The Gauki people, who know the constant law of all things, not only still retain their ancient traditions, but also know how to survive in this industrial world. They know at which node they should back down and at which node to persevere to the end, such as teaching the "little brother" the question.
Text | Alan Ella, picture | Alan Ella, Alexandra Lizé
Gauki people
Nestled on Colombia's Caribbean coastline, the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta is the highest coastal mountain range in the world. For more than 400 years, the High Base tribes, which still retain the ancient Tairona civilization of the pre-Columbian period, lived in this deep mountain, refusing to make contact with the outside world and silently overlooking the heavens.
The Gauki people live deep in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Santa Marta and have long been denied contact with the outside world
In the creation story of the Gaugi people, they consider themselves to be "big brothers" who understand the way the world works, while modern Western people (that is, those who do not understand) are "little brothers". For centuries, they had seen enough of the little brother "destroying the world" in the mountains, and if they continued to do so, the end would come. Therefore, the Gaoji people broke the silence and stood up hoping that the little brother would listen to the teachings of the big brother.
The Goki are direct descendants of the ancient Tarona civilization, they are not hunter-gatherer tribes and have been engaged in farming for thousands of years. When the Maya and their successors, the Aztec Empire, and later the Inca civilization swept through Central and South America, the Gaukis remained unmoved. When the entire Tyronian civilization shattered and collapsed, they fled into the mountains with the core cosmic values of their ancient civilization.
After that, these people coexisted with the Spanish colonizers for another 75 years, and no other Indian civilization survived that time. Between 1525 and 1600 they even established close trade relations with the conquerors. When attacked in 1600, the Gauki gathered 20,000 men to counterattack fiercely. The battle was lost, they lost their towns and wealth, but they rebuilt the whole society intact under the leadership of the Mamas, their rulers.
The missionaries, of course, did not spare the Gokis, who for the past 400 years had been almost everywhere, with a church in every Goki town, without any influence on the tribesmen. Not a single Goki converted to Christianity. What pervades their society is an intellectual connection.
First encounter with the Gauki people
Erara, who met the Gauki people in the early 1990s, showed the camera to the Aborigines
The first time I came into contact with the world of the Gaukis was to make a documentary, the ancient Tyronian civilization has not disappeared, and I wanted to see if they were willing to tell me something in person.
I spent a whole year trying to connect with them, it wasn't easy, they were known for rejecting the outside world inside the circle. Finally, a year later, I was surprised to receive their offer or invitation to travel deep in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, where they were located.
I took a helicopter to the border between the Gaugi and the modern world, where there are two neighboring villages, one for modern farmers and the other for the Goki. I was called into one room to wait, a little overwhelmed, and then taken into another room, where a large group of elders gathered. At the first sight of them, the first word that popped into my head was "wise man"; they were all dressed in white robes, holding poporos (which they used to store lime, and when chewing coca leaves, they ate a little lime at the same time), and they all looked solemn under the light of the fire.
Elder of the Gauki clan holding Popros
Someone said to me, "You said you came to communicate with us, and if you have anything to say, let's talk about it now." "I began to explain why I was here, and if they had anything they wanted to communicate with the outside world, I could help; I tried to explain what a film was and show them the camera; I also said that they had reasons to refuse to shoot, and that the film could pose a threat to them, which I fully understood; and that when making a film they would have to accept some behavior that they might not be able to explain to them. I told these people bluntly about the equipment I needed to shoot: lights, cameras, generators, helicopters, etc. He also told them that he didn't want to get caught up in the middle of the shooting because they couldn't stand the equipment and went on strike in the middle of the shooting. It was a long, complex conversation, not to mention that I was speaking English, the assistant translated into Spanish, and then sentence by word by a clan named Ramon into Goky. Ramon was a newly elected Spanish translator of the Goki people, and earlier, no one in the tribe spoke Spanish, and no outsider knew the language of the Goki. Finally, the white-robed Gaugi said, "We have listened to what you are going to say, analyze and consider it, and do divination." Tomorrow we will call you again. "I was sent away like that.
