OUR
ROOTING
LIBERATION
Dr. Nataly Allasi Canales
We, the descendants of those who created Kin with The Land;
We, the descendants of those who stand side by side with The Land;
We, the people who are deliberately working for the liberation of Land and People;
This is who we are and who this is for.
Who We Are
We are not here as representatives or as “all of the people”, we are here as humble observers, students, children, and Kin of The Land. We are here as the proud descendants of the Peoples Kinned to Turtle Island and Abya Yala.
Opening Statement
We honour the Elders and their legacy; through decolonising and reclaiming the knowledges they forged.
Acknowledge the importance of Bitter Potatoes for our peoples as they too can be the main focus of research.
Showing pride in our crops’ diversity, knowledge associated with them, agricultural techniques, rituals and cultural practices around them can empower us to be agents of agricultural systems innovations and pave the way for future rematriation actions in the wake of planetary dysregulation and food insecurity.
SIN PUEBLO
NO SOMOS
Bolivia
Santosa Mamani Huarcaya
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Vitalia Colque Jorge
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
David Sánchez Choque
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Alex Mallcu Choqueticlla
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Teogildo Ancari Condori
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Sebastiana Pascual Aruquipa
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
José Flores Huallpa
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Martín Chacolla Vargas
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Peru
Máximo Colquehuanca Hampiri
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Modesto Huamán
Ancestral Land Knowledges
Anayo Félix Orihuela Córdova
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Paula Huamán Landa
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Juan Romero Valladolid
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Margarita Maywa Tapara
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Marcela Vilca Sarcco
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Vicentina Poma Huamán
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Mario Infanzón Huaquisto
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Jerónimo Huanca Ampuero
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Igor Mamani Ccarita
Agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge
Mariano Sutta Apocusi
Agricultural, botanical cultural and ancestral Land knowledges
Note to the Reader
These sets of Living Knowledges are“for us”, by us we mean those that are Land-Kinned, colonised, rematriating, de-colonising and curious to remember their Kinship to the Land. The Knowledges presented here are meant to be researched, meditated on and contextualised to the readers needs. It is a slow process of contemplation rather than mass and immediate consumption.
THIS IS A PROJECT
THAT FEATURES THE BITTER POTATOES
WITH AN HOMAGE TO THE MAIZE
WHO CREATED US
AND IS DEDICATED TO THE SURVIVAL
OF OUR FUTURES
In 1492, when the colonisers started their systematic trans-generational ecocide and genocide on the Peoples and Land of Turtle Island and Abya Yala, we already had our languages, food, healing practices, sciences, knowledges, and culture. These systems and cognitive frameworks helped our Ancestors heal from the slaughter, sustain life across multiple worlds, liberate themselves from the clutches of slavery as well as guarantee our existence.
These systems and cognitive frameworks were not due to utopic happenstance or a unique intellect, it was thousands of years of deep Kinship between our Ancestors and The Land. To know a particular plant through generational time provides us with the particular privilege of forming knowledges that are life saving and life creating.
Our beautiful Maize is an inspiring example of millennia’s worth of observations, listening, and relating, creating the opportunity for deep knowingness. This knowingness allowed our Ancestors to create a Kinship with the Maize, co-evolving together. However, this relationality is not exclusive to humans and Maize. The Maize themselves only flourish because they belong to a wide community of living beings called Milpans, which are self-sustaining and autonomous forest gardens steered by many Peoples across Turtle Island and Abya Yala.
Within the Milpans time and place are indistinguishable, trans-generational time creates space and space creates even more time, seeding multiple worlds and imaginations. In the Milpans, the microbes in the soil use their imaginations to create the precise environment for oxygen to pierce through every inch of the soil, perfect for seedlings to turn into Maize, squash, beans, multiple trees, medicinal plants, and so on. Each being having spent millenia in profound Kinship with each other, taking us with them. Maize is not the first “engineered” crop, it is the manifestation of time/space (Pacha - in Quechua) and the imaginations of multiple beings. It is not a metaphor to say that we are the Maize and the Maize is us. Maize is as much our blood relative as our human Ancestors.
This is a project on the Bitter Potatoes with an homage to the Maize who created us and is dedicated to the survival of our Futures.
SEEING OURSELVES
THROUGH THE EYES OF
THE LAND
In this section we offer various considerations and contemplations for the use of the word Indigenous. As the origins of this word lie within the imaginations of the coloniser, it is important that we create space to discuss what this word means to us, how we want to identify as we advocate for our rights and Liberation, and contemplate new words that allow us to relate to our Land and Ancestors in terms that align more with our epistemologies and world views.
We are using “Land-Kinned” synonymously with Indigenous, but as a more accurate, expansive and relational term for those of us who have suffered all the various aspects of settler colonisation across the world. It is also a mental framework that helps reframe our intrinsic and unbroken link to the Land, our Ancestor and Creator. Whether we acknowledge it or not, the Land is always in us. This is not a metaphor, the air we breathe contains the soils we inhabit.
Indigenous is often linked to a western world view of relationality, i.e. genetics. This is not necessary how we define our relation to our Ancestors pre colonisation. We are not here to dictate who is Indigenous or not, as that goes against the morals of this project. In other words a person's Indigeneity and relation to Ancestors and Land is their own personal journey.
