Autumn Newsletter October 2022

Dear members, dear patrons

Autumn has arrived and with it the cooler temperatures.

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Exhibition «Im Wald. A Cultural History» at the National Museum Zurich 18.03. - 17.07.2022

As part of the exhibition, among many other works of art, a series of 25 drawings by indigenous artists from the Chaco will be shown: Marcos Ortiz, Osvaldo Pitoe, Jorge Carema, Eurides Asque Gómez, Efacio Álvarez, Esteban Klassen and Clemente Juliuz.

https://www.landesmuseum.ch/en/exhibitions/temporary/2022/in-the-forest/in-the-forest

The forest is central in the drawings of the Chaco. Animals and trees as well as the human subsistence activities of hunting and gathering are among the most popular motifs of the drawings. They show that the connection to the forest and its beings has remained important for indigenous communities, although their lives have changed extensively through colonization and sedentarization for a generation or two.

The drawings not only visualize the importance of the forest for indigenous ways of being in the world in the Chaco. They also tell about the relationships which humans maintain with animals, birds, insects, trees and plants as well as with other beings. This coexistence is currently threatened by massive deforestation, which irreversibly transforms both people's lives, their relationships and the landscape of the Chaco.

Podcast: Art from the Amazon and the Chaco, episode 2:

Article in the catalogue by Ursula Regehr and Verena Regehr Gerber: "Drawing and remembering the forest. Perspectives from the Gran Chaco», pp. 86-95.

Protect Indigenous people’s rights or Paris climate goals will fail, says report

Rainforests looked after by communities absorb twice as much carbon as other lands, analysis shows.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/31/protect-indigenous-peoples-rights-or-paris-climate-goals-will-fail-says-report

Rocky road: Paraguay's new Chaco highway threatens rare forest and last of the Ayoreo people

Forced from their homelands by missionaries, the Ayoreo claim the restitution of land in the Chaco. Now the Bioceanic Corridor cuts through the fastest-vanishing forest on Earth, refuge of some of the Americas' last hunter-gatherers.

by Laurence Blair. Photographs by Santi Carneri

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/05/rocky-road-paraguays-new-chaco-highway-threatens-rare-forest-and-last-of-the-ayoreo-people

Grand Theft Chaco II: The Vice Continues

Source: www.earthsight.org.uk

https://www.earthsight.org.uk/news/analysis-grand-theft-chaco-ii-the-vice-continues

Gran Theft Chaco - luxury car with leather from the stolen land of an isolated tribe

Source: www.earthsight.org.uk

https://www.earthsight.org.uk/grandtheftchaco-en

Paraguay and COVID-19: Indigenous peoples between hunger, risk and indifference

Source: Amnesty International, Paraguay 19.04.2020

Paraguay und COVID-19: Indigene Völker zwischen Hunger, Risiko und Gleichgültigkeit

What if everyone in the world planted a tree?

Made by Maia Films, 26 February 2020

What if everyone in the world planted a tree?

From land purchase to biosphere reserve

For more than 20 years, the Foundation for Indigenous Communities in Paraguay has been supporting indigenous peoples to protect the forest in the Chaco. Urs Scheibler, co-initiator, resigns as chairman of the Board of the Foundation.

Source: E. Gächter, Volksstimme vom 11.10.2019

Vom Landkauf zum Biosphärenreservat

Transfer of knowledge and education

The trips, camps and patrols into the territory are also used to transfer knowledge: members of the older Totobiegosode generation, who grew up in the forest, transmit their history and experiences to the younger generation, who have already grown up in sedentary settlements.

Read more ...
© Gerald Henzinger