asakiyume | el árbol de gusanos

I think I maybe shared earlier that the Tikuna see a linking between certain creatures of the land and certain creatures of the water: for example, river dolphins are linked with humans--every time a human dies, a dolphin is born, and every time a dolphin dies, a human is born. Thinking of the world population of humans versus the world population of river dolphins, the connection must be between only limited human populations.... maybe just Tikuna.

And they see a similar connection between manatees and tapirs. The symbol for Fundacíon Natütama, a Tikuna nonprofit, shows this with a manatee-tapir creature.

Another nonprofit active in the Colombian Amazon, Fundacíon Omacha, shared another story about manatees that they say is Tikuna--though when I ran it by my tutor, she'd never heard it, so... not sure. But I like the story, so here it is:

It's said that manatees start out as worms on a particular tree. They wrap themselves in leaves, making nests like the nests of the arrendajo bird (which, may I just say, is káurë in Tikuna, the name of the colonial person in "New Day Dawning"). After three months, the worms have the shape of manatees, but it takes a flash of lightning to cause them to fall from the tree into the water. The story concludes by saying that if you stop seeing those trees on land, you'll stop seeing the manatees in the water.

What happens on land affects what happens in the water, and what happens in the water affects what happens on land. Good to remember.

Here are Fundación Omacha's images for this story (plus the text in Spanish). (Originally posted on Twitter on September 12--link to that post here.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

sovay

What happens on land affects what happens in the water, and what happens in the water affects what happens on land.

I like that very much, and the current flowing between people and dolphins.

Edited Date: 2023-10-08 01:04 am (UTC)

asakiyume

And as the river rises and falls what's land one season is water the next. River-dwelling creatures feast during the high-water period on the same fruits that terrestrial creatures are eating at other times of year.

River-dwelling creatures feast during the high-water period on the same fruits that terrestrial creatures are eating at other times of year.

That seems right. Sharing food is one of the oldest things you can do to be a community.