This section is a critique on how the word is used, not on those who use it. We are at another very precarious point in time, where the genocide that started 500 years ago evolves into more pronounced violeces. Therefore, we will need to continue to reassess our relationship with this word and what it means to be Indigenous in Turtle Island and Abya Yala. It should be noted that the word Indigenous has served a pivotal role in our Liberation as it has been used to enact various Land and Human rights.
Colonialism tore through our families and Peoples with unhinged violence that left many of us fragmented and physically displaced from our Ancestral Lands as well as interrupted from our cultures, languages, and sense of self - self as it relates to a Being belonging to the Land/being part of the Land. Therefore, we all exist in various forms of Indigeneity and are experiencing various “journeys of return” and re-rooting ourselves.
Another aspect of the word Indigenous we should consider, is its roots in white supremacy. The idea of othering and separating peoples by phenotype is the ideology of European supremacy, therefore we must be careful that as we seek to liberate ourselves through identifying as Indigenous, we don’t play directly to the hands of supremacy ideologies.
The final consideration is how supremacy has forced us into racial categories, specifically to justify a racialised experience (slavery, Jim Crow, apartheid). This forced our siblinghood with those kidnapped from Africa to be erased. We became two Peoples instead of one.
Given that our Black Kin have inhabited Turtle Island and Abya Yala for over 400 years and have Kinned to these Lands, would that not make them Indigenous? They have also played pivotal roles in protecting and caring for the Land through the Land Knowledges they conceived from their respective Ancestral Lands. This contribution has ensured the collective survival of all of us who currently inhabit these lands, including the coloniser. Doesn't this reciprocity and Kinnedness to the Land align them spiritually and politically to Indigenous right and Liberation pathways? A deliberate othering was enacted by coloniser to separate us from our Black Kin. In the United States any person identified as Indigenous was prevented from having land, if they were mixed with those who had been identified as Black. It was the colonisers imagination who made us see Black Kin as different, therefore part of Indigenous Liberation needs to align with Pro-Black Liberation strategies. We must also contemplate how the Land Knowledges brought over from Africa in the imaginations of our Kin have also helped shape our own relations to Land. Given us new staples, new cultivation practices, and new Land imaginations, therefore, we should contemplate how we come together as one People in a just and fair manner.
Here are more questions to consider:
1. How does the word Indigenous further anti-Black sentiment?
2. How do we imagine ourselves as Kinned Peoples?
3. How do we show up for Black Liberation?
4. How can the term Indigenous also hold the dreams, rights, imaginations, and personhoods of Peoples who were forcibly taken from Africa?
5. Is the term Land-Kinned enough?
6. What does it mean to be claimed by the Land?
7. Those of us who directly share blood ties with Black Kin, how do we acknowledge this without appropriation or anti-Blackness?
8. What are the spaces that we need to create for Land Knowledges to be remembered and conserved by all those who are Kinned to the Lands of Abya Yala and Turtle Island?
RESPONDING
TO LOSS
The Dysregulation
of our Planet
and Continual Genocide
There are various pathways in which the Peoples of Turtle Island and Abya Yala continue to be affected by settler colonialism, in fact, it constitutes genocide. The biggest threat at the moment is being displaced from our Lands, which creates a gap between us and our more-than-human Kin. This means that the possibilities of continuing our traditions, such as the Milpan heavily diminish when we are separated from our territories and Elders. Therefore, part of “re-kinning” with the Milpan will be through the development of Land rights. This is not only about regaining our access, but also advocating for the Liberation of the Land from extractivists agendas. Even when some of us have access to the Land, the dysregulation of planetary systems is creating a constant threat to our Kinships. Time and place are no longer in a rhythm that we understand, the soil is contaminated and their biome is in dysbiosis, access to clean water is difficult and violent due to planetary dysregulation and extractivist economies, and we are also losing millions of Kin at various scales. At the human scale, we are losing Land and Water protectors, who have historically and diligently defended our right to the Land as well as the Liberation of the Land. At the other side of the scale is the alarming speed the ecocide of more-than-human Kin is happening, which means that we are losing systems that contribute to pollination, micro-climates, and soil health.
These changes and challenges are not happenstance, they are crises that have been deliberately orchestrated by white supremacy for the generation of profit. They are the continual imaginations that genocided our Ancestors. Therefore, our response to the crises cannot rely on their knowledges or their imaginations, we must turn to our more-than-human Kin and the connections we have had for their Wisdoms and guidance. There are many Land-Kinned Peoples across the world who are building bridges back to the Land and healing. For example, in Cuba, they are studying plant immunology to understand more about how plants stay healthy even in extreme weather conditions. They are also growing and expanding extremophile plants, so all of their Kin can survive what is to come. The Peoples of the Chad basin are healing the Land that has been desecrated and abused by western industry and colonialism. They have turned to their Ancestral Wisdoms for guidance and are healing acres of Land that were once barren. In California, the Lisjan Ohlone Peoples, who are the original Peoples of Huchiun, now known under its colonised name of San Francisco Bay Area, have started a project of Rematriation. They call it Sogorea Te’ Land trust, in their own words they say Rematration is “Indigenous women-led work to restore sacred relationships between Indigenous Peoples and our Ancestral Land, honouring our matrilineal societies, and in opposition to patriarchal violence and dynamics”. These various healing methods make us aware that “the work” is alive and well, that we are always developing new methods and practices of relating to the Land in the face of continual violence and interruption, and that we will always find ways to still be here.
