Essarye: A Gunadule Tradition on Mother Earth
Channel: The Earth Stories Collection
Date: 2020-04-22

This is what the Great Nele Olonakekiryai, from the Gunadule People, told to a group of old women in the village of Ukkupneka, by the river Tuira, in Panama. Olonakekiryai started to sing about the origin of the Gunadule People, about Mother Earth, about what really happens between humans, plants, animals and Mother Earth.

The Gunadule are an Indigenous people from Panama and Colombia. They speak the Guna or Kuna language, and call themselves Dule or Tule. When the Spanish invasion, they lived in the region of Uraba, in Colombia, but they went north, to Panama, due to a conflict with the Spanish and other indigenous peoples.

This Gunadule tradition illustrates, within The Earth Stories Collection (www.theearthstoriescollection.org), an excerpt from the Preamble of the Earth Charter (www.earthcharter.org), the one which says: 'Earth, our home, is alive with a unique community of life. The forces of nature make existence a demanding and uncertain adventure, but Earth has provided the conditions essential to life’s evolution'.

The Earth Stories Collection is an initiative from The Avalon Project (www.avalonproject.org) in partnership with the Secretariat of the Earth Charter, at the United Nations' University for Peace, and the Scottish International Storytelling Festival (www.sisf.org.uk).


If you want to download a pdf with this tradition, please go to: https://theearthstoriescollection.org/en/essarye/



Source:
Rocha Vivas, M. (2010). El sol babea jugo de piña: Antología de las literaturas indígenas del Atlántico, el Pacífico y la Serranía del Perijá. Bogotá: Ministerio de Cultura de Colombia, p. 467.


Music:
'Rainforest', by Ellie Crow, under license Creative Commons, CC BY-NC-SA on https://soundcloud.com/fandom-trash-music/rainforest


Videos:
* 'Paint the Rain Forest', by Green Squares, under license Creative Commons on https://youtu.be/eNkNQFjeK1Y
* 'Vines Overwhelming Trees in Rain Forests', by VOA News, under license Creative Commons on https://youtu.be/vWwpWn5gVcM
* 'Lacandona Jungle', by Luciano Vigueras, under license Creative Commons on https://youtu.be/dwYOB-co-SI