The Kogi are the last surviving civilisation from the days of the Inca and Aztec. Direct descendents of the Tayrona culture, who inhabited the Sierra Nevada prior to the Spanish Conquest. Following the conquest, its population of around one million inhabitants began to decrease to the point that it almost disappeared.

At present, four indigenous communities that preserve their ancient traditions amount to about 30,000 people. They are the Kogi, Arhuacos, Wiwas, and Kankuamos. The Kogi community occupies the northern area of the Sierra, among the valleys of the Don Diego, Palomino, San Miguel, and Ancho rivers.

The Kogi have been living in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains on the Caribbean coast of Colombia since around 1000 AD when the Caribs invaded the country.

The Sierra Nevada is an isolated triangular pyramid rising over 18,000 feet from the sea, the highest coastal mountain on earth. It is on a separate tectonic plate from the Andes, and its unique structure means that it is virtually a miniature version of the planet, with all the world’s climates represented.

The mountain is quite literally a micro-cosmos, a mirror of the planet on which every ecological zone is represented and in which most of the plants and animals of the planet can find homes.

With 1000 year old traditions, the Kogi are a culturally intact pre-Colombian society. Although they don’t have the wheel, or even writing, they are unbelievably culturally advanced. They show an astuteness and understanding of human nature that is baffling. But, their knowledge is even deeper in matters of the environment and the ecosystem they inhabit.

The Kogi practice subsistence agriculture based on a polyculture that testifies to a great knowledge of the Earth. Semi-nomadic, they regularly migrate from one territory to another according to the seasons and harvests, never exploiting the land intensively.

On the upper lands, the Kogi cultivate potatoes, onions, cabbage, lettuce, blueberries, tamarilloes (a kind of tomato), pumpkins, garlic, wheat and even rice.
On warmer lands, they grow corn, beans, yuccas, arracachas, malangas (tubers), coca leaves, cotton, pineapples, papayas, guavas, maracujas (passion fruit), sweet pomegranates, oranges and lemons.

The work of the Earth is a daily preoccupation, otherwise the jungle takes over and ends up swallowing up everything. For the Kogi, agriculture is a “thermometer” that allows them to gauge the state of their relationship with Mother Earth, interpreting good harvests as a sign of harmony and bad ones as a symptom of imbalance.

The Kogi refer to themselves as elder brothers and express concern that non-indigenous outsiders, the younger brothers, are plundering and dismembering the Earth. Their message to the world is timely and poignant: that our ways of exploiting and destroying nature is bringing rapid ecological collapse that will harm the entire world and which they can see evidenced in form of prolonged droughts and disappearing glaciers in their own mountains.

Water means everything to the Kogi, a true living being, the blood that circulates in the veins. Imprisoning water in dams seems inconceivable, it’s like constraining a flowing energy. The relationship of the Kogi with the sea is totally different: they compare it to the amniotic fluid of the Mother Earth and consider that it is not made for swimming. When they walk to the sea, they turn around on themselves as a greeting.

For the Kogi, everything is balance and harmony. If we upset this balance on the planet, ecological disasters follow, such as earthquakes, droughts, floods, hurricanes, etc… They fear, and they are not wrong, that we little brothers will destroy everything on the planet. Our elder brothers believe that it is their responsibility to watch over the balance of the planet. When ecological disasters strike the world, spiritual authorities carry out large “Pagamento” (offerings) marches, with the aim of restoring balance and returning to the planet what was taken from it.