Listen to this important webcast with Ryan Eliason interviewing Taska Yawanawa
Business Ventures That Empower Indigenous People to Protect The Rainforest (45 minutes)
Tashka is the Chief of the Yawanawa tribe of the Brazilian Amazon and he will be calling in from the edge of the jungle. You'll hear from one of the wisest, most creative, visionary leaders alive today about how he brought his tribe back from the brink of ethnocide by initiating ecologically sound income producing projects. The Yawanawa and their allies are developing a new model of sustainability that allows the Yawanawa to protect the rainforest and engage with the outside world without losing their cultural and spiritual identity.
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Tashka Yawanawa describes how isolated their village is and what daily life is like. How they live in harmony with nature. He speaks of the history of the Yawana, how many people developed decease and were used as slaves as the Rubber Cappers, and how the tribe lost many people and was on the brink of the extinction, but now there numbers are getting better.
He won a scholarship and went to the U.S. and learned English and he married a Mexican woman. They were planning to go back to Mexico when he was asked to come back to his community.
They wanted him to be the Chief and Shaman, he said "No, your making a mistake" but they told him they had had a vision and they told him they would help and support him.
400 people are now 700.
"Live in harmony with nature"
"the jungle is the supermarket, where we build out house, where we get our water"
They went to the media to give attention to the community from international community so that the Brazil government would change the area of the territory so that they could sustain themselves
They are working on green solutions, for travel with vehicles. They were using diesel. So now they are using a type of seed to make a vegetable oil for the motors on the boats. They need to use the boats at this time otherwise it's 7 days paddling to get to the nearest community.
They bring their spiritual and beliefs to their business models. Aveda uses special "environmental products" from Yawanawa people is just one of their projects. Their economic projects are going well, one of which is a center of healing and ceremony and education outsiders about their community.
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From Wikipedia In 2001, at 26 years old, Tashka Yawanawa became responsible for 500 people and 1,000 square kilometres of Amazon Rainforest as Chief of the Yawanawa. In just a few years, Tashka and his wife Laura, a Mixteca-Zapoteca leader from Oaxaca, Mexico, have managed to double the Yawanawa territory, reinvigorate Yawanawa culture, and establish economically and socially empowering relationships with the outside world.
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http://www.aveda.co.uk/aboutaveda/yawanawa_updates.tmpl The chief says that the reason the biz model with Aveda works is their is no middle men and there is transparency.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Yawanawa/140861025940312
Tashka Yawanawa Blog