Our Response:
How We Root
Our Futures
The restoring of sacred relationships is an important thread of work to our survival and Liberation. As all of us from Turtle Island and Abya Yala in some form have had their relation to the Land interrupted. Settler colonialism interrupts through displacement, land grabs, boarding schools, kidnappings, enslavement, cultural genocide, contamination and genocide of more-than-human Kin, and various other violences. We must acknowledge that we are interrupted but not broken or unlinked. Through our collective memories and perhaps through blood we carry an intrinsic link to the Land that birthed our Ancestors. It is this that will keep guiding us.
Those who are alive today face an additional challenge, we no longer have access to the wide catalogue of tools our Ancestors did before 1492. Paired with a plurality of crises, our time is uniquely challenging. Therefore, we have to keep creating new strategies, methods, practices, and imaginations. Our health and the health of future generations, including more-than-human Kin depends on dedicating time to restoring our Land relations at all scales. Whether it is remembering and executing an Ancestral recipe, safeguarding seeds, learning our languages, or starting a Land collective, or simply surviving - it all counts.
In this project we cover one possible path forward, that of the Andean Bitter Potato (the desiccated products are Chuñu and Moraya in Quechua & T’unta in Aymara). Within the life and history of the Bitter Potato lies a story of solidarity and Kinship between Peoples, Land, and more-than-human Kin. It’s also a beautiful example of interdependent survival. As the Potato nourishes the Peoples, they simultaneously guarantee their own survival on earth. The work of restoring Land and more-than-human relations by Land-Kinned Peoples is often referred to as Traditional Ecological Knowledges or Traditional Knowledges by western academics. The word tradition refers to a phenomena or activity that has been long-standing. This can be problematic as it can assume that these relations are locked in time rather than being in constant evolution. This mindset can also assume that Land-Kinned/Indigenous Peoples are no longer relevant to the development of our current world. However, we are still here and striving to continue our Kinned journey with this planet. Traditional Ecological Knowledges can be understood as epistemologies that are embodied and cultivated in Kinship over time, they are alive and evolving between Kin, in practice, in relation and in action. They are Knowledges that realise the experience of and between Kin.
The next chapter of the Bitter Potato is being co-written by Quechua & Aymara Peoples and the Potato themselves. Here, we tell just one part of this continual, intricate, and life-sustaining story.
THE BITTER
POTATO
Prayer, Dance, Soil
On the Capac Inti Raymi (Andean new year, December), owners of chakra (plot in Quechua) prepare to embrace Pachamama (time/space) and other Kin with the promise of life through offerings like coca leaves, aqa (maize fermented drink, chicha), alpaca fat, flowers and various crops, including native potatoes. An Elder holds with both hands kintucha (three perfectly shaped coca leaves) whispering wishes and blowing them to ask nearby Apus (mountain gods) good harvest for this year and the upcoming generations. As the leaves are passed from hand to hand, everyone sends their prayers to Pachamama, Ajomamma (goddess of potatoes) and other entities. Then, the men start parting the soil pressing their weight into the Chakitaqlla (ancient Andean footplow), while the women whisper prayers of reverence as they walk along the groove, nurturing the potato seeds back to the soil.
“Cultivation of potato and oca”. This is chakitaqlla and the depictions of an early chronicler, Guamán Poma de Ayala (1615) (
Image © Felipe Huaman Puma de Ayala, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Land is Kin
There has been a millennia-long relationship between ecological knowledges, tools, culture, and Land connectedness. Many origin stories across Turtle Island and Abya Yala centre our connection and oneness with the Land. This cultural perspective birthed knowledges, tools, and practices that further deepened and cultivated our connection. With time, it was culturally ingrained that our survival, complexity, and growth were directly dependent on the tools and Land Knowledges we developed. This has given birth to a multitude of ecological practices and technologies across a diversity of geographies and purposes used to this day. For example, crops like potato, coca and quinoa, mainly consumed by the Andean communities, helped build complex societies, cultures, and cities such as Tiwanuku which was a city around Lake Titicaca. Freeze-drying practices of tubers, particularly potatoes, have been crucial for a progressive population growth even under climate and political crises for at least ~3.5 millennia.
The Inkas, who led one of the biggest cultural and population expansions of Tawantinsuyu in Abya Yala (including from today’s south of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia to central Chile and north of Argentina), had a special network of storage systems called Qullqa (a rectangular-shaped building was mainly used to store Chuñu and other crops) that were linked through Qhapaq ñam (Andean road system). This road network allowed Inkas to efficiently collect life sustaining crops that were highly nourishing due to intelligence of ecological technologies and distribute them to the population in times of scarcity. Another result of ecological technologies was that the weight of the Chuñu was much less that of a potato, which also facilitated the distribution, by South American camelids like alpacas and llamas, of food in times of emergencies. We can imagine how these types of ecological technologies and thinking would be beneficial in the context of planetary dysregulation. We have the opportunity to both directly apply these types of technologies, as well as expand them to fit with current needs.
