Colombia, Cofán Indigenous group threatened

In a case reminiscent of the movie Avatar, a tree symbolic to the Cofán people of southern Colombia is threatened by construction of a military base. The base is the latest in a string of incursions that have squeezed the Cofán into a smaller and smaller area in the Guamuez Valley region of Putumayo, near the border with Ecuador, according to Carlos Salinas, who is carrying out an ethnohistory project and lobbying for the tribe. Members of the Cofán community in Santa Rosa del Guamuez first showed Salinas the tree in 2008, after he began an oral history project to help the tribe record the words and memories of elder shamans and their wives. Read Article

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