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https://news.mongabay.com/2026/09/colombias-indigenous-guardians-adapt-as-pressures-mount-on-the-heart-of-the-world/>
"RIOHACHA, Colombia — Amid the low slopes of a tropical dry forest, families
from the Wiwa community of Gomke are building a new home.
Their ancestral settlement lies higher on a lush mountain in the town of
Dibulla, overlooking the Caribbean coast in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa
Marta.
Across this region, many Indigenous communities have been forcibly displaced by
climate-related disasters or uprooted by armed actors. Gomke’s move to lower
terrain, however, is described by community representatives as voluntary: a
collectively led adaptation strategy to protect social, educational and
spiritual cohesion amid intensifying climate pressures and the presence of
paramilitary groups.
They call their new settlement Shegunamke.
The Wiwa have also acquired other parcels of land elsewhere in the Sierra,
including at higher elevations. “We have left [those] untouched so that rivers,
springs and bodies of water do not die,” said Roberto Carlos Coronado Calvo,
rector of Shenzhawimaku, the Wiwa educational institution that combines
conventional learning with the community’s language, culture, knowledge systems
and relationship to the territory.
“If we begin clearing and cutting into the páramo [ecosystem], how can we
guarantee life for those living below?”"
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
