See the Video: 2012 TOMA Solar Medical Project HERE
A
special (first of its kind) inter-agency Colombian government
project team has been tasked by the President Uribe to work
with the Indians to begin the process of designating the Sierra
Nevada Mountain as a protected Indian and ecological reserve.
One of the cornerstones to the project involves the creation of
9 health / educational outposts that will be built in the Sierra
Nevada Mountains to serve the Kogi, Arhuaco, and Wiwa
peoples. This plan has been carefully designed to maintain the
cultural imperatives of the Indians while still providing them
supplemental health and educations services when they feel
they are needed. The U.S. State Department’s Colombian
Embassy is paying for part of the construction. For our part the
TOMA Foundation has agreed to oversee the acquisition and
installation of medical equipment and supplies for each of the
proposed 9 health outposts/clinics.
In northeastern Colombia there is a mountain system, completely independent from the Andean Mountains called the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Drained by more than 30 river basins, the massif of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta rises abruptly from Caribbean sea to summit ice at 18,947 feet (5,775 meters) – the highest coastal mountain formation on the planet. As an island unto itself, this mountain system and its surroundings encompass a stunning diversity of ecosystems.
There are mangrove swamps, tropical rain forests and open woodlands, dry scrublands and deserts – and soaring above all in the clouds and blowing rain, the alpine tundra and snowy peaks.
By itself the Sierra Nevada is a ecological
treasure but what makes this 8,000-square-mile area so unique is that it is
the homeland of the Kogi, Arhuaco, and Wiwa Indians. Descendants of an
ancient South American civilization called the Tayrona and numbering perhaps
45,000 today, the Kogi, Arhuaco, and Wiwa peoples are separated by language,
but share a common way of life and the same fundamental religious
convictions emphasizing peace and harmony, respect for nature and personal
meditation. They believe every element of nature is imbued with spiritual
significance, so that
even the most modest of creatures can be seen as a teacher to mankind. For
decades now they have been diagnosing local ecosystem changes in the Sierra
Nevada as symptomatic of world global warming.
Until recently these Indians have shunned or severely limited their interactions with the modern world. However, with the growing threats to their homeland and culture by farmers, loggers, drug cartels, and various armed guerrilla groups, they have begun to work with the Colombian government to exercise their Indigenous rights enumerated in Colombia's constitution and formally take back the Sierra Nevada Mountains as a protected Indian reserve.
