Power of the Chakra

Power of the Chakra

Amazonian forest gardening by ¡SubsistenceMatters!

Project description
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Power of the chakra

– a community investigation project… Why is the chakra important? What can we learn from the chakra? What are the biggest problems that indigenous communities are facing, and how can the chakra help? What spiritual teachings does the chakra bring? What knowledge does the chakra hold? What does the chakra need to thrive? Together with their wider communities, six Napo Runa researchers (from Ecuador) and six Urarina researchers (from Peru) will look for answers to these questions. …

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Nina Isabella Moeller

Nina Isabella Moeller has a mixed academic background in philosophy, sociology and anthropology. She has worked in Latin America and Europe – as academic as well as research and policy consultant and project manager for indigenous federations, NGOs and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Currently Associate Professor of Political Ecology and People’s Knowledge at Coventry University (UK), and a researcher in Food Systems Transformations at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), her interests comprise the dynamics …

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Emanuele Fabiano

Emanuele Fabiano obtained a Ph.D. degree at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales de Paris (EHESS) in 2015. He is a member of the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale (LAS) and the international work group on Contemporary Political Anthropology in Western Amazonia (APOCAMO). He has done extended fieldwork among the Urarina of Peruvian Amazonia, as well as in the Andean regions of southern Peru and Bolivia. In addition to his research in Peru, in 2017 he did …

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Fredy R. Grefa

Fredy R. Grefa is an indigenous (Napo Runa) first-generation human and cultural geographer, using Amazonian concepts and values to understand how Amazonian peoples make sense of living in rainforest environments. He has researched territorial claims (including those of his own community) for more than 15 years in the Ecuadorian Amazon, working with indigenous organizations such as CONFENIAE (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon) and COICA (Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin). His research …

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Complete project description

Amazonian forest gardens (chakras) for crisis resilience and cultural resistance in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon: Case for Support 1. Research questions or problems Widely recognised as one of the most ecologically significant areas of the world, the Amazon region faces a ‘crisis nexus’ of multiple, interconnected socio-ecological crises. It is ravaged by largely unfettered resource extraction (oil, timber, gold), intensive agriculture and large infrastructural development, and concomitant pollution. It is increasingly threatened by extreme weather and …

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Project launch

The municipality of our hosts in Archidona posted this nice little video with segments from the project launch: Municipalidad de Archidona welcomes Power of the Chakra, a research collaboration to explore the Kichwa (or Napo Runa) “chakra”, which traditionally is a family’s network of intergenerational forest gardens in the Upper Napo region of the Amazon. As civilisation marches forth the forest falls and from the ashes rises the chakra, because subsistence matters. What the chakra of the …