There is one more idea to consider; culture, knowledges, technologies, and even evolution are dependent on collective memory. The plants and crops that have co-evolved with the Abya Yala and Turtle Island Peoples carry all the memories of the Land and in turn their histories. We have a duty of care to continue this long-standing relationship and not forget our origins. We come from the Land, we are the Land. To carry on these practices means that we also carry the memories so they can be transferred to generations to come.
A lot has been taken from us, including large swathes of our cultures, however, if we remember the architecture of our practices and knowledges, we can evolve them to create both resistance to the violence we experience and for our liberation.
The Gift of Observation
There are many of us that have been able to hold on to Ancestral Knowledges but many more of us have been left with nothing due to displacement, kidnappings, enslavement, and various other settler colonial violences that still persists over 500 years. Sadly, due to the continual effects of colonialism, planetary dysregulation, and extractive economies, we continue to lose Ancestral Knowledges. However, they cannot take our traditions of observation, curiosity and Kinship. It is in this cognitive tradition that we can find healing, pathways to rematriation, and restore the vast memories held by the Land.
The skill of observation starts with spending time with the Land, listening to their needs, changes, and memories, documenting systemically what we see, and honing this skill even further. Whilst there are multiple Indigenous world-views in Abya Yala and Turtle Island, there is a common thread within our methods of observation. We see the world in an allocentric manner. We observe the world around us through its interconnections and relationalities. This ability is evident in how the Quechua culture uses the Chakana (the bridge to the above) for creating ecological knowledges, successfully guiding their food productions in various climates and environments.
We can continue this tradition of allocentric observation and use it to understand how to heal and support the Land through the various violences we are witnessing. We can even use observation to evolve our role within the ecosystem, deepening our Kinship with the Land, with each other, and more-than-human Kin.
WE LEARN TOGETHER
WE MOVE FORWARD
TOGETHER
Mutualism, Reciprocity, and Symbiosis. In Kinship with (Bitter) Potatoes
The mutually symbiotic relationship our Ancestors created with the potato species (what Western science knows as “domestication”), contributed to their genetics, chemistry, shapes, flavours and the interactions with other beings within their ecosystems. In return, the potato radically shaped our nourishment, mental and physical development through our gut biome, culture, and cosmovision. These interactions were so deep and for so long that our Ancestors also found a way to use the complex mountain geography and otherwise adverse climatic conditions to get rid of the bitterness in potatoes by traditionally desiccating them.
Our Land-Kinned siblings expose the tubers to a process of freezing and thawing for 2 to 3 days on the coldest days of the year in June. Then, as part of desiccating rituals , they place them on the floor and step on them, pushing the water of the tuber and peeling them off. If the process stops there, the product is called Chuñu or t’unta (for Quechua or Aymara). If Chuñus are further enveloped into a sac or bag and taken to a stream for ~20 days, then the product is Moraya (for both languages).
These food products can be stored in houses or Qullqas for decades in case other crops fail. Since the times of the Chimú people (850 - 1470 AD), Andean people have effectively used this strategy to overcome drought periods. Even the fall of the Moche culture (100-750 AD) is linked to climate crises like flooding and extreme drought from an El Niño event, which prevented them from having access to other crops. Showing that for life to be sustained, there’s a need for diverse food systems, as relying on one crop or variety could be catastrophic.
We have the tools and know what to do. Our Knowledges are constantly evolving and being shaped by the different events and changes that we’re experiencing. The ability to adapt to change is core to all living beings, in fact, even at an individual level, we have evolved physiological responses that are specialised in detecting changes in our environment to generate the appropriate adaptive responses. However, we have to consider three things. The first, is that the changes and events we are experiencing, such as the contamination of our Air, Water, and Soil are happening at exponential rates and in simultaneous locations putting vulnerable populations like Land-Kinned People at higher risk. The second is that these changes, driven by the violence of extractive economies and anti-life governments, are also directly contributing to the dysregulation of planetary systems, which is leading to vast ecocide. The third consideration is that we are facing these extreme changes as we face displacement, discrimination, and poor health. This is a type of loss that we may not have all of the tools for. And yet, the Bitter Potato reminds us of our capacity for deep adaptation. This is not to say that we have “special or magical” powers, as many in the west stereotype us with, it is our ability to Kin with the Land and our allocentric viewpoints.
CONTEMPLATION
If we cannot return to our Lands, how do we Kin with new Lands honestly and deeply?
If we are to be displaced constantly, how do we learn to make Kin and root with new beings in new settings at an equal time scale to develop ecological knowledges suited for this loss?
How do we learn to create more solidarity with others who share our experiences, so we can co-create new ecological knowledges for rapid adaptation?
How do we co-create pathways for Land liberation, so we can abolish displacement for future generations?
How do we hone our observational and listening abilities to bring forward Ancestral Knowledges such as freeze-drying potatoes, so it allows us to adapt to our current circumstance, as a form of resistance and liberation?
