Conversations with the Earth has led to an international indigenous family of communities and media hubs covering 4 continents and many diverse ecosystems. Participatory Video capacity building was the catalyst to community empowerment and the amplifying of excluded voices of the traditional custodians of our planet's biocultural diversity. This photostory visually describes the 10 days we spent together in Copenhagen in December 2009 participating in the UN COP15 conference and Klimaforum, the people's summit.
'Growing Up in Cambridge Bay' charts the experiences and lives of local youth in Cambridge Bay in the Arctic Circle. They document traditional fishing, hunting, Arctic sports, local legends on the origin of death and musical traditions such as throat singing.
Forest dwellers feel the heat as traditional seasons fail. Fruits are rotting on the trees due to the excessive heat. Even the forest floor is drying up. ‘Facing Changes in African Forests’ was created by members of the Baka community in eastern Cameroon during a Participatory Video training in April 2009.
'Kuna Conversations with Mother Earth' was created during a Participatory Video during which the Kuna Indians of Panama documented their struggle to conserve the forests, their main source of food and traditional medicine.
'Peru Conversations with Mother Earth' is a powerful film relating the Andean cosmovision. Quechua videographers documented seasonal changes, hail, melting glaciers, christian fundamentalism, and other threats to their culture, livelihoods and landscapes.
In this article Nick Lunch (InsightShare Co-Founder & Co-Director) describes how the Biocultural Portal (currently working under the project name 'Conversations with the Earth), functions as a web based resource for Indigenous Peoples and other stewards of biocultural diversity to share participatory video promoting local solutions to preserve the worlds biocultural diversity. He argues how the project - as a process at grassroots level - challenges power inequality but is simultaneously empowering for government officials, UN officers, civil servants, donors, NGOs, activists and communities alike.
Participatory Video project undertaken by indigenous community leaders at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York, May 2008.
The Voice of the Batwa PHOTOSTORY is a detailed description of the process through which a group of Batwa, from various squatter camps in Uganda, created a powerful film documenting the discrimination and marginalisation they face.
The Batwa are an indigenous people of the Great Lakes region of tropical Africa. Formerly hunter-gatherers, they were expelled from their ancestral forests to make way for conservation and tourism projects. They experience extreme racial discrimination from their neighbours, poverty, landlessness and unequal access to education and healthcare.
'Kamayoqs' was created during a pilot initiative with potato and alpaca Kamayoqs, in the high Andes of Peru, exploring the potential of Participatory Video for pro-poor market development and farmer-to farmer technology transfer.
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