2.1 Human Sustainability- HS

Seeks to affirm principles and values, where the human being is sustainable, so that these values can allow us to live with dignity on our territories.

2.1.1 Conceptual and Situational Development

The general framework of what is known as human sustainability is based on our Cosmo vision, where relationship systems are created in which human beings and environment intertwine and interact. It is the profound synchrony with the spiritual world, in which the daily life of the individual and collective is feed upon. The changes that have been occurring in this relationship matrix have led COICA to reflect upon what is happening with our peoples and the environment. We’ve been led by the profound relationship with our historic heritage, by the great strength of our physical and cultural continuance and by the challenges found within our organizations.

It is in this way that COICA proposes to redefine the social and economic patterns, by rescuing sustainability as it is seen from our own Cosmo vision. We view it necessary to find changes in the social, economic and cultural structures. Therefore, we innovate the relationships between human beings, emphasizing on the wide sense of life. When we refer to the term of “sustainability”, we trace a bond or linkage with the human being and we define it as an affirmation of principles and social, moral and spiritual values, where the human being lives in a healthy, sustainable and healthy environment. We aim at finding just social actions and not just with a market-based focus, as the current economic model and society desires. These values will allow us to live with dignity in our territories, without it being necessary to beg in the cities (8) . In summary, we refer to living life to its fullest.

It is obvious that the relationships established during the last decades between the external world and ourselves have led to the emergence of viewpoints that disagree with our ways of thinking and existing. However, we’ve had developed our own internal tools to avoid being seduced by the practices and by the discourses of “progress” and “development”, so that we can keep on living in our collective healthy and long-lasting world. Our rules and principles are being explained in Life Plans, a tool that help us on planning and understanding our lives, to break the inequity that we have with gods, with men and with the forest, the earth, the water and our “ajas” (9). The Life Plans are based on the principles of reciprocity, of shared responsibilities and of diversity, crucial values that guide the exercise of our planning with an integral viewpoint from ourselves. We are not the beginning, nor the end, but rather a way to assure our rights and diversity, both at the legal and social levels.

Our human sustainability has been guaranteed throughout Amazon occupation history, thanks to the management of jungle resources and the capability of producing goods based on the life patterns of our ancestors. These patterns connect the simplicity with quality through the autonomy of the self-development and the production destined to cover the basic need of the group as a whole. Therefore, according to our own needs, we have produced tools for hunting and fishing, cotton-made or “tucun” hay clothes, to keep us warm; ornaments, bracelet, necklaces, rings; corporal painting with “seiba of the genipa” and the “achiote” seeds to make ourselves handsome and distinguished by our posts and positions; chairs and houses for our protection. In addition, we carry out cultural parties with musical instruments, such as: Tapuru, caracú and specific sound flutes. We produce home products with pottery, such as plates, glasses, pots, among others, of different sizes and uses, especially for parties and chichas (traditional drinks). We also make drinks with cassava, corn, peanuts, among others; build transportation media such as canoes, roads, among others. All the materials used for this have been taken from the jungle and rivers, without causing any harm to it or altering its biology (10).

The adequate management and domestication of plants and animals have been and still are fundamental for production and consumption, using the supply of products from the environment for human needs. These are important aspects in the economies that are founded n reciprocity, among the members of a community and their relationships. The system that for has guaranteed the supply and reproduction of our family unities for centuries, - in which all the members of the communities are included, according to their posts and responsibilities-, within the collective social web. Every family unit must then offer goods, as a service to the community and therefore, the system, guarantying not only the supply to the family nuclei but the needs of the community as a whole. An economy developed from monetary independence.

With the arrival of manufactures, the inter-ethnic commerce has been decreased. However, we keep nurturing ourselves both from the economy based on exchange of products and services between peoples, as well as every day more we are participating in the monetary market, by offering both products of the jungle, from the land, as well as services, through projects such as the eco-tourism ones, which are being experienced in the Amazon. However, the trend within many communities, and specially those that are located very near urban centers, is to generate income through the sale of their work force. This creates huge social costs, since this process weakens the reciprocity system, not to mention that the participation in the market has generated a change in the base of production, passing from diverse production systems to mono- cultivation systems.

Mono-crops, introduced in the era of development projects into our communities, destined to income generation, through the entrance to the market as providers of products, has lead not only to harm our millenary diversity but social duties and the cultural reproduction of the “chacras” (lands). In this sense, with the introduction of other management mechanisms and viewpoints, we observe changes in our social, political and economic base. However, what distinguishes us from the rest is that our social and spiritual relationships rest in the core of our peoples and are characterized by a profound sense of reciprocity and shared responsibility ethics, a fundamental base for our ancestral existence as peoples. These are things that we claim to be recognized and at the same time, respected.

Within the Indigenous Summit, held at the city of Kimberley, South Africa, we demanded our recognition and our national, regional and international acceptance must become a reality, in order for our knowledge systems to be respected, promoted, protected and secured as intellectual collective rights. In this way, we are convinced that human and environmental sustainability of our territories will be strengthened and maintained.

Shared responsibility, a crucial term that connects present and future generations, represents the conscience of generational responsibility, which embraces our relationships with our ancestors and commit us to deliver it to future generations. The Amazon is worthy of having a life of its own forever, therefore, it is our challenge to keep on defending and so as to guarantee our existence as peoples and the Amazon, as a free and peaceful place. This physical and symbolic place is our inspiration and a great example of self-development and reciprocity. The oxygen that comes out from its veins is life for all lives. We are not opposed to development, neither to research nor to the discovery of new alternatives for the preservation of humanity, however, we do want our ways of living to be respected, as well as our socio-cultural diversity, our wisdoms and our existence.

Human sustainability, -a collective practice within our communities-, is the exercise of the rights of present and future generations. It clashes with the immediatization and ways of thinking of the current capitalist development model. COICA, through its organizations, summarizes and defines it in general and simple terms, from its own practices. A comprehensive viewpoint of territorial management, as it has been stated by CIDOB; the viewpoint of good living, as it has been conceived by CONFENAE; a political posture, with a position that identifies ourselves, developed by OPIAC; the affirmation of the alternative, as it has been expressed by COIAB; the ancestral ways in which we have occupied our habitat, states ORPIA .

The commitment of our temporal lives, which follows thousands of other past lives in present and future times, and subscribes itself on the fulfillment of the spiritual duty to safeguard our sacred lands, as FOAG explains. The common sense of men and women from a community, their ideas on the origin and end of live, the most significant values over which they settle as a human group, the thinking and knowledge on each one of the phenomena that surround them, as it has been said by AIDESEP. Taking these horizontal definitions into account, the organizations are working to reach what they affirm to be a comprehensive vision of the societal processes in which social, political, economic, cultural, environmental and spiritual relationships are connected within our territories.