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  • Meet the First Generation of Awasqa Youth Scholars

    It is with great joy that we want to introduce the first eight young Awasqa Youth Scholarship recipients! The main objective of the Awasqa Youth Scholarship is to create networks across Latin America and to give visibility to the work of Black and indigenous youth who are leading in the fields of community journalism, communication…

  • To Migrate Is To Resist Colonialism

    Source: Originally Published by Revista Amazonas Translated by Awasqa Interview with Amarela Varela Huerta and Soledad Álvarez Velasco This text stems from an interview with Soledad Alvarez Velasco (Ecuadorian) and Amarela Varela Huerta (Mexican) Their words show a common sisterly fabric, an intellectual, feminist, transnational friendship and, above all, their activism for a dignified and…

  • Amazon’s Ancestral Medicine Against COVID-19

    In Ecuador, like many Latin American countries, due to the global inequity of access to vaccines against COVID-19, only 10% of the population has so far received both doses of the vaccine. Indigenous peoples, with minimal access to clinical care, are particularly vulnerable populations that know very well they cannot lower their guard to the…

  • Fanesca as a Symbol of Resistance and Community Relations

    Easter week is here, and it’s that time of the year when families in Ecuador and Ecuadorian immigrants in the US, Canada, and Europe prepare fanesca, one of the most intricate dishes I’ve had the pleasure to prepare and eat. It is so complex that people often gather their extended families to help in the…

  • Elections Significance for Indigenous Peoples in Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, USA

    The significance of democratic elections in 2020 for indigenous peoples go beyond electoral results. Wavering between the need for sovereignty/self-determination and democratic participation, indigenous people are finding themselves in places of power denied to them historically. After hundreds of years of noncitizenry, indigenous plurinational states are now shaping democracy. Below we summarize some of the…

  • #WasipiSakiri. Foto: RadioIluman

    Decolonizing Health II: Community Efforts in Abya Yala

    Slowly we perceive―like the rising of the river when it comes down from the mountain―that the rain at the top of the summit hasn’t ceded, and that we must prepare for the sudden flow. After the initial storm, like the soft roots that creep between the stones until they are broken, ideas, actions, and the…

    Singing Hip Hop in Native Languages to Reclaim Identities

    Musical expressions are liberating and help build resilience. Some musical expressions have managed to unleash social change and others, to shape identities and resistance, but above all music is contributing significantly to keeping Native languages ​​and expressions alive. Indigenous languages ​​are living, active languages ​​that grow and are renewed, for example, when young people take…

  • “I Will Return and Become Millions” The Greatest Legacy of Tupak Amaru

    Editors Note: This essay was originally published by Salvador Quishpe Lozano on October 12, 2019, as a call and response to the great repression suffered to the indigenous-led protests against IMF-sponsored neoliberal policies. It places the protests in a historical context of indigeous resistance. References have been added by Awasqa for English speakers. Today, October…