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Stories of Resilience

A set of interwoven stories that show the strength and adaptation capacity of indigenous and local communities’ organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic irreversibly altered human life, with new social and economic implications. Amid the global emergency, indigenous peoples and local forest communities survived, adapted, and grew from the hardship. Their inspiring stories illuminate one of the darkest chapters in recent history.

Costa Rica

The Rescue of Seeds and the Return to the Soil

In the Bribri and Cabécar indigenous territories of Costa Rica, a group of women started a movement to guarantee quality food for hundreds of families.

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Indonesia

Community Organization and Solidarity in the Face of Adversity

Community solidarity, unity, and organization made it possible to protect millions of people during the pandemic in Indonesia, the world’s largest island nation.

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Brazil

Keeping Ancestral Strength Amid a Pandemic

Powered by the fire of ancestry and spirituality, Brazil’s indigenous peoples withstood the pandemic on their own terms, steadfast in the fight for rights and environmental protection.

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Ecuador

Reviving Ancestral Knowledge

When COVID-19 arrived in the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador, the communities took up their ancestral knowledge, reviving the flame of traditional medicine with their profound knowledge of plants and the natural world. 

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Stories of Resilience is a Global Alliance of Territorial Communities and TINTA (The Invisible Thread) collaboration to inspire global change through highlighting Indigenous and local communities’ practices that have successfully tackled COVID-19.

TINTA (The Invisible Thread) is a global facilitation platform to strengthen Indigenous, local and frontline community organisations.

Costa Rica

The rescue of seeds and the return to the soil

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, the Bribri and Cabécar people relied on the sales of plantain and bananas for their survival. The road closures and the halt in economic activity generated an urgent need to provide food in solidarity with hundreds of families in the Talamanca communities, a local area with the largest Indigenous population in Costa Rica. However, the initial chaos gave way to a revival of traditional sowing methods and a return to a nutritious, organic, and ancestral diet.

It is important for us as women to continue leading food production and food security, which are the most sensitive and worrying issues for us since they are related to our families’ nutrition.

Maricela Fernández, leader of the Cabécar people and president of the Kábata Könana Women’s Association shares information in one of the communities that is part of the Women’s Association’s network.

The respect for ancestral customs and practices has revived interest in the communities for self-sufficient and organic agriculture, and it has allowed women to recover crops that their ancestors grew in the mountains, using their elders’ knowledge to produce fresh food in abundance.

Protectors of the Forest and the Mountain

Two weeks after the initial start of the pandemic in 2020, the Association for the Integral Development of the Indigenous Talamanca Cabécar Territory (ADITICA) organized a meeting to address the public health emergency and delegate responsibilities to the community organizations that comprise it. That is how the Kábata Könana Women’s Association, meaning the Protectors of the Forest and the Mountain in Cabécar, became responsible for developing a core cultural productive process focused on food security.

The group of women conducted a diagnosis of communities deep in the forest. This diagnosis revealed that agriculture had been left aside because the sale of some products met their economic requirements. Maricela Fernández, leader of the Cabécar people explains that “we were focused on the sale of plantain and bananas, so we were more interested in selling plantain and bananas than in growing basic grains, tubers, medicinal plants and diversifying our plots.”

The diagnosis conducted by the Kábata Könana Women’s Association required them to visit more than 110 families, in communities scattered over vast distances in the tropical forests, valleys, and mountains, where on occasions it was necessary to navigate large rivers to reach the villages.

Little by little, an inventory was created of what each woman planted in their plot: rice, beans, corn, manioc, cocoa, chili peppers, fruits, and medicinal plants, among many more crops. Based on this inventory, it was possible to see who needed seeds to restart the cultivation of certain products on their lands. Thus, the ancestral, healthy, and self-sufficient diet that the Bribri and Cabécar people have relied on for centuries was recovered.

We started working in traditional agriculture, without chemicals. All of us working organically to preserve the native seeds that are resistant to climate change, and that is what we’ve been doing

The need to diversify crops and preserve seeds led the Kábata Könana Association to create systems to exchange seeds and products between women in the communities. Through the organization of monthly fairs and markets, in which people gather to sell their excess produce or exchange it for other products with their female colleagues, the women commercialize their products and provide for their community.

