Colombia is in a country-wide crisis and indigenous communities are mobilizing for the right to life and the rights of Mother Earth. Amidst the pandemic, a National Strike began on April 28, bringing much needed attention to poverty, extractive industries, and repressive violence against indigenous peoples and all sectors of civil society.

Communities have been stretched and are struggling to meet basic needs.

We urgently need funds to support local communities and we are calling on the international community for help.

____________________________________________________

We are the Union of Indigenous Yagé Doctors of the Colombian Amazon

Our organization (UMIYAC) was created in 1999 and includes five indigenous ethnicities from southwestern Colombia.  We work to preserve the Amazon rainforest and to revitalize and protect our cultures and our ancestral medicine. We are spiritual authorities, medicine men and women of knowledge, and our role is to ensure the health of the territories and the physical and spiritual well being of our communities and territories.

We are committed to ensuring that all support goes directly to communities.

We’re asking for your help

Funds are urgently needed to fill a gap in food security in this critical moment. Roads have been blocked so communities cannot travel to regional centers to purchase food and only locally produced food is being allowed to pass through blockades.

Your contribution will support:

• Purchasing local food to provide basic and healthy food to 500 people who are part of the mobilization in 11 communities
• Medical and other supplies (flashlights, raincoats, etc)
  
• Transportation of food and supplies from regional centers to community hubs

Funds till help communities continue their resistance and defense of the Amazon, protecting territories from big oil and multinationals. Every contribution supports these communities with their resistance and resiliency.

Colombian Context

Since April 28th, the Colombian indigenous movement has been mobilizing in defense of the right to life and the rights of Mother Earth. We live in a historically oppressed nation where ideas, creativity and democracy are repressed with massacres and assassinations. A nation where every two days a human rights defender loses her or his life for taking a stand against corruption and environmental devastation.

We call on international civil society organizations and social movements to show solidarity with the struggle of indigenous, Afro and mestizo peasants, the youth and the entire Colombian people in defense of freedom and the right to life, and in defense of Mother Earth. 

Read UMIYAC's statement about the national strike.