The next morning, I could see them gathered in the mountains, apparently divination. I was summoned shortly after. This time, a group of Mamo priests stood up, and one by one they began to speak, making people feel different as soon as they opened their mouths. Apparently, these people have carefully considered the impact that making a film might have on them, and there is already a clear division of labor between them. Different priests would be responsible for different situations, in their words, for different elements. They were talking about their duties at this time, but these speeches brought me directly into the history of the entire Goki world in epic sentences, explaining to me their creation.
Mamo priests in the 1990s
One after another, the epic poems are narrated by different Mamo priests. It was a very shocking experience for me, they told everything that I planned to shoot in the movie, and they said it directly, as if they had already seen through my thinking.
Mother Earth, the beginning of all things, the heart of the world
Aluna is the mysterious world in the cosmology of the Gauki people, Aluna is the mother earth, the beginning of all things, the spirit of reproduction, the pure life force, the void. The history of the world told by the priests of Mamo is their creation myth, the original intention and reality of Alana.
In their creation story, the Mother of All Things conceives all the possibilities of the world in a process of great pain, she has experienced all kinds of appearances of the world, she knows the possibilities of the whole world, history, race, war, empire, the appearance and disappearance of all things. But in the process, the world is still visible, they just happen within Alana. After everything has happened, they appear in the outer world, and it is the Mother of all things who reveals everything that has happened. And that's the world we're in today.
The Mother of All Things has no gender, and in the story of the Goki people, in the beginning, the Mother of All Things has a beard, a male outfit, and when she has sons, they oppose these male outfits of the mother. Therefore, it is only after the birth and creation of the male that the Mother of All Things truly becomes a woman.
Women have a high status among the Goki people
Human beings were created, and their duty was to take care of the world. One of the most important parts of the Gauki's perception is that humans are not earth-destroyers. The world needs human beings, and the mother of all things needs human beings. This is different from our modern way of thinking, and our idea is often that whenever we talk about nature, the environment and other issues, we always feel that we are the source of the problem. But the Gaukis point out that the real problem is our behavior, and in fact, we are the real solution.
After human beings were created, the "little brothers" were created, and they were a hazard to the "center of the world", and after being granted a certain amount of knowledge, they were sent to a distant place.
In the Gauki cosmology, Santa Marta Nevada is the center of the world, a place of wonder and, in fact, a model of the entire earth. Between the mountains and the sea is an ecological zone, and indeed in the middle of the earth, very close to the equator, with 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night every day, and six months of rainy season and six months of dry season every year. Santa Marta' Sierra Nevada is also not geologically connected to the Andes, making it a perfect isolated place to some extent. I myself think this is heaven, for the simple reason that I feel very comfortable and happy on the territory of the Gauki people, and this emotion is pure and reliable.
Big Brother and Little Brother
In the story of the Gauki people, one day, the little brother will return to the heart of the world. When they take their own machinery and occupy and destroy the land here, the end of the world will come. The Gaukis are not prophesiing the future, because everything has already happened in Aluna.
The little brother returned here with Columbus. The word Columbus was not a personal name for the Gaukis, but everything associated with conquest. Columbus himself never set foot on Santa Marta Nevada, but Santa Marta was one of the New World ports where the Spanish fleet docked. It was also here that the Gauki people had their first contact with the Spaniards and saw Spanish ships for the first time. After that, "centuries and centuries, the little brother kept coming from another country," said priest Mamo, "and Columbus came to this land, and immediately saw the wealth here, and murdered many of the natives." He took away the gold that belonged here, the sacred gold, the mask made of gold, all the gold, and they kept digging, and they took too much, too much, too much. ”
The eldest brother warns the "little brother" that many of their development actions are plotting to kill the mother of all things
Over the past 40 years, the Goki have seen exactly what they believe in the final stages of the return of the Little Brother to the Heart of Earth and the arrival of the end times. In the 1970s, Colombians built a road from Santa Marta to Venezuela, and the northern part of the Sierra Nevada mountains of Santa Marta was opened. It was the marijuana boom of the 1970s, and the Gaukis watched as roads were built and colonists moved in to cut down the forests at the foot of the mountain and grow marijuana. Then, as more and more outsiders came along, they began to occupy the mountains and expel the Goki into the higher forest. In the end, the Goji were cornered and completely unable to grow the crops they had relied on for thousands of years at high altitudes.
