The Elder Brothers

http://tairona.myzen.co.uk/

The first thing to say about meeting the Tairona is - PLEASE DON’T TRY.

These people are the conscientious guardians of a tradition, philosophy and form of thought that has been pretty effectively destroyed everywhere else in the world by the advance of our own culture. The most isolated of the Tairona communities, the Kogi, know very well that isolation is their only possibility for survival.

The original European invaders of America carried death on their breath and their bodies, in the form of invisible infections which wiped out perhaps as many as nine out of every ten inhabitants of the continent. Even the best-intentioned among them were, however inadvertantly, the carriers of destruction.

We also carry infections. But more than that, we carry our own way of perceiving and understanding the world, and however well-intentioned we may be, we re-form the consciousness of others. We teach more than we learn, and so we change the people we meet. That is why the Kogi demand that we stay away.

When I made the film, the Kogi Mamas prepared for it with enormous care. Every Kogi seen in it was chosen by the Mamas to be there: even towns full of people were entirely occupied by a cast that had been selected and prepared for the experience. The Mamas spent a year preparing themselves and the people seen on camera for the experience of taking part.

The Kogi think in terms of levels of cultural pollution; the lower down the mountain they go, the more of it they encounter. Whole areas of the Sierra are closed to whole groups of Kogi, because they have become too polluted by outside contact.

The Tairona do not want to be met. But they do want to be listened to.

And that is not for their sake. It is for ours.