How do we create new mental and spiritual pathways to mourn the loss, so we can show up for other-than-human Kin with a calm and clear mind? We will not be useful or kind if we are in a constant state of distress. This perhaps is our biggest challenge.
Current Evolution of Ancestral Land Knowledges
Currently, Bitter Potatoes consist of 70% of the Altiplano Andean peoples’ calories intake during August to March, when other crops are less available at such altitudes (above 3500 masl). Despite a reduction in variety, they continue to receive high nourishment and biome diversity, contributing to the overall sustenance and health of Quechua and Aymara Peoples. Additionally, the reach of Chuñu and Moraya is vast outside Altiplano, as they are widely used as thickeners in other regions, contributing to the nourishment of Quechua and Aymara descendants and other Peoples outside their native territory. A great example of the vast significance of the Bitter Potato.
The knowledge and connectedness around Chuñu and Moraya are still practised today with Land-Kinned in the Peruvian, Bolivian, and Argentinian Altiplano, where People continue to tend and grow Bitter Potatoes and vice versa. This Knowledge and care has been passed down by performing these cultivation rituals and involving everyone in the community. Quechua and Aymara People’s unparalleled commitment to living in a symbiotic relationship with the Bitter Potato, has been a historical strategy to guarantee food sovereignty while resisting climate and political changes. The mutualistic symbiosis is deliberately re-birthed everyday through daily rituals and community acts of tending the Chakra, harvesting and communal nourishment practices.
CONTEMPLATION
The Bitter Potato has needed evolutionary time to co-emerge alongside the Peoples of the Andes, it is part of their Creation story. However, it would seem that we no longer have this kind of time span.
How do we perceive time differently and what tools can help us towards it, so we can create other mutualistic symbiotic relations that will birth new creation stories?
How do we archive the Knowledges of the Bitter Potato as we move through the loss and crises, so we can continue to pass on Ancestral Knowledges to our future generations?
Can we create new cultivation rituals that incorporate our collective mourning?
What is the value of collaborating with western scientific methods to preserve and evolve the Knowledges and Technologies generated by the Bitter Potato in symbiosis with Andean Peoples?
An Andean World-View
Here, we offer all our Land-Kinned and Indigenous Kin around the world a glimpse of our world view. This is also a reminder to ourselves that our roots run deep and they have been nourished with millennia-long Knowledges, Wisdoms, Philosophies, and Epistemologies. As we mourn the incredible loss of our Lands, culture, and Peoples, we can turn to our worldview to guide, comfort, and even give us the mental architecture to mitigate the loss we are witnessing. Quechua and Aymara Peoples have used the Chakana as our symbol of interconnectedness of People, more-than-human Kin, and Cosmos (the Universe and its order). Additionally, the detail and intricacy of the Chakana shows us that everything that was created and continues to be created using this world-view is not accidental or “magical” as it is often dismissed as, it is deeply intentional.
This world-view also supports the idea of an allocentric point of view, which is essential for this era. We cannot dismiss these Ancestral methods and practices as being part of a different era, we must learn to hone them and make them relevant for our current circumstances.
For Quechua Peoples, we follow Chakana’s cosmovision and its embedded Knowledges, which is the relationality of everything, the cultural fusion of our most sacred Kinship with human, more-than-human Kin, calendar and symbols.
Our Peoples developed labour principles that were rooted in reciprocity to ensure that all Peoples within each community lived with dignity and equity, all still practised today. They are as follows:
Ayni, the work the community does is mainly to improve the communities’ infrastructure, including helping the most vulnerable, like orphans and Elders.
Minka, the reciprocal work families help to build or improve another family’s house or plot.
Mita, the work owed to improve the State’s infrastructures.
Agricultural calendar following the best growing conditions according to the local environmental conditions.
Inti Raymi (21 June), the main Andean celebration in honour of Inti (the Sun God) in the winter solstice, as the following days will have more hours of light. It was interrupted and banned after 1492, but celebrated again from 1944 to this day.
Pachamama Raymi (1 August), the cult to Pachamama when people mark the cattle and dig a hole with offerings, giving back what Pachama gave us; maize, coca leaves, fruits and food specially prepared for her. Everyone dances and sings until the next early morning.
Auti Willka Chika (21 September), which marks the Spring equinox when flowers bloom and is the time to plant crops, is celebrated to ask for a good harvest.
Anata (Carnival Monday in February), celebrated to bless the crops production and in particular linked to potato production. Including Ch’alla, which celebrates the first harvest, the offerings include flowers and aqa.
Hallu Willka Chika (23 March), the harvest feast, marks the autumn equinox. The celebrations include the end of harvesting and preserving the seeds for the upcoming planting season.
CONTEMPLATIONS
How do we keep these labour principles with us, regardless of where we are forced to be?
Is there room for developing them further to address the deep loss and inequity we are currently facing?
How do we create systemic mechanisms to teach these principles to the younger generations, so they are not lost?
Can we create archival principles and methods that are coherent with our philosophies for the next generations?
