In every culture, people have found symbolic, sacred places
where they can recognize the beauty,
the enormity of the universe, coming together as a focus.
Around the world, people of all beliefs
protect their places of connection, rejuvenation,
and spirituality.
But some sacred sites have become an unholy battleground
of land rights and religious dogma.
In Ethiopia, sacred areas that are sanctuaries of biodiversity
are under attack by a wave of religious fundamentalism.
And in Peru, Andean potato farmers
face cultural devastation from climate change.
Things are out of kilter, out of whack, all over.
But indigenous people know its nature.
And they're the very people who are suffering the most
right now.
And those are the people we have to protect
and we have to learn from them.
In the Gamo Highlands of Ethiopia,
it's time to light the fire.
Across the countryside, people are
gathering in sacred groves and meadows
for Masqala the region's New Year's celebration.
The fire brings renewal, giving power
to the blessings and wishes for the coming year.
The dubusha is a sacred meeting place
for managing common resources and resolving disputes.
All decisions are made by consensus.
Located in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia
boasts high plateaus and fertile lowlands,
abounding with cultural and biological diversity.
Many of the country's 80 ethnic groups
have continued to follow their unique spiritual traditions
coexisting with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church
since the 14th century.
5,000 feet above the Rift Valley,
the people of the Gamo Highlands have
maintained their own distinctive culture,
tending a network of sacred natural sites.
Their indigenous belief system, based
on the celebration and renewal of fertility, is called woga.
Among its many rules governing the relationship
between the natural and spiritual world,
woga calls for the protection of certain landscapes.
Traditionally, when you go to forest to cut trees,
you have to ask elders.
And they tell you what to cut.
You don't cut every tree you get.
Tradition protects lots of trees.
Community leaders called halak'as enforce woga.
They call on special priests called maakas
to pray and perform ritual sacrifice.
It is quite elaborate.
There are guardians are responsible
for each sacred site.
For example, that will be a person responsible to maintain
and keep the sacred tree.
There is another person to maintain the sacred land
and the sacred stone.
There are also sacred meadows.
On sacred grazing meadows called kalo.
Any disturbance of the land is strictly forbidden.
This kalo was saved for Masqala.
Its abundant grass means a feast for the cattle
and a holiday for their herders.
[NON ENGLISH SINGING AND
After the meadow has acquired sufficient amount of biomass,
then the people will be allowed to graze in the meadow.
The kalo opening during Masqala celebrates
the crucial role grass plays in the cycle of life.
Maako Wario is the spiritual guardian of Milo Mountain,
another place held sacred for generations.
Maako Wario's practice is the foundation of woga
and the heart of traditional spirituality, ritual sacrifice.
But elders have seen a change in the community's relationship
with the land.
Ek'a Herayssa is the guardian of Naggasa,
the sacred forest where he contacts the spirit world.
For centuries, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church
coexisted peacefully with indigenous practices like woga.
All over the country, there are peoples
who are going to go to the Orthodox Church
and still practicing their own cultural traditions.
But in the past 20 years, the Orthodox Church
and growing numbers of Protestant converts
have become more conservative.
Now, both churches reject woga as superstition or worse.
Because most of these practices are attached to some demon
worship, personally I'm against them,
because it holds people with fear.
And what they're doing doesn't really help them.
Many people are becoming Protestant.
The Orthodox don't like that.
And the traditionals don't like that.
Most of these people are coming to the Protestant Church
because of modernism.
There's the synthesizer, the choir, the preaching.
That really attracts many people,
then maybe they understand the real message of the gospel.
No one has felt these changes more than Maako Dogiso,
caretaker of Muta Mountain.
They are losing ground, the traditional beliefs.
Now traditionalists say the conflict has gone
beyond threats to the land.
Terenke Sank'a is a medium known for her prophetic visions.
Sank'a's coffee ceremony is an ancient way to communicate with
the spiritual world.
People consult her to rectify past mistakes
or look into the future.
Another day of Masqala celebration
is called sofe, the presentation of brides.
Newlyweds are dressed in crowns of butter
and paraded through Dorbo, the sacred meadow.
But before the women could present themselves
to the elders, the ceremony was interrupted.
We don't know why this whole thing began but somebody passed
on a wrong message to the people,
saying that the Christians have come to take Dorbo.
People are afraid to plow Dorbo, because they would
think God will destroy them.
It's a sacred place.
It Shouldn't be touched.
OK.
But what God has given them to use, they should really subdue.
They should really be using the land
because it's given to people.
They should really come out of that fear.
It's like bondage.
It is everybody's right to come and convince
the individual to give up a certain belief
and to assume another.
But people shouldn't infringe on the right of others
by just propagating their own.
In traditional beliefs, there is some wisdom,
some knowledge in it.
If you recognize, all believers do exist.
Survival of one is important for the survival of another.
Elders see the Gamo landscape as a network of sacred sites
that are the heart of the community
and the key to its fertility.
Their wisdom is now being recognized by modern science.
