Representing Amazonian perspectives and histories, beyond the exoticising lens of the outsider

Could you explain how TAWNA started out, how its founding members met, and how the idea of an art organization became a reality?

TAWNA emerged from the coming-together of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists who shared a common vision: to tell our own stories in our own languages.

For a long time, outsiders came to our communities to film, photograph, and document our lives without asking us how we wanted to be portrayed. Often, we never saw those images again or had access to the material that had been produced. There was also no dialogue about how these representations were constructed. We recognize this practice as audiovisual extractivism.

TAWNA emerged from a desire to see ourselves through these images again, reclaim access to our own representations, and restore the dialogue that had been taken away from us. It is about bringing cinema and images back to our communities, but also about finding new ways of relating to and working with the outside world through respect, exchange, and reciprocity.

This is how a collective was born in which territorial and cultural defense form the foundation of our work. From this starting point, we develop projects that seek to strengthen and create opportunities for artists and creatives from Indigenous Amazonian communities in Ecuador.

What does the name mean?

TAWNA is the name we give to a long pole, which can be made from pinduk or other trees. We use it to propel a canoe when navigating rivers and traveling between communities.

Our ancestors used the tawna to navigate, and this practice continues to this day. For us, the tawna is a tool that allows us to move, connect, and maintain ties between communities. It makes encounters with other territories possible.

That is why the name TAWNA also represents how we understand the collective: as an instrument that propels us forward, connects worlds, and opens paths for stories, voices, and ways of seeing life to travel further.

Was it a long and challenging process, how did TAWNA grow and change over its journey, and what barriers to formation did you face?

It has been a process of tremendous learning, with difficulties along the way, but also with many dreams realised. TAWNA was born from our own perspective and our own way of feeling and understanding the world.

One of the main obstacles has been the lack of resources and opportunities to sustain our creative processes. However, we have continued to grow and explore new ways of developing projects that strengthen and inspire communities and younger generations in the Amazon, bringing our stories into new spaces. We deeply believe that culture is a way of imagining and building new worlds.

I think one of our greatest challenges has been finding our own way of telling stories. This has meant engaging with tools and languages from outside, making them our own, and transforming them through our own perspectives to strengthen our ways of narrating, feeling, and representing the world. It is not simply about learning to use other tools, whether it be digital cameras, the internet or radio, but about making them our own without losing what makes us who we are.

For me, TAWNA is a living process that continues to grow through the strength of our memories, our dreams, and our commitment to talking about who we are, where we speak from, and how we understand our relationship with the territory and with life.

As I understand it your work focuses upon the defence of indigenous territories and the protection and promotion of Amazonian culture? Was that the defining aim from the outset? And can you speak more about what defending these territories, and promotion of these legacies means to you today? What sorts of projects or initiatives do you work on to reach these goals? Education is at the core of your practice, correct?

For me, defending our territories means defending the memories of our grandparents, passed down from generation to generation. It means defending our way of living freely: bathing in a clean river, hunting, fishing, cultivating our gardens, taking medicine, and maintaining our connection with spiritual beings and our dreams—the dreams that come to us at night and form part of our worldview.

At TAWNA, we learned to make films through hands-on experience, alongside our fellow collective members, sharing knowledge during shoots rather than attending major universities. Our university was the rainforest, a hut, the stories told by our mothers and grandmothers, and the stories passed down by our grandfathers and uncles. This is where our way of seeing, feeling, and telling the world comes from.

Our projects seek to bring these stories to more communities and territories so that the Amazon can be understood through our own voices and perspectives. For us, cinema is a way of keeping our memory alive, passing the knowledge of our elders on to younger generations, and protecting our culture. It is also a way of defending the rainforest, its beings, and the relationships that make our existence possible, so that everything that sustains us is not lost or destroyed.

One of our projects is KANUA, the Floating Amazonian Film Festival. Through this initiative, we navigate rivers in a solar-powered canoe, bringing films and stories of struggle and resistance made by Amazonian filmmakers to communities that are difficult to reach. We also organize art and filmmaking workshops with young people from these communities, allowing them to explore their own forms of expression and tell stories about their communities' realities, experiences, and territorial conflicts from their own perspectives. We seek to strengthen their voices through these creative tools, enabling them to share their experiences, defend their territories, and create their own narratives.

