Nataly Allasi Canales
Lands
Abya Yala & Denmark & UK
“To heal in community, we need our systems to heal, especially; agrarian and health institutions.”
Nataly is Quechua and was born in Amazonia. She is an evolutionary biologist and a Villum fellow on native bitter potatoes. She is an activist for Indigenous rights, agrobiodiversity and biodiversity conservation.
Allinyachiymanta
*Quechua for ‘On how we heal in community’
After I put on my helmet, I set up my biking music, often Amazonian and Andean beats, which is energising and also, in my case, healing.
With music, I teleport to my homeland; I feel the warmth even while biking under cold showers. I make my way to the city of London to the botanical gardens. And each time, I wish more towns would give their inhabitants the freedom of biking.
I choose storm sounds from the Amazonia to soothe me to sleep at night. The music and my memories set me on the right path to the realm of dreams. Which, for me, often means visiting my homeland. There, I can see the vibrant, colourful naca-naca (the aquatic coral snake, Micrurus surinamensis) again zigzagging across the resplendent river, the shiny ebony feathers of condors. And, of course, the magnificent shihuahuaco (Dipteryx micrantha), was first introduced to me when I was a kid as the smallest tree in our forest. And I imagined it as the jaguar’s lair.
I heal, thanks:
To the majestic organisms that bring us awe and strengthen our spiritual kinship with nature. We heal ourselves and also the community.
To the art many of my paisanas y paisanos have created; poetry, music, textiles, and handcrafted figurines. They all document our struggles, culture and cosmovision; they are our libraries and “books”.
To our community, who constantly show solidarity in different situations, possibly a legacy of ayni systems (energy exchange between human-nature-universe for Quechua people). Want to build a first floor? No problem, we will help you organise a fundraising party for it. We all give a bit of our time to develop our community.
When awake, I constantly think of the great ways we could change as a society to make our livelihoods more sustainable and better.
What is setting us back, and what do we need to heal?
As a plant researcher and Quechua woman, we heal through plants in my cosmovision. Shrubs that my ancestors used, like muña (Minthostachys mollis), for respiratory and digestive issues, are used to season our foods. Palms, like shapaja or eshishi (Attalea phalerata), is precious for Ese’ejja Peoples’ and is used as food and building material. And cacti, like wachuma or San Pedro (Echinopsis pachanoi), which contain mescaline, are widely used by curanderos (healers) in the Andes to diagnose and cure illness, influencing ancestral healing.
To heal in community, we need our systems to heal, especially; agrarian and health institutions.
Wachuma, golden cactus or San Pedro is one of the main characters of Miguel Gutiérrez’s La violencia del tiempo, a monumental Latin American boom work. Here, wachuma shows characters the past, revealing the future while healing and reconciling generational grievances in a post-colonial setting. Photos of Bolivian Echinopsis pachanoi. Credits: Bharath AB Nair.
Food sovereignty
How do governments not foster native seed exchange among farmers but instead criminalise these millennia-old agricultural practices? Is it because farmers’ food sovereignty threatens the corporate interests of big biotechnology companies? Biodiversity is an obstacle for “modern progress”. Instead, many in power seek these lush, extensive forests to become palm oil and soy monocultures that drastically erode Amazonian lifeforms.
Like many other countries, new seed and plant variety laws were imposed in Kenya, making it illegal for smallholder farmers to give their children or exchange with other smallholder farmers. For this, they can go to jail for up to two years. Thus, we must firmly resist these absurd attempts of privatising and controlling seed exchange.
Similar smallholder families were the ones that, at least 10 000 years ago, domesticated and created thousands of varieties of potatoes in the Andes, for example. Political instability, improvised policies, frost, landslides and now global El Niño. The odds are against these families, and still now, struggling farmers with little resources keep conserving and creating new varieties as part of their initiative to attain food sovereignty. Imagine how much more we could achieve:
when all seed banks are open access and community-based and would provide to local farmers so they could keep breeding, generating different varieties, and adapting new species;
when researchers working on Indigenous crops incorporate Indigenous perspectives into their research questions. While also protecting the genetic resources underlying local crops from profit-driven organisations;
when government institutions long-term support and give self-determination to traditional and Indigenous farmers and their practices. Which have shown to be exceptionally culturally and biologically resilient through centuries;
when governments listen to and work on Indigenous farmers’ demands for sociopolitical commitment to maintain and bolster Indigenous crops while both parties work together.
Health sovereignty
Why is there no intercultural health system in places where several languages are spoken and different cultures and practices coexist? Many places which were once Indigenous, and their health systems, have been displaced and threatened by colonisation, climate crisis and social and ecological conflicts due to oil and natural gas mining activities. Exercising their self-determination on health care is also exercising their fundamental autonomy rights.
The same Peoples that centuries ago used the Andean fever tree (Cinchona sp.), the source of quinine, to treat fever and, thus, malaria. It saved so many lives that it was cultivated by European empires in other tropical countries to develop the empires and under-develop their then-colonies.
It is the case of Indigenous Peoples today in rural Andean areas that cannot access hospitals unless travelling long hours. And when they can access it, the health care staff a. are only trained in ‘modern’ medicine but not traditional medicine. b. only speak the dominant language. Leaving rural patients discriminated against, unattended or wrongly diagnosed.
However, Indigenous health practices have shown their resilience again, for example, during the Covid-19 pandemic. When artists, healers and leaders from Shipibo-Konibo Peoples in the Amazonia organised themselves to heal through plants affected by the pandemic. They called this initiative Comando Matico, honouring matico (Piper aduncum), one of the leaves used to treat Covid-19 symptoms. Later, local physicians and nurses trained in ‘western’ medicine joined them. Unfortunately, several of their Elders' and leaders' lives were lost during these difficult times; with them, biodiversity, health and food knowledge. Comando matico exists and has no government support yet, and they have not replicated this model yet.
Our health systems and peoples will heal:
when community-led initiative builds intercultural health education programmes;
when our health care systems become intercultural, attending populations in Indigenous languages and their traditional medicine using trusted plants and practices;
when criminalisation for cultivating and using our ancestral plants stops like it is the case for coca (Erythroxylum coca);
And when our ecosystems, Peoples, Elders, and the knowledges they carry are respected and protected against the threats of capitalism and its aftermath.