The Bribri and Cabécar people’s diet includes a great variety of tubers, grains, vegetables, and fruits.

Weaving Community Networks

The Kábata Könana project began generating results in the communities of the indigenous territories of Talamanca Cabécar. But the needs were the same in other territories, so the Bribri and Cabécar Indigenous Network (RIBCA) also supported the exchange of knowledge between six women’s organizations, to replicate the markets and seed exchanges in other communities.

Alondra Cerdas is the community leader of the Tayní Indigenous Territory and president of the Ditsä Wä Kjänana Women’s Association, meaning Women Protectors of the Seeds in Cabécar. Their organization is one of those who replicated the markets and seed exchanges that started in the Talamanca Cabécar Territory.

Alondra recalls how at the beginning of the pandemic the markets closed, and the Ministry of Education’s programs to supply food to children and teenagers in schools across the country were called off. The school meals programs made up a large part of the children’s diet, and when they were shut down families began needing more food, during a time when the cost of food started to rise.

Because of this, women in the Tayní territory decided to tackle the urgent need to resume traditional agriculture, where plants, fruit, vegetables, and tubers are organically produced, agrochemical-free, and grown in diversified plots, providing better nutrients for their families’ diet.

Alondra considers the first year of the pandemic as a terrifying time for her community and the territories in general. She works as an assistant for the Indigenous People Attention Program at the Costa Rican Social Security Fund, the institution that took care of the first case of COVID-19 in the Tanyí Indigenous Territory.

We came to the conclusion that a healthy diet would help us protect ourselves against any virus and any disease, to have better defenses to counter these diseases. Our products are organic, if we know how to look after them and how to plant them they provide a large quantity of vitamins, calcium, and iron to our immune system

The return to traditional agriculture improved the quality of life in the territories and also generated an economic activity capable of creating income with the sales of excess produce from the female producers’ plots.

In addition to food, the women sell all types of products from the forest, basketry items, and craftwork during the monthly fairs and markets.

Several women’s organizations gather in Gavilán Canta, at Kábata Könana Association’s headquarters, where the transport of the women producers and their crops is coordinated from the communities deep inside the mountains. The facilities are the property of the Association, and the women are co-owners of the property, in which they have built an office equipped with solar panels, internet access, a sleeping area, and a fitted kitchen.

Near the office, the women have also built a circular house in the architectural style, worldview, and customs of the Cabécar people, using raw materials such as wood, rope, and palm leaves from the forest. In this circular house, cultural activities, meetings, and all types of community events take place. In different, scattered plots on the property, the women also watch over the seedbeds arranged according to Cabécar ancestral engineering, which is circular like their buildings.

Organizing the women in the communities to produce all the food has been hard work that continues until now, generating benefits for hundreds of families, with dozens of women actively involved in the markets and seed exchanges.

Traditional knowledge is the essence of a people, of an indigenous territory. Knowledge is the strength of a people because it has a connection to Mother Earth, it has a connection to the forest and a connection with all of nature. The pandemic was a difficult thing for us because it claimed many of our elders’ lives, but we can also say that from the pandemic we were able to learn and embrace a lot of knowledge, a lot of practices, a lot of culture, that we had almost forgotten.

The priorities of the women’s associations drove them to resume traditional organic agriculture, in which plants, fruits, vegetables, and tubers grow in beds alongside other crops, preserving the seeds most resistant to climate change and giving their families the opportunity to maintain an ancestral diet. All of this is possible thanks to the tenacity of the women producers and the fact that their territories are legally recognized, allowing them to make self-determined decisions about health and economic issues.

The activities and solutions of Indigenous communities are crucial to the mitigation of climate change and to the deceleration of biodiversity loss in tropical forests worldwide. Supporting the defense of their territorial rights is therefore one of the most effective ways to preserve the biodiverse areas of the planet, on which the future of humanity relies.

Stories of Resilience is a Global Alliance of Territorial Communities and TINTA (The Invisible Thread) project for the documentation and visibility of cases that show the adaptability, strength, and unity of people and communities in the face of COVID-19 in the Latin American, Asian, and African territories that make up the Alliance.