What are the risks, challenges, harms that you work to counter?

One of the main risks we seek to counteract is the destruction of our territories and the gradual disappearance of our ways of life. When a river becomes polluted, the rainforest is destroyed, or the places we inhabit disappear, we also lose part of our memory, our knowledge, and our relationship with the spiritual beings that form part of our worldview.

Another challenge is that our stories are told by outsiders who often do not understand our ways of seeing and relating to the world. That is why, at TAWNA, we seek to tell our own stories through our own voices and perspectives, so that our peoples are not made invisible and our cultures remain alive.

We want younger generations to know their roots, listen to their grandparents, and maintain their connection with their territories. For us, filmmaking is a way of passing on our knowledge, keeping our memory alive, and defending life.

Do you think that, in international terms, the perception of the Amazonian region and its culture has broadened over recent years, or do you still find it is a very narrow understanding?

I feel that there is still a limited understanding of our peoples and the deep connection we have with nature, plants, animals, our songs, and the designs we paint on our faces. Sometimes, because we are Indigenous, people underestimate our ways of thinking, feeling, and seeing the world.

But we see far beyond what is visible. The stories we share through TAWNA also emerge from this way of understanding the world. They come from our dreams, our memories, and what we have heard from our grandparents and mothers. In my own case, I remember listening to my mother tell stories when I was a child, and how her eyes would light up as she recounted her experiences of living as a nomad. That memory remains alive within me and is also part of the stories we tell today.

I feel that we still need to move beyond the romanticization of our cultures and begin to truly understand, respect, and listen to them. We do not want to be seen only as peoples of the past or as an exotic image of the Amazon. We want people to recognize that we have our own ways of thinking, our own knowledge, our own questions, and our own ways of understanding life. We want our voices to be heard for who we are, without others having to interpret our identities on our behalf.

How do you reach those you work with and support, and how are the networks and communities you foster maintained? Do all of those you interact with ‘become’ part of TAWNA, or is it a looser network of associates and collaborators?

Many times, communities invite us to film in their territories. Through these encounters, we build relationships that continue in other spaces, such as our KANUA festival, where we meet and share experiences with some of these communities again.

TAWNA is a diverse collective made up of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. When communities see Indigenous faces behind the cameras, telling our own stories, they feel represented and recognize the importance of narrating our experiences from our own perspectives.

In this way, we have built a network of collaborators and allies with whom we share processes, dreams, and struggles. When a community needs support in bringing a situation to public attention or defending its territory, we also help amplify its voices through our social media and audiovisual productions.

For us, the relationship does not end when a film is finished. Telling our stories also means being present, maintaining our relationships, and supporting one another along the way.

What are the core challenges that you feel those you work with today, in the regions where you operate, face. And do you feel optimistic about the future, is there movement toward improvement?

Today, some of the communities we have worked with and belong to face threats from oil companies, mining, and projects such as the Ronda Suroriente oil licensing round. These activities put our territories, our ways of life, and our relationships with the rainforest and rivers at risk.

Despite this, I have hope. We are peoples who have resisted for a long time and who continue to seek ways to defend our territories and build different futures. Today, we see communities developing their own alternatives, fellow community members working on the construction of electric peque-peque boats, and women organizing as Indigenous territorial guards to protect their lands. We also feel there is greater unity among the communities and the people with whom we share this path.

I believe it is possible to build different futures, although I know we will have to struggle to realise them. My hope comes from seeing that, despite all the threats, our peoples continue to organize, create alternatives, and defend life.

How do you hope that TAWNA will grow, and how will you measure or see your own legacy or success? And, how might this grant help toward those aims?

We hope TAWNA will continue growing as a space where Indigenous Amazonian peoples can tell their own stories, strengthen their cultures, and defend their territories through art and cinema. For us, success means seeing younger generations take these tools into their own hands and create their own narratives. This grant would help us sustain our creative processes, reach more communities, and strengthen the networks that make this work possible.