In the process of migrating to the mountains, at first, the altitude made it impossible for them to grow cotton, and soon, even ordinary crops could not be grown. It was also at this time that the Gauki decided that they must find a way to communicate with their little brother. Although the history of the land is full of blood and war, and all this has not stopped, the Gauki people believe that not all colonists are as evil as those they met in Colombia, and there must be people who are willing to help them survive.
The Gauki people believe that their existence is crucial to the whole world, their vision is very clear, they are big brothers, and the meaning of existence is to protect the world and let this earth continue to multiply. That's why they survived the bloody 16th century, why they were able to find a way to survive in desperate situations and find solutions in the face of disasters that were irreversible for other races.
Based solely on the ecological changes that the Gauki people see in the mountains, they accurately predict that there are more new diseases in the outside world
As they themselves faced a crisis, they also witnessed an ecological catastrophe that began gradually unfolding in the mountains. They had expected that the ecology would begin to be destroyed at this point. The glaciers at the summit of Santa Marta Nevada are melting at a rate of 20 meters per year. I saw with my own eyes the devastation of the glacier, where the glacier is now devastated, full of mountain ravines and dry weeds, full of death, and the snow and ice here almost completely melted in 2008. This is only a small part of the signs of the end of the world seen by the Gauki people, who also see species extinction, where plants and animals do not die of hunting, but that ecological changes force them to change their habits but are still unable to adapt; they see changes in the way birds migrate, time and place; and plants that should not exist invade the land and take away the plant territory that originally lived here. And everything they saw proved once again what they were convinced of—that their myth had told them.
Such rhetoric is hard to accept for a modern person or any rational person. Their way of life, their way of thinking, is something we have never been exposed to and cannot prove. But the truth is that their system is clearly capable of working, and has been in operation for thousands of years, and the Gauki people know with certainty what kind of action will lead to what kind of result, everything is connected, everything has a higher meaning, and we little brothers don't understand it at all.
The Gaoji people always remember the teachings of the mother of all things at the beginning of heaven and earth, and it is in this way that they have passed on this wisdom from generation to generation
Every job is critical
The essence of harmony is related to everything the Gauki people do. For example, a Gauki would say to priest Mamo, "I'm going to make some pottery." The latter replied, "I will divinate to decide this." The divination words go like this: "This man needs to be given some pottery." The rest of the word also depends on the man's own character, "Does he need more energy to make pottery?" Did he have to be more manly to make pottery? Does he first have to know how to behave in order to make pottery? ”
If the divination results are satisfactory, then the person can make pottery. Priest Mamo would say to him, "Now you are going to take away some of the mysterious living matter of the Mother of All Things." (Clay is part of the life force of the Gauki people) You have to get the clay from a designated place, so it also upsets some kind of balance, and you have to get your own balance and the place back together. "The priest would give the man something to calm the strength, usually some plant seeds or flowers, or maybe small stones." You have to bury them there and meditate. "Only then can this man obtain clay. He also had to be separated from his wife for a while, could not have sex, and had to fast and meditate. This will all be done under the supervision of the priests of Mamo, who will work with him spiritually. Then, when he was ready and took the clay, there was another necessary work to do: he meditated at the stone table where the clay pots were made, and he remained in a meditative state throughout the making process. The process of physical production is also the process of the mind, and the person must be in harmony with the objects he makes. He may have to spend a month making 30 clay pots, and only when all is done can he be reunited with his wife, go to the bath, etc. And the clay pots he made will be good objects for harmony, and the food cooked with them will be healthy.