Indonesia

Community Organisation and Solidarity in the Face of Adversity

The Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Archipelago (AMAN) works locally, nationally, and internationally to advocate for the Indigenous peoples of Indonesia; it represents more than 2350 communities, totaling 21 million individual members.

Stretching from Sumatra in Asia to the western part of New Guinea in Oceania, Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelagic state. Despite these geographical conditions, AMAN was able to support and accompany its member communities during the COVID-19 pandemic by providing clear guidelines, when the Indonesian State was unable to respond effectively.

Community vegetable garden. Rongkong, South Sulawesi Island 

AMAN leadership’s strategic approach traced clear action plans that were carried out in communities far and wide, protecting the lives and well-being of millions during the hardships of the global health emergency. 

A Solid Structure to Support Communities

From the moment the pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization in March 2020, AMAN’s Secretary General instructed all its regional and local chapters, organisations, and groups to carry out a total lockdown in Indigenous territories. 

Eustobio Rero, Deputy for Organisational Affairs at AMAN, remembers how the announcement of the pandemic came just before the organisation’s annual general meeting was set to take place in Flores, East Nusa Tenggara:

It was only one day before the meeting, and we decided to postpone the event, even though all the regional and local executive bodies were already on their way to attend. Some of the participants for the meeting were already in airports or in transit, but we decided to cancel the meeting to prevent the spread of COVID to the communities.

Additional immediate measures taken by AMAN’s executive bodies included an instruction to increase the production of rice and other staple foods, the distribution of masks and personal protective equipment for medics and primary healthcare staff, as well as coordinating with health agencies, hospitals, and the health services located within the communities. 

AMAN’s self-determined emergency response was crucial to safeguarding the communities because the Indonesian government’s public policies came in late, during May and June 2020, when the COVID-19 virus had already spread throughout Jakarta, Surabaya, Medan, and other regions of the fourth most populated country in the world.

In 2020, all Indigenous communities had already followed the instruction to lock down from March, until February 2021. During that time, none of the people in the Indigenous communities died of COVID. During those 8 months, we worked to ensure mitigation, by conducting a total lockdown and ensuring food sufficiency. We survived to the fullest.
Eustobio Rero
Deputy for Organisational Affairs, AMAN

By November 2021, the Delta variant of COVID-19 had spread in over 179 countries. Many Indigenous peoples in Indonesia fell ill in the communities, and AMAN had to implement even more measures to counter the effects of the pandemic.

In the second phase of the pandemic, during the Delta variant, many people were infected. We then focused our strategy on two things: we helped by providing medical equipment to health service units and encouraged the government to provide vaccination to Indigenous peoples. We were able to encourage the Ministry of Health to provide hundreds of thousands of vaccines specifically for Indigenous peoples.
Annas Radin
Deputy of Empowerment and Community Service, AMAN

Vaccination campaigns were completed with the support of the Indonesian Ministry of Health.

AMANKan: Emergency Response in Action

The work of thousands of AMAN members made it possible to implement a general lockdown in the communities, establish quarantine spots, and increase agricultural production. This was all possible because AMAN established 108 Emergency Response Units at the community level. 

The Emergency Response Units, known as AMANKan, were led by women and young people who worked tirelessly to implement the lockdown, to ensure a dignified quarantine was possible for those returning to the villages from the cities, to organise rituals and traditional healing practices, and to ensure that the instruction to increase food production was followed. 

Documentation of the AMANKan emergency response, photos provided by AMANKan teams in communities all across Indonesia.

Annas Radin, Deputy of Empowerment and Community Service at AMAN was tasked with the coordination of AMANKan. He explains how the instruction to produce more food in the territories became a major accomplishment of the emergency response, as it resulted in a surplus that allowed AMAN to re-distribute the goods to allied organisations and people in need in the cities. By increasing their agricultural production, AMAN member communities contributed greatly to the well-being of millions of people. 

Sovereignty and Solidarity

Beyond the social and economic advantages that producing their food brought to the Indigenous communities, AMAN’s emergency response also took into consideration aspects related to people’s well-being. As Annas recalls: 

Communities were encouraged to conduct quarantines with dignity. This means that if an outsider returned to the village, or someone had an illness or symptoms similar to COVID, they would have to quarantine in the forest, a farming area, or near a river, where the people would build a shelter, send food every day and look after them until they recovered.
Annas Radin
Deputy of Empowerment and Community Service, AMAN

This simple but effective method provided a way to deter the spread of COVID-19 to the villages and ensured that those who fell ill would have a safe recovery. However, when the Delta variant of COVID-19 started to spread, stronger policies had to be enforced to keep the crisis at bay and out of the villages. 

