Dream weavers: The Sapara women of Ecuador and Peru believe dreams are vital for wellbeing

Sep 4, 2024



Luisa Grefa uses leaves as wings in this image to represent her Sápara name of Saweka, which is a type of bird. (Photo by Tatiana Lopez)

By Tatiana Lopez

We all dream, but for the women of the Sápara community dreams are vital to their wellbeing. Their dreams help guide their lives; they connect them to the forest. When they enter Makihaunu (dream world) their spirit communicates with the spirits of the trees, the animals and people who have died.

I first met the Sápara – and learned about the importance of dreams – in 2020 when I was doing my master’s thesis on the link between nature and human wellbeing. The Sápara are part of a dwindling Indigenous community who live in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon: there are only 600 members left, and only three elders continue to speak the Sápara language.

As with so many other Indigenous groups, oil exploitation and the climate crisis severely threaten Sápara land and ways of life – including the dream world. If the forest is destroyed the spirits will leave and they then lose their connection to the land. They say people in cities do not remember their dreams because their connection to the natural and spirit world is blocked by the concrete buildings.

My project is called In Between Dreams the Forest Echoes the Song of the Burning Anaconda. I named it because Sápara believe the anaconda is the creature that balances the Earth; if the Earth is threatened, the anaconda will “sing” and the Earth will burn.



Polaroids embroidered by women from the Llanchama Cocha and Atatakuinjia Sápara communities in Ecuador, 2022. From left: by Musaka Ushigua: ‘My name is Mukaka, I am garlic woman, I cure people every day.’; by Kaji Grefa: ‘My name is Kaji (hawk). When I was a child, my wings grew, and I started to fly.’; by Tzakuana Ushigua: ‘Tzakuana (wituk) is a fruit or a seed with which women dye our hair and paint our faces to look beautiful.’ (Photos by Tatiana Lopez)

The project encompasses a range of images: cyanotypes that I embroidered based on interviews with women and symbols from nature; digital photos; and Polaroids that I invited the women to embroider, showing what colonization meant to them and how it has affected their identity and their dreams. One women remembered becoming a hawk in her dream and could see the forest from above.

More:
https://cuencahighlife.com/dream-weavers-the-sapara-women-of-ecuador-and-peru-believe-dreams-are-vital-for-wellbeing/