The Peru Hub ‘Cuyay Wasi’ is located in Vilcacoto, an Andean peasant community in the Mantaro Valley. Making videos in a participatory way has supported community movements by reaffirming their cultures. Having produced beautiful videos in which they see themselves they reflect upon what they can do with their own material resources and cultural ways.
Kuna Indians are using Participatory Video in their struggle to conserve their forests, which are their main source of food and medicine. As their traditional island territories are threatened by rising sea levels, they are using video to ask indigenous youth to reconnect to agriculture and invite industrial countries to cooperate in the conservation of biodiversity.
'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.
'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.