The efforts that people in the communities made to protect their villages – caring for the sick, and increasing agricultural production – were carried out by women and young people, who worked tirelessly. 

We worked together in solidarity to gather rice and ensure that the people who were in quarantine would get enough food. Some of us made cooked meals for them. When someone tested positive, we would give them rice and cooked fish or vegetables.
Romba Marannu.
Chairwoman, Toraja Indigenous Peoples Alliance

Working with a common interest and supporting each other, the communities managed much more than survival: their work provided nutritious food to thousands of people in the cities of Indonesia, where the effects of the pandemic hit hardest. 

Since its creation in 1999, AMAN has developed a strong organisational structure that oversees areas such as management and operational affairs, mobilisation of resources, community support and services, economic development, management of natural resources, and education and cultural affairs. The decisions taken by the Secretary General and their Deputies at the very start of the pandemic proved effective in protecting people in the territories.

AMAN fights for the recognition and protection of Indigenous peoples’ rights in Indonesia. Self-determined measures carried out at all levels, from the communities to the national executive body, were possible thanks to its strong organisational structure. Enforcing Indigenous peoples’ rights is not only a solution to the current climate crisis – it represents a means to guarantee the enduring presence of their vast knowledge and cultural heritage for the collective benefit of humanity. 

Stories of Resilience is a Global Alliance of Territorial Communities and TINTA (The Invisible Thread) project for the documentation and visibility of cases that show the adaptability, strength, and unity of people and communities in the face of COVID-19 in the Latin American, Asian, and African territories that make up the Alliance.

Brazil

Keeping Ancestral Strength Amid a Pandemic

During the pandemic, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) led its member organisations through a centrally coordinated anti-COVID alert system. This system included community closures and a vaccination programme for the 311 indigenous communities that are part of the organisation. Despite their experience in coordinating large-scale mobilisations and advocacy actions, the response to the pandemic has been the most complex organisational challenge for APIB since it was founded in 2005.

APIB vaccination campaign, Khikatxi village, Mato Grosso, Brazil. Credit: Kamikia Kisedje

In a country like Brazil, the seventh most populous in the world, permanent coordination for the defence of indigenous rights requires planning, visibility, and civil mobilisation. These actions are driven by grassroots movements drawing on their ancestral and spiritual energy. Keeping ancestral knowledge alive, preserving spirituality, and defending land tenure are closely interconnected issues for indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples have different traditional knowledge, and our ancestry, our territories, are also part of our struggle. We express this through painting, adornments, headdresses, bracelets, necklaces, in short, through the instruments that strengthen us in our struggle.
Dinamam Tuxá
Executive Director of APIB

The demarcation of indigenous territories is a constitutional right in Brazil and should guarantee the self-determination, autonomy, and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples, as well as their active participation in the management and preservation of these territories. However, in practice, land demarcation processes have been halted, sabotaged, and attacked by commercial and governmental interests.

Brazil’s indigenous peoples are protecting the six biomes that make up their territories by defending their rights. The Amazon, the most well-known of the six Brazilian biomes, is the largest tropical rainforest on the planet. The other Brazilian biomes are the Atlantic Forest, the Cerrado, the Pantanal, the Pampa and the Caatinga. Together, these six biomes are vital contributors to a balanced global climate.

Cacique Raoni Metuktire, one of the most important chiefs of the Kayapó people, an emblematic international figure in the struggle for the preservation of the Amazon rainforest and indigenous culture. Credit: Kamikia Kisedje / APIB

The Struggle for Mother Earth is the Mother of All Struggles

Women, indigenous women leaders, defend life. Their struggle and advocacy are focused on keeping Mother Earth alive, on stopping deforestation, the plundering of resources, the pollution of water and air, and the rise of global temperatures. By defending all life forms, indigenous women are the first line of environmental defense in the ecosystems that are indispensable for human life to survive on our planet.

