus mean not just in terms of the survival of the human species, but for all of nature? Mamo Daiwiku will be joined by Dr. Amanda Bernal-Carlo, a biologist who works closely with the Mamos, and Susan Kaiulani Stanton (Haudenosaunee/Native Hawaiian), founder of Grandmothers Circle the Earth Foundation, for an enlightening big picture overview.
Glenn Aparicio Parry, PhD, of Basque, Aragon Spanish, and Jewish descent, is the author of Original Politics: Making America Sacred Again (SelectBooks, 2020) and the Nautilus award-winning Original Thinking: A Radical Revisioning of Time, Humanity, and Nature (North Atlantic Books, 2015). Parry is an educator, ecopsychologist, and political philosopher whose passion is to reform thinking and society into a coherent, cohesive, whole. The founder and past president of the SEED Institute, Parry is currently the director of a grass-roots think tank, the Circle for Original Thinking and is debuting this podcast series of the same name in conjunction with Ecology Prime. He has lived in northern New Mexico since 1994. www.originalpolitics.us
Mamo Daiwiku is a Colombian Arhuaco Mamo (one of the spiritual elders) from the High Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains, the tallest coastal mountain range in the world, source of 35 major rivers and over 200 tributaries, considered the Heart of the World by the Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa, and Kankuamo Indigenous peoples who live there.
Amanda Bernal-Carlo is originally from Colombia where for several years she studied the ecology of the Andean Forest and the Paramos. She is a scholar of Biogeography, Ecology and Medicinal Plants, and the President of The Great Balance. In 1989, while carrying out research on the biogeography of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, she became involved in the study of the Kogi Indians, their philosophy of life, and their traditional healing. For several years she collaborated with the Fundacion Pro-Sierra, an NGO supporting these Indigenous communities. In 1996, she received the First National Research Prize from the Colombian government for the work she accomplished on the Colombian Andean Mountains.
Susan Kaiulani Stanton (Mohawk/Native Hawaiian) is the Founder and Senior Grandmother of Grandmothers Circle the Earth Foundation, an international organization that travels the world in service of Mother Earth and future generations, giving birth to new Grandmother councils all over the planet. Susan is Vice-President of the Great Balance, bi-located in the United States and Colombia with a focus on building a culturally appropriate university and the planting of one million trees to protect and perpetuate the culture and sacred land of the mamos, the Indigenous People of the beautiful Sierra Nevadas de Santa Marta. She is a delegate with the International Public Policy Institute to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
Traditional native flute music by Orlando Secatero from Pathways CD.
Liberty song by Ron Crowder, Jim Casey and Danny Casey
Photo of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia, by U.S. Geological Survey, Public Domain
For Mamo Daiwiko’s full Spanish version Listen Here.