Círculo de la palabra: Healing knowledge and ancestry

This session will focus on memory and recognizing our ways of healing from our realities, stories, and memories. This is a guided proposal to exchange on our scars because speaking from there means we have survived barbarism, even when the painful memory remains. It is a proposal that arises from the need to talk about the processes in which the flesh begins to sprout again, aided by other hands that have already healed many wounds, including their own, with plants and vines from the forest, with the songs and stories of our grandfathers and grandmothers. It is a space to recognize and share the tools and knowledge that our ancestors have left us to live in diasporas and situations of oppression.

To this, we invite Maima Elvia who, through the circulo de la palabra (circle of the word), an ancestral technology of the indigenous peoples of Abya Yala, will share her knowledge and wisdom with us. In this circle, we weave words together collectively through oral memory, our spiritualities, and the languages of Mother Earth. We will be giving life to a space of learning and unlearning, of healing with our elders, where through silence, listening, conscious thought, speaking with kindness, and gratitude for all that we receive, we will be in connection with the earth, with the plants, and with ourselves.

The space of the circle is hosted and held by Daniellis Hernandez Calderon. 

Maima Elvia Descanse Humenda  belongs to the original Cofan people located in the Amazonian territory, between the borders of Ecuador and Colombia. Maima Elvia grew up in the jungle of Ecuador in the Chandia na'e "Rio Cristalina" community. Her knowledge of sacred plants and ancestral Cofan medicine was passed down to her from childhood by her grandmothers and grandfathers, her mother Rosita Humenda Lucitante and her father Federico Descanse. Together with her father, she navigated rivers and walked the jungle learning the Cofan spirituality and respect for sacred plants. This legacy of knowledge has accompanied her throughout her life. In her youth, Maima moved to the Cofan community of Santa Rosa de Sucumbios in Colombian territory. There she established her family. In this community she received the teachings of Taita Elías Lucitante and Taita Guillermo Lucitante, who were the highest authorities of this Cofán territory. The older Curacas deposited in Maima the knowledge to safeguard the Cofán thought and culture. Maima Elvia is one of the first women in the Cofán culture to guide spiritual and healing processes with sacred medicines. In the words of the Maima: her knowledge comes from the grandparents of the jungle. Their spirits accompany her and visit her in her dreams to teach her how to treat illnesses of the body, spirit and mind. Through sacred plants, prayers, icaros and rituals.

Daniellis Hernandez Calderon  lives and works in Berlin as an artist, activist, and curator. In her work she explores possibilities of reinvention of the past and takes as sensitive material to build her work those memories produced and nourished in the coexistence, solidarity, struggles and resistance of migrated, diasporic and discriminated, but not defeated, bodies. Daniellis earned a BA in Sociology from the University of Havana. In 2007, she graduated from the International Film and television School of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba as Documentary filmmaker. She also holds a Master in Art in Context by University of Arts, Berlin.