Irrespectively of the pandemic, we have always valued spirituality, the biodiversity that provides us with the materials to prepare our medicines, and is also the home of our souls. Thinking about biodiversity is not just thinking about a forest growing - it's a whole range of things, including that magical part that evokes our spirituality. So, the pandemic just cried out to the world how strong and powerful the spiritual force of indigenous people is.
Cristiane Pankararu
Leader of the Pankararu People, ANMIGA

Cristiane Pankararu is one of the founders of the National Articulation of Indigenous Women Warriors of Ancestry (ANMIGA). This organisation is a network for the empowerment of indigenous women, amplifying their voices and their roles as educators and healers. ANMIGA is inspired by their ancestors, the women who fought from the beginning of colonisation in the 1500s.

Cristiane talks about the strength of her ancestors, their resistance and struggles throughout history, and also shares how indigenous women have made progress by taking up political roles and occupying international advocacy spaces. “These women are our ancestors, and we are the warriors of today. So, we call ourselves ancestral warriors because these women are our role models”.

Variety of body paintings and expressions during the 3rd Brazilian Indigenous Women’s March. Credit: Kamikia Kisedje / APIB

Today, women leaders such as Sônia Guajajara, Brazil’s Minister of Indigenous Peoples, and Célia Xakriabá, Federal Deputy, are leading government bodies and legislating for the defense of indigenous peoples’ rights. Women leaders represent indigenous peoples in public decision-making spaces, keeping alive the ancestry and spirituality of their peoples through their political advocacy.

Sônia Guajajara

Célia Xakriabá

Sônia Guajajara is currently serving as Minister of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil.  Célia Xakriabá is a Federal Deputy for the State of Minas Gerais. Credits: Ricardo Stuckert/PR and Bruno Figueiredo/Liniker

Dance, music, and song are art forms that narrate the stories of centuries past, transmitting knowledge and offering hope and inspiration. The diversity of artistic and spiritual expressions among Brazil’s hundreds of indigenous peoples is vast, and the shapes and colours of body art have meanings linked to the knowledge or skills of those who use them.

Winti Suya, leader of the Kisedje People, led the Khikatxi village during the pandemic. It was one of the greatest challenges any community leader could face. Leading a community during a public health emergency on the scale of the pandemic required wisdom and time, lengthy community conversations, and decisions made for the common good.

Today the community has become much stronger. With the arrival of the pandemic, we were able to prepare ourselves, we organised ourselves and we faced a complex and difficult situation, over which we had no control, because we didn’t know what it was, we couldn’t see it.

The Healers of the World

Despite the great human loss, indigenous peoples were strengthened by the pandemic. They were able to learn from their experiences, as many of their worldviews have taught them to do. They believe learning is continuous and based on an immense heritage of ancestral knowledge. Many indigenous peoples possess ancestral knowledge and the skills necessary to coexist with the natural world. This knowledge is where we can find the solutions to heal the world.

When we lose our connection to nature, we lose our humanity. A return to our own nature, to being in harmony with the world we are part of, are essential steps to stop the climate crisis and global warming, the greatest challenges humanity is facing.

Global climate decision-making must include indigenous peoples’ input and guidance. The work of land rights organisations must be directly funded, and their knowledge about conservation must be scaled up. In supporting indigenous peoples’ struggles, we are helping to heal the world.

Photography and video: Kamikia Kisedje / APIB

Stories of Resilience is a Global Alliance of Territorial Communities and TINTA (The Invisible Thread) project for the documentation and visibility of cases that show the adaptability, strength, and unity of people and communities in the face of COVID-19 in the Latin American, Asian, and African territories that make up the Alliance.

Ecuador

Reviving Ancestral Knowledge

This is a story of the peoples of the Ecuadorian Amazon, a story about the appearance of COVID-19 deep in the rainforest, and how the communities came together and shared their knowledge to face the pandemic and its impacts.

The rainforest is a market, the rainforest is a pharmacy, the largest and best we have. Just as doctors have medicine, we also have our rainforest where we have medicinal healing plants.
Nancy Guiquita
wise woman of the Waoraní people

Despite the unforeseen appearance of the pandemic in 2020 and the devastation that it caused worldwide, indigenous people embraced their ancestral knowledge and faced it with wisdom and solidarity. Since the first months of the global emergency, communities throughout the Amazon resorted to ancestral knowledge by bringing back to life the words, songs, and experiences of their ancestors.