We are Pachamama and Ajommama’s children
Our Ancestors and us, in Kinship with Nature and particularly potatoes, have been growing thousands of potato varieties for millennia. We’ve been coming up with different ways of processing them to make them last longer, like Chuñu, or to give them healing properties, like Tocosh. We’ve been eating them as a staple and in several innovative ways, they have provided sustenance, nourishment, and even immune support. We’ve been maintaining our ways of living and Kinship with Nature, while resisting the global pressures, at times harsh climates, and even settler colonialism. As long we stay Kinned with the Land, whether it be directly within our territories or spiritually if we are displaced, we will continue to build pathways of justice, liberation, dignity, and healing. However, our ability to resist the violence does not condone it nor does it mean that we accept it as an inevitable part of life. We all deserve to live a life without violence and harm rather than learn to resist it.
CONTEMPLATIONS
What does the Bitter Potato need to survive planetary dysregulation?
Could it be a crop that continues to feed and sustain Quechuan and Aymara Peoples as the ecologies of our Lands continue to change and degrade?
How can we best protect our current Potato varieties from the more and more frequent and extreme droughts and frosts?
Can our sister and brother researchers (Andean and Aymara) help us conserve the current Bitter Potato varieties and innovate for the future challenges by integrating western science to our epistemologies?
We follow Allin Kawsay Principles
This is our development model for a better livelihood based on solidarity and reciprocity with all Kin, while respecting Pachamama. We follow Allin Kawsay (“Buen Vivir”) , which is based on physically and spiritually living well and in harmony with Pachamama, other Kin and oneself. Here again it is important to note that our principles are not happenstance, it has required deep time and space to be shaped. Any cognitive product, whether it be principles, methods, theories and so on require mental infrastructure such as processes, epistemologies and culture, these too require time and space to develop. These types of world-views, due to their thoroughness and complexity, can not be developed by a singular person or even within one moment in time, they require collaboration and evolutionary time.
Therefore, we must consider how we, those living right now collectively, contribute to their respective world-views. In part it starts with acknowledging them and bringing them back into our daily life. Here, we highlight how Allin Kawsay principles have been used to create abundance and diversity through agrobiodiversity.
Agrobiodiversity is the biodiversity in the agricultural ecosystems, which produces food, medicine, clothing and furniture. It is also the Knowledges associated with the particular crops’ ecology, their diversity, understanding the climatic conditions while harnessing them in favour, the complex product processing and particular usage underpins millennia old cultural traditions carried by Land-Kinned people in connection with their environment.
Alongside crops, Andean cultivators also respect and tend the crops’ Ancestors (“wild” species) growing in the chakras (plot) by not uprooting them as they would with other plants. Species considered “wild” in Western science are bred and taken care of by Apus (God mountains) and other beings in sallqas (lands that are not cultivated by people, as opposed to chakra), making human agriculture an extension of Apus tending species. In return, potatoes and other crops and animals also tend us. For example, during the festivities for Mamacha Candelaria in Conima, Puno, Aymara women harvest the first potato tubers and make them meet the ones preserved from the previous ritual, while the Andean healer voices the old tubers says to the newly unearthed tubers “As we have nurtured these people, it is now your turn to do so”.
Similarly, our Kʼicheʼ brothers and sisters (in today’s colonised land of Guatemala) have similar comovision, as read in their Popol Vuh. Where gods practised Milpa to produce maize, beans, squash and chilli. Humans learnt the Milpa system from the gods and to this day practise it. Thus, in our cultures, we don’t follow the “wild” and “domesticated” dichotomy concepts, all more-than-human-Kin are all interconnected, welcome and of value.
CONTEMPLATIONS
Can the Ancestral Knowledges of agrobiodiversity be ethically evolved to help heal the Land from contamination and other degradation?
Could we develop “comunales” dedicated to agrobiodiversity that follow local principles and are also connected across Turtle Island and Abya Yala? This could reduce the vulnerabilities presented by planetary dysregulation, settler colonial violence, and extractive economies.
How can we put forward our cosmovision of all beings tending each other in order to inspire other Kin to practise respect to all beings and entities?
A Scientific View
Ethical Western science provides us with an opportunity to observe additional qualities of the Bitter Potato, the mode and tempo of how it has evolved over time and space, allowing us to deepen our relationship with this plant. Bitter potatoes are highly resilient crops to abiotic and biotic stress that Andean peoples developed and still cultivate until now. They are sister species to the globally known and consumed common potato: Solanum tuberosum. Bitter potatoes grow or are cultivated at 3500-4600 m.a.s.l. along the Andes from Venezuela to Argentina. They are frost and drought-hardy, and early maturing, which has been of interest for breeding programmes. In botany, they comprise five species within the Solanum genus, S. ×juzepczukii, S. curtilobum, S. ×ajanhuiri, S. megistacrolobum and S. acaule, where the last two are non-cultivated. Bitter potatoes have medium to high levels of secondary metabolites, particularly glycoalkaloids, compared to the common potato. These compounds act as a defence against herbivores, giving the potato plants their bitter taste and making them toxic when consumed in large quantities.
While glycoalkaloid levels vary, being higher in flowers than in tubers, the close relationship between Andean people and the potato plant led to the development of varieties with lower alkaloid content in the tubers, making them safe for consumption. Additionally, during my fieldwork in early 2024, I met several Quechua families who consume bitter potatoes for their healing properties against gallstones and pneumonia, to name a couple. In the same line, researchers have found that these glycoalkaloids have anti-inflammatory and antitumor effects. Thus, we can argue that people and bitter potatoes are in mutualistic symbiosis; people keep growing medium-high glycoalkaloid varieties and species for healing purposes, for example, while bitter potatoes produce such glycoalkaloids to fight herbivores and to ensure being tended by people.
