The University of British Columbia

Symposium Resources

Andean Pacha and Mama Kawsay

Tirso Gonzales
Indigenous Studies, UBCO

Article

From Colonial Encounter to Decolonizing Encounters. Culture and Nature seen from the Andean Cosmovision of Ever: the Nurturance of Life as Whole

Suggested Books/Comments

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Wes Jackson. 1996. Becoming Native to this Place. Counterpoint.


Quijano, A. (2000) ‘Coloniality of power, eurocentrism and Latin America’, Nepantla: Views from the South, vol 1, no 3, pp533-580
Lander, E. (2000) ‘Eurocentrism and colonialism in Latin American social thought’, Nepantla: Views from South, vol 1, no 3, pp519-532
Frederique Apffel-Marglin with PRATEC. 1998. The Spirit of Regeneration. Andean Culture Confronting Western Notions of Development. Zed Books Ltd. London and New York.


PRATEC. 2006. Calendario Agrofestivo en Comunidades y Escuela. Proyecto Andino de Tecnologias Campesinas, PRATEC. Peru.


Manfred A. Max-Neef. 2009. “From Knowledge to Understanding: Navigations and Returns”. Draft thematic paper for What Next Forum.
Jorge Ishizawa. 2006. “From Andean Cultural Affirmation to Andean Affirmation of Cultural Diversity—Learning with the Communities in the Central Andes.” Draft thematic paper for What Next Forum.
Jack Ralph Kloppenburg. 2004. First the seed: the political economy of plant biotechnology, 1492-2000.  University of Wisconsin Press.


Melissa K. Nelson. 2008. Original Instructions. Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future. Bear and Company.


C.A. Bowers and Frédérique Apffel-Marglin (eds). 2005. Rethinking Freire: Globalization and the Environmental Crisis. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahway, NJ.


Carolyn Merchant. 1992. Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable world, Routledge, New York, and Chapman & Hall, London.


Noorgard, R. (1994) Development Betrayed: The End of Progress and a Coevolutionary Revisioning of the Future, Routledge, London and New York.


Narby, J. (2005) Intelligence in Nature: An Inquiry into Knowledge, Penguin, New York


Narby, J. (2007) ‘An anthropologist explores biomolecular mysticism in the Peruvian Amazon. Shaman’s Drum, no 74, pp43-46.

From the perspective of the Andean cosmovision of ever, culture and nature are not separate. At the core of this cosmovision is the nurturing of life as a whole. Such nurturing takes place within the local pacha (meaning the living, natural collectivity of all beings) and comprises the runa (humans), sallqa (nature), and apus/wacas (deities). Kawsay Mama (mother seed) is embedded within pacha and interacting dynamically with-in the chacra/small plot of land with the components of the natural collectivity. Learning how to nurture and letting oneself be nurtured is a primordial principle and practice in the Andes. Nurturance is carried out through the treatment of all entities as equivalent beings, with respect, empathy, reciprocity and joy. All living beings (i.e. Kawsay mama/mother seed) are considered equivalent persons that complement one another through acts of mutual nurture, which is manifested in rituals and daily dialogue. Through formal and informal dialogue, Andean indigenous peasants have developed sophisticated responses to the variety of beings inhabiting a particular agricultural place or chacra, the small plot of land at the centre of everyday practices and rituality. Chacra is not only the place but also the relations sustaining all equivalent persons such as the seed, the lama, the rain, the rock in the mutual relations of harmony that procure life continually. The chacra is harbored within pacha, the landscape that Andean indigenous peoples have become intimate with, the landscape that they have come to know in all its expressions over time. Through ritual, the Andean worldview purports to sustain the creation and recreation of diversity in all of its expressions and practices. The contemporary concept of sustainability is intrinsic to this millenary worldview; the Andean cosmovision is devoted to the procurement of balance and harmony among all living beings demonstrated both in daily and ritual practices. This unique approach to life was rarely understood by the colonizer mentality and its dominant Euro-American centered view of the world that has dominated for the last 500 years, thus marginalizing and threatening the Andean way of life and the life of mother earth as a whole.