The Amazon rainforest is the biggest rainforest on the planet. Due to its size, it influences the temperature and regulates global climate. For the people and communities that live surrounded by this biological immensity, the forest provides everything, from food and water to healing medicine.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the Ecuadorian State ordered road closures and left the indigenous peoples without health support. This abandonment resulted in an acceleration of the transmission of ancestral knowledge from the elders to the younger generations. Families and entire communities went deep into the dense forest to collect and then prepare the medicines that were used to treat the symptoms and alleviate the pain of those who had been infected.

Medicinal plants collected by Nancy Guiquita, wise woman of the Waoraní people

The Path of Ancestral Wisdom

Nemo Guiquita, leader of the Waorani people, headed a community dialogue process. The return to ancestral medicine generated a need to create spaces for the elderly to share with the young, to not only teach them about medicinal plants and their characteristics, but also how they should be collected, prepared, and applied.

In the communities, we worked with our wisdom keepers, youth, and women to fight the disease. We had to turn once again to our community elders and start identifying medicinal plants, leaves, roots, and stems. Our knowledge came back to life and has been a great achievement and strength for us.
Nemo Guiquita
leader of the Waorani people

Nemo talks about how “young people had to involve themselves in learning about medicinal plants and the ancestral knowledge that our elders had, we all got involved. Every young person, every woman that attended our elders’ ceremonies was learning”. Nemo relays how the knowledge of the Waorani people’s elders helped avoid many deaths and improve the quality of life for those infected by COVID-19.

Community of Unión Base, Ecuadorian Amazon

In another part of the vast Amazon rainforest, the Unión Base community also experienced this rebirth of ancestral knowledge. Indira Vargas, leader of the Kichwa people, actively participated in several training processes on COVID-19 organized by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENIAE), and she trained as a health Promoter.

Together with a group of women from her community, Indira is part of the Awana Collective, a space for sharing ancestral practices, experiences, and care, ranging from traditional food practices, and the handling of native plants and seeds, to discussions around the bonfire, ancestral medicines and the role of women in community development.

Women from the Awana Collective show traditional medicinal plants from the Amazonian peoples of Ecuador

Indira talks about her training in the use of various Amazonian plants: “Ever since I can remember, I grew up with my grandparents in the community and in fact, they taught me a lot about stories, about knowledge itself. As Indigenous people, my grandmother taught me how to cultivate the land and how knowledge is connected to singing”.

Indira remembers when the news of the pandemic reached Unión Base, how the community looked upon the images of bodies in the streets of Quito and other Ecuadorian cities with great fear, all of which was the result of the healthcare system’s inability to attend to the multitudes of infected people. After the initial fear, community work proved to be the solution to the collapse of the health system, providing an abundance of natural remedies to alleviate the symptoms of COVID.

Elixirs, syrups, and preparations to alleviate muscle pain, headaches, and fever, are all created from ancestral knowledge, from wisdom passed down through songs and word of mouth. Indira talks about how the use of ancestral plants and medicines is consistent across the Amazonian communities of Ecuador, despite being from different territories, languages, and peoples. This demonstrates a deep and intrinsic ancestral wisdom. Her work as a health promoter is precisely a combination of ancestral and Western knowledge.

Both Western medicine and traditional medicine are good. Connecting the two would be a great step forward. It would be an intercultural construction: true interculturality in knowledge.
Indira Vargas
community leader of the Kichwa People

The historic battles of indigenous peoples and local communities, brought to light through their representative organisations, keep the fire of traditional knowledge and its harmonious connection with nature alive. Humanity has a lot to learn from this traditional knowledge, considering our common fate is intrinsically linked to that of indigenous peoples and communities, the main defenders of biodiversity, forests, water, and life on the planet.

Stories of Resilience is a Global Alliance of Territorial Communities and TINTA (The Invisible Thread) project for the documentation and visibility of cases that show the adaptability, strength, and unity of people and communities in the face of COVID-19 in the Latin American, Asian, and African territories that make up the Alliance.