CONTEMPLATIONS
How can we continue to use western science along with Ancestral Knowledges to advance our relationship with the Bitter Potato and other ecological technologies?
How do we set clear boundaries to protect our Ancestral Knowledges from scientific exploitation?
Through evolutionary genomic questions, we can identify the genomic regions that confer abiotic resistance to Bitter Potatoes. Then, by exploring Bitter Potatoes at population genomic levels, we can identify which populations have such resistance traits. Understanding the evolutionary Kinship among Bitter Potato populations will empower Andean farmers to develop their own breeding programmes on their terms and Knowledges. These questions can be applied to other relevant native crops that are also cultivated in complex ecologies, which Land and Kin are facing challenges.
Epistemic Justice
Historically, the study and collection of Andean crops, especially native potatoes, were driven by extractivist research agendas linked to colonial interests. These efforts prioritised gathering botanical "resources" without considering local Knowledges or needs. However, recent decades have seen a shift toward more inclusive approaches, incorporating diverse local epistemologies that challenge extractivist practices. Indigenous-led research, grounded in local cosmovisions, now aims to ensure equitable sharing of research benefits. Increasingly, Global North researchers advocate for Indigenous Knowledge systems as ethical, culturally aware alternatives to address global crises. These systems emphasise interconnectedness between Peoples, Nature, and the Cosmos, promoting sustainability and care for all Kin.
Through this project, we aim to decolonise the current dominant knowledges around Bitter Potatoes; which have been rooted in extractivist agendas. Re-acknowledge the erased role and agency of Andean Peoples in developing the millennia connectedness with Nature and potatoes that resulted in developing over four thousands of potato varieties while knowing their biology, as well as right agricultural practices given the complex mountain geographies.
As part of ensuring our futures, all aspects of our ecological Knowledges must be stewarded by those who have historically conserved, cared for, and cultivated crops like the Bitter Potato. Our Knowledges should stay local within the hands of the comuneros and comuneras, including their archival processes. This, in essence, is epistemic justice, which is a concept that all knowledge should be freely accessible and considered equal in value to other knowledges. However, we would like to go even further, epistemic justice should include the creation of infrastructure for Indigenous Knowledges to be documented, archived, and upheld by us and for our continual development. Secondly, epistemic justice should also offer protection from exploitation, where our Knowledges are taken from us and gate kept or used to uphold systems of supremacy. The access to our Knowledges is core to our futures and liberation. How can we create our worlds and envision realities without supremacy if we only use their knowledges? Even the way we refer to ourselves is in their language and rooted in their realities, we are Indigenous as a direct reflection of the coloniser. How do we imagine ourselves using our own words and Knowledges?
Recommendation for Epistemic Justice
While most studies and projects on Andean crops have focused on the common potato due to its great impact on the global market, projects that put Bitter Potatoes and other local crops like quinoa, oca, mashwa and mawka in the light, acknowledges this crops’ role in the Andean cosmovision.
The approach
Engaging with Bitter Potato farmers in the Andean Altiplano through interviews in Quechua and Aymara and a deep understanding of the cultural context builds trust, crucial for understanding the peoples’ concerns and shared knowledge. A long-term commitment, humility, and willingness to learn from the farmers' perspectives help align with Land-Kinned methodologies that prioritise relationality and respect. This approach turns local-led research into a collaborative effort, making the outcomes more beneficial to the community.
The Research Questions
Tackling community-relevant questions about Bitter Potatoes regarding their diversity, ecology, bitterness content and genetic diversity across time with scientific and Andean epistemologies can benefit the community and their resistance against pressing issues like biodiversity loss and food insecurity.
The following is an extract from "Allasi Canales, N., Curry, HA. Unearthing Colonial Pasts and Indigenous Futures through Potato Collections, 2025. (in review)"
The generated knowledge from our research should not only be publications but, if requested by the communities, it can be a starting point to enhance the well-being and weave back with land and cultures, opening new avenues for healing imaginations. Thus, the data generated will be the communities’ intellectual property to prevent exploitation of the knowledge and genetic diversity. Bitter potatoes might not have been a main focus point in Western science, especially in applied research. However, for Andean communities, these potatoes are more than just food- they are essential for survival, demonstrating a deep connection and understanding of our Land, culture and resilience. These connections and knowledges shape the science we pursue, ensuring it serves the needs for those who rely on it, while also bolstering our communities and the next generations. Understanding historical samples, first collected to improve the British potato, through state-of-the-art genomic, chemical and ecological methods is also bringing back the knowledge associated with them, which was carefully tended by our ancestors across different altitudes and adverse environmental conditions. This commitment to our systems should not open the door to knowledge mining. Indigenous knowledge is linked to Indigenous self-determination, rights, and responsibilities, including the respect of all Kin, not only humans. Our ancestors’ stewardship of Bitter Potatoes is a testimony to these principles, where the cultivation and preservation of this crop are acts of resistance, resilience, and reverence for the interconnectedness of life.