Gauki family
Balance and health
Perhaps the easiest way to explain Alana, to explain the connection of all things and the system of thought that arises from all of this, is perhaps through a health perspective. The Gaugi people believe that balance and harmony are the key to health, and the essence of the life force is powerful and chaotic, just as the so-called beginning of all things, everything is chaotic. That's why the earth needs humans, who are the gardeners of the earth, and we need to balance this chaotic force to maintain the balance of the earth. The main job of the Mamo priests is to mentally balance the chaotic energies of the world and maintain the health of the earth.
Many things happening in the world today are upsetting the balance of life forces, and the ecological catastrophe in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta is one of them, and the Mamo priests must exert their power to restore some balance between the chaotic force of creation and the force of growth of all things.
The greetings of the Gauki people are a good reflection of their cosmology: "How are you?" The greeted person may have just walked briskly 5 miles up the mountain, but his answer would have been: "I'm sitting well." "Sitting well on one's own stool symbolizes a kind of harmony for the Gauki people, representing that you are in the right place, and the world is in balance with you.
The Gorkys consider Santa Marta Mount Nevada to be the "heart of the world," which also makes sense geographically
If we cannot maintain our own inner balance, it will also pose a threat to the balance of the external world, and the life force will be in danger, it will be out of control. The Goji once warned the little brother: "You will see new diseases coming, and then there will be no antidote." "They have no idea that AIDS and mad cow disease, or other terminal illnesses that plague humans and animals, are raging, but just by the changes they see in the world, they know that there will be new diseases."
If a Goki was sick, the Mamo priest would come and interrogate the patient, "What have you done?" What makes you throw yourself out of balance? What exposes you to the threat of disease? This way of healing also allowed the priests to know everything about what everyone in the village was doing.
The Gaukis are not legendary, and like most tribal groups, they are not resistant to diseases brought on by the outside world, but in their own world, although they operate in a completely different way than we do, I have to admit that their incomprehensible medical system has a secret to longevity. Once I survived my childhood, these people were amazingly long-lived, and I met several elderly people over the age of 100. The Goji people over 90 years old are by no means a minority, in fact, 90 years old is their average lifespan. The Gauki are very healthy, as are their livestock, and their horses and cows are robust. If you've traveled to the Third World and seen the animals there, you know that livestock in these places are usually breeding grounds for disease and parasites. Their plants are equally stunningly beautiful. I don't know exactly how they do it, like how they deal with animal parasites. According to them, if you derail the whole world, the parasite will follow.
For the Gauki people, everything has a higher and deeper connection
I was also surprised by the optimism of the Gaukis. They do not regard death and the end as inevitable, they do not regard anything as inevitable. Their systems of thinking and beliefs are not full of certainty, but full of possibilities. In their mythology, there are many kinds of endings in the story, that is to say, there are many kinds of endings for human beings. One of the most optimistic versions is that the little brother returns to the center of the world to help the big brother maintain the world together. The Goji people do not completely deny the little brother, believing that the latter is a scum. They respect the knowledge of the little brother, and the true wisdom is the part that the Mother of All Things gave them at the beginning of creation and that the Big Brother did not possess. What the Gauki people have told me repeatedly is that the little brother can help us. The message they want to convey is for the little brother to put down the butcher's knife and stop destroying the world, so that the identity of the helper returns to the center of the world, not the destroyer. Otherwise, No matter how powerful Big Brother is, he can't save the world.
Alan Ella is a British historian and documentary filmmaker. In the 1990s, when filming a documentary for the BBC, he met and met the Gauki people and formed a friendship. Filmed the documentary Message from the Heart of the World: A Warning from Big Brother and published books. He has since founded the Tyrona Cultural Trust and has also produced other historical documentaries. In 2014, the Gauki people once again summoned him back to the Heart of the World to shoot the new film "Aluna", in which the Gauki people participated in editing and other matters, and they had to explain to the little brother in the new film what "all things are connected".
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