{"id":42787,"date":"2026-03-23T13:17:01","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T11:17:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wearewater.org\/?post_type=waw_insight&p=42787"},"modified":"2026-03-23T16:11:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T14:11:23","slug":"the-voice-of-the-rivers-memory-of-the-peoples","status":"publish","type":"waw_insight","link":"https:\/\/www.wearewater.org\/en\/insights\/the-voice-of-the-rivers-memory-of-the-peoples\/","title":{"rendered":"The voice of the rivers. Memory of the peoples"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The future of the Ticuna depends on educating young people in the values of a culture grounded in honesty, hard work and harmony with nature. \u00a9 We Are Water Foundation<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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The river has a voice\u201d, say the Ticuna elders, and in that affirmation beats the way of understanding the world of a culture that has grown up listening to the language of water. For them, the river not only sustains life: it explains it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Ticuna are one of the most numerous peoples of the Amazon. They call themselves Mag\u00fcta, \u201cthe people of the origin of the world\u201d, or Pog\u00fcta, \u201cthose who were fished with a rod\u201d, in reference to the myth of Yo\u2019i, the cultural hero who gave them life. They live on the banks of the upper Amazon, in a wide region that extends across Colombia, Peru and Brazil.<\/span><\/p>\n

The voice of the river has guided the Ticuna generation after generation, forging ancestral knowledge that goes back long before the seventeenth century, when the Portuguese documented their existence to the world for the first time. Their culture has been transmitted orally: the elders keep the origin myths, the signs of the climate, the cycles of fishing and hunting, and the art of \u201cmaking the chagra\u201d, the cultivation plot that is at once food, school and memory of the territory.<\/span><\/p>\n

But that voice which guided their ancestors in fishing, hunting and cultivation is no longer the same: it is uncertain and confused. The river\u2019s flow is altered, and its waters run polluted. On its banks, deforestation advances and with it the loss of biodiversity that is the basis of their sustenance. Their children can no longer enjoy the health that the water gave their grandparents, and the whole community struggles to recover its life beside the water.<\/span><\/p>\n

Together with World Vision, we have produced a documentary that delves into the present reality of these people, who are living difficult times in their intimate relationship with the river and striving to recover their ancestral culture and pass it on to their children and to the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Directed by <\/span>Ignasi Rodr\u00edguez<\/b> and <\/span>Carlos Garriga<\/b>, director of the Foundation, <\/span>Amazonas: The Memory of Water<\/span><\/i> focuses on people. Beyond the spectacular landscapes, it portrays the daily life of the riverside communities and their intimate relationship with water.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n