Imagining Ourselves Beyond Genocide
For over 500 years we have only been able to imagine ourselves as either having survived genocide or as needing to survive impending genocide. We have been in a constant state of grief and trauma, which can make it difficult to find the mental space to imagine ourselves beyond our current moment or beyond the grasps of settler colonialism. Fortunately, we still have access to Ancestral Knowledges and more-than-human Kin, who also hold Knowledges that can guide our future. Let us imagine our beginning, our continuation, our existance beyond genocide.
The ancient Andean agrosystems and current conservation and innovation efforts will be the instruments to address the challenges we are facing. Our Ancestors have already deciphered the best times to plant, harvest, let the Soil rest all while respecting and loving to the Pachamama and all the Kin that surround us, as represented in our sacred chakana. Our Elders also came up with systems to uplift everyone’s livelihoods based on communal solidarity like Ayni, Mita and Minka.
People are constantly adapting their practices and ways with the Soil, Land and Environment to the current risks. Thus, studying our locally important crops (and by extension biodiversity) through different epistemologies, while maintaining the focus on research questions based on the communities’ needs, we can start our healing processes from past injustices and current challenges. The same way our Quechua Kin have thrived through past climate crises, ensuring the most vulnerable have access to food in uncertain times through Qullqa and Qhapaq Ñan.
Even as we face the destruction of the Soil we can turn to Ancestral Knowledges.
Bitter Potatoes already have a great potential to be crucial for the current and future environmental pressures. Additionally, the current biodiversity at cultivar level of Bitter Potatoes means our food systems stay diverse and therefore protected against biotic and abiotic stresses that threaten monocultures.
Communal agricultural systems that are already in place can be remembered and replicated in Andean villages, where people practise rotation farming in their community’s chakra (manda).
Despite our incredible resistance we have co-created with the Bitter Potato and other crops, the current planetary dysregulation could severely affect those species and the wider Andean ecosystems. Additionally, due to socio-economic pressures to migrate to cities in search of better education and livelihood, the youth are decreasingly involved in farming practices. Therefore, we must consider how we involve urban and Andean peoples descendants’ communities in Ancestral Knowledges and advocate for abolishing Right to Pollute Policies that give industrial polluters full legal permission to pollute and extract from our Lands.
Finally, we must continue to create pathways of solidarity with other Land-Kinned and Indigenous Peoples around the world, so together we can advocate for Land liberation, as we will not be free until the Land is free.
WITH THE LAND
WE SEED OUR FUTURES:
STORIES OF THE ANDES
“The L’uki potato always bears its seed (even when there is frost). Good or bad, it recovers and the potato produces seed. We defend ourselves with that. Because there is nothing more here. What are we going to do here? It does not produce much. (Only) Llama and Chuñu. The place where we are is a cold place, the cold is special.”
- Don David
David Sánchez Choque
Work focus: potato cultivation and alpaca herding at Huari, Bolivia
What I learned from Santosa:
about the local agricultural practices, where I learnt about peoples’ locally important varieties and that many of them use wanu (alpaca/sheep/cow dung) as fertiliser
Santosa Mamani Huarcaya
Work focus: agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge at Ocuri, Bolivia
What I learned from Vitalia:
that Bitter Potatoes are important to people that grow them because it gives them sustainance and cultural identity and pride. They use Bitter Potatoes as medicine and for rituals. For many Bitter Potatoes are staple, eating them everyday twice a day.
Vitalia Colque Jorge
Work focus: agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge at Pintata, Bolivia
What I learned from Paula:
that people are very concerned about extended draughts (Bitter Potatoes are rainfed only) and frost which can kill the tubers, affecting not only the year’s harvest but since the tubers are “seeds”, it has an impact for the future cultivation..
Paula Huamán Landa
Work focus: agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge at Accha Alta, Peru.
What I learned from Doña Vicentina:
that in her community, people select the potato seeds each year right after harvesting. Also, all the seeds she has are selected in this way and since potatoes are vegetatively propagated, the potato varieties she grows and eats today may have been in her family for generations.
Vicentina Poma Huamán
Work focus: agricultural, botanical and cultural knowledge at Accha Japupampa, Peru.
Dr Nataly Allasi Canales
Dr Nataly Allasi Canales is a Villum Fellow at the University of Copenhagen and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew who applies her cosmovision and interdisciplinary approaches in plant science. Her current project explores questions relevant to Andean communities by studying the ecologic niche, genetic and chemical diversity of uncommon tuber-bearing potato species to identify resilient populations and predict their growing conditions within the Andes in the face of farmers being affected by climate change. She has a PhD in Evolutionary Genomics from the University of Copenhagen, Natural History Museum of Denmark, and a Postgraduate diploma in Interculturality and Amazonian Indigenous peoples from the Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya. She is the author of several research articles and chapters on the genomics of cinchona, biodiversity, and the use of museum collections in genomic research, as well as public-facing accounts including, “The Roots of a Scientist” commissioned by the Wellcome Trust.
Supported by
Araceli Camargo - Co-Writer
Hannah Yu-Pearson - Editor
Joshua Artus - Designer