Coinciding with the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30), which will be held for the first time in the Amazonian region in November 2025, this event will discuss the impact of climate change on pottery making traditions amoung Shipibo-Konibo communities.
Led by Shipibo-Konibo women potters from the Ucayali Valley in Peruvian Amazonia, the ‘Ancestral Connections’ event will foster a space of exchange of collective experiences and family histories centred on pottery making. During three days, a series of workshops will put into dialogue the potters’ techniques – from the gathering of raw materials to the creation of kené designs – delving into the intergenerational transmission of ancestral knowledge and material practices or pottery making as an important cultural element of Shipibo-Konibo identity.
The workshops will also reflect on the impacts of climate change on the continuity of these traditions and the ecosystems that sustain them, highlighting the vital role of Indigenous peoples in protecting the environment for future generations in the planet. This event is the result of a collaboration between the Multiversidad Bakish Mai, the Shipibo Conibo Centre Yarinacocha, and SDCELAR/The British Museum, and will take place on 14-16 November at the campus of the Multiversidad Bakish Mai in San Francisco de Yarinacocha, Peru.
Organizers:
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WHITNER FAGO: Whitner FaGo is a Shipibo Konibo Indigenous Hip Hop artist from the Ucayali region in Peruvian Amazonia. His Shibipo Rap music shares with the wider audience his grandparents’ stories and memories, by turning them into rhymes and lyrics. His songs place the Shipibo tradition in conversation with contemporary community struggles and global issues, such as the importance of environment and cultural identity conservation, territory, and the role of education. He recently released his first album, ‘NON AXEBO’ (‘Our Culture’), with 15 songs and he is currently producing his second album called ‘ANCESTRALES’ (‘Ancestors’). FaGo has participated in events organised by the Ministry of Culture as well as international performances including the XIII Biennial SALSA Conference, and the first International Biennial of Amazonian Art, amongst others. |
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MULTIVERSIDAD BAKISH MAI Intergenerational centre in the Ucayali region dedicated to the transmission of Indigenous knowledge, with a focus on ecology, food sovereignty, plant medicine, art, political education, and Indigenous territorial sovereignty. As a non-profit foundation, the Multiversidad Bakish Mai is committed to promoting, revitalising, and assuring knowledge transmission related to the worldviews and lifeways of the Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo people in Peruvian Amazonia. |
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SHIPIBO CONIBO CENTRE
Non-profit cultural organisation based in New York City (on ancestral Lenape land) that promotes and sustains the creative lifeways of the Shipibo-Konibo people in Peruvian Amazonia within the fields of contemporary art and knowledge production, in ways that benefit its practitioners. With a focus on Indigenous self-determination and territorial sovereignty, as well as visual arts, music, and ethnobotanical research, the organisation’s mission is guided by the conviction that Indigenous identity does not belong to a romanticised ancient past, but rather to a technologically grounded and sustainable future.
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Publications related to women’s and maternal health with Wixárika communities by the author of this exhibition
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2013)
Shame as a barrier to health seeking among indigenous Huichol migrant labourers: An interpretive approach of the “violence continuum” and “authoritative knowledge”
Social Science and Medicine 97 75-81
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2023)
Wixárika Practices of Medical Syncretism: An Ontological Proposal for Health in the Anthropocene
Medical Anthropology Theory 10 (2) 1-26
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2020)
“You see, we women, we can’t talk, we can’t have an opinion…”. The coloniality of gender and childbirth practices in Indigenous Wixárika families
Social Science and Medicine 252, 112912
Jennie Gamlin and David Osrin (2020)
Preventable infant deaths, lone births and lack of registration in Mexican indigenous communities: health care services and the afterlife of colonialism
Ethnicity and Health 25 (7)
Jennie Gamlin and Seth Holmes (2018)
Preventable perinatal deaths in indigenous Wixárika communities: an ethnographic study of pregnancy, childbirth and structural violence BMC
Pregnancy and Childbirth 18 (Article number 243) 2018
Gamlin, Jennie B. and Sarah J Hawkes (2015)
Pregnancy and birth in an Indigenous Huichol community: from structural violence to structural policy responses
Culture, health and sexuality 17 (1)
