How do indigenous cultures like the Shipibo of the Amazon preserve their traditions in a rapidly globalizing world? Writer-filmmaker Athena Gam is spearheading the 'Song of the Amazon' project in alliance with the Shipibo to anchor their art and stories, their world myths, into an upcoming animated feature film. The Shipibo tapestries anchor the "vibrational songs" (or icaros, as seen on ayahuasca). These circuitry-like patterns are fast becoming an icon of the hip Global Village. But their culture goes much deeper than ayahuasca.
And even so, can a cultural transplant such as theirs preserve the wisdom and mimetically infect the West even as it is commodified? Can that spiritual energy inherent in their worldview kickstart a remembrance of spirit, changing one cultural dreaming for another? In the mashup of the 21st-century world, are we all future Global Shipibo?
Support the animated film 'Song of the Amazon', a visionary animated film based on the cosmology, art and wisdom of the Shipibo people of Peru, by contributing to their Indiegogo campaign here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/song-of-the-amazon.
Originally aired on: Nov 1, 2014
