This project shares the efforts of the Muysca Fowe community in the Andes of Colombia, in leading a movement to liberate the territories they once inhabited from colonial exploitation and returning to their ancestral ways of living.

The Muysca (meaning “people” in the Muyscubun language), an ancient Indigenous civilization native to Colombia, see this decolonization of both the mind and the land as only possible through alternative education systems and a permanent dialogue with the surrounding nature. For them, everything is Muysca, everything is people, and rebuilding our relationship with the people-land, the people-river, the people-trees and all beings who share the planet with us is the first step to relearn what has been lost throughout centuries of separation from our true self.

The process of the Muysca Fowe community (fowe meaning “fox”) is not only about liberating the land, but also about liberating ourselves, our minds, our conditioning and our habits which seem natural to us now from our colonial heritage and indoctrination which is still present in our daily lives.

This means that first we must liberate and decolonize our minds and bodies in order to then act to liberate the land. Through colonization, we were made to believe that we are not sons and daughters of Mother Earth, that we do not depend on her and vice versa, and we have forgotten to listen to her. The Muysca believe that colonization was possible through the disconnection to the Earth, through what they describe as the “cutting of the umbilical cord” which kept us connected to Mother Earth. Therefore, now we are lost and confused since we have lost our sense of origin and connection.

Directed by Mariana Rivera
Cinematography by Danielle Khan Da Silva