Here in the Gamo Highlands, we have encountered
more than 300 sacred sites.
Since these places are protected,
that keeps the biodiversity intact.
What we found is that there is 35% more biodiversity
in the sacred groups through traditional ways
by diversities being protected.
Science has quite a lot to learn.
There is considerable amount of knowledge attached
with the use of the plants.
Plants have medicinal values for humans and livestock.
Some plants are wild edible plants.
Some plants have importance in maintaining soil fertility.
Some plants have not even been investigated.
I consider this as a landscape supermarket
where people go out and collect the food materials, medicine,
and plants of ritual importance.
Our recommendation would be give the non-sacred groups
the same status as the sacred groups so
is that more biodiversity can be protected.
Knowing your past helps you to determine your own future.
You didn't start from nothing.
This country is very big, immense
diversities in religious beliefs and cultural practices.
Anything that of a value for humanity
should be at least not to be lost.
There is this elaborate way of protecting the landscape,
and people now are becoming very much aware of their rights.
This is very important in maintaining biodiversity.
And there is a lot to learn from this kind of work.
Though separated by language, custom, and 8,000 miles,
the Q'eros of Peru share the Ethiopians' deep concerns
for protecting their natural heritage
in the face of global environmental threats.
There is a relationship between cultural diversity
and biological diversity.
And the reality is is these are man-made catastrophes which
cause destruction of people and crushing of ecosystems
and climate change.
You cannot solve the problem of global warming with the same
tools and mindset which has created it.
The problem is our attitude towards the natural world.
We don't want to stop our consumerism.
We don't want to stop all materialism.
But climate change is forcing us to rethink our relationship
with the earth.
From a small village in the Andes,
farmers and shepherds are on a pilgrimage
to visit the most powerful spirits of the land.
In this group from Qocha Moqo, Mariano Machacca
leads the pilgrimage.
Benito Quispe is the spiritual guide, and Freddy Flores
Machacca, the Q'eros cameramen.
On their annual journey to the festival of Qoyllur
Rit'i, the Q'eros will walk 30 miles in the next four days
to pray for good fortune in the coming year.
The pilgrims also seek blessings for the mountain spirits,
now threatened by the choices of people thousands of miles away.
Since ancient times, the physical geography of Peru
has been a map of indigenous spiritual beliefs--
rich with sacred mountains, rivers, and glaciers.
Just north of the revered Mount Ausangate,
thousands of people gather every year for the Festival
of Qoyllur Rit'i.
Pilgrims from the H'atun Q'eros community
follow the same mountain passes their ancestors traversed.
Their remote location in the highlands
protected the Q'eros from the brunt of the Spanish invasion
in the 16th century.
Still, the conquistadors brutally imposed Catholicism
upon Peru's native people.
To escape punishment, they blended
their traditional Incan practices
with the new religion.
And even under Spanish rule, the Q'eros
continued to pass down their traditional ways
of surviving on the land.
People have co-evolved with crops and biodiversity here.
So they know the best way of how we could maintain
this rich diversity we have.
But in recent years, the Q'eros have
been feeling changes in Pachamama,
or Mother Earth, the Supreme Being.
And they are seeing threats to the Apus,
mountain spirits they invoke for the weather
and water they depend on.
To the herders in the Andes, the mountains talk to one another.
They know how the mountains are related.
The winds are the breath of the mountain.
The winds are named for the mountains from which they come.
So in a way, you can say that the Q'eros
think like a mountain.
The Q'eros think like of river, like a lake.
That kind of thinking, we have lost
and we don't understand any longer.
In the early days when Pachamama was young,
the spirits of the mountains were still growing.
All of the peaks wanted to reach the heavens but especially
Apu Ausangate, who grew higher and higher.
The creator, angered by Ausangate's arrogance,
struck the Apu's head with a silver cross.
Then Ausangate grew no taller, only older, with a white head
like the wise men.
But the creator warned him--
your ice and snow will one day disappear.
And a great wind will blow.
It will blow away everything, even you, the mightiest Apu.
And the world will be empty.
Beneath the Apus, the Q'eros see spirits
throughout the landscape--
in their herds and in their crops.
Potatoes have a spirit, and our relationship is not just
a food source or a crop.
It's more a culture of relationship.
4,000 native varieties of potato have been essential to life
in the Andes.
This is a very harsh and fragile ground.
One way to create resilience in the system
is to have diversity.
All these potatoes are like a big family,
and they cannot live separated.
Their seasons are changed.
Their rain patterns are changed.
The disease patterns are changed.
And they've already moved their planting season
two months early.
Milton Gamarra is working with the farmers of Qocha Moqo
to measure the impact of the changing
climate on their potato crop.
Gamarra encourages the farmers to carry on their planting
customs, including the traditional practice
of cooperation.
Reciprocity is part of the Andean world.
And in the Q'eros, you see it all the way.
You will never see even the poorest community
not sharing or not giving.
The spirit of ayni also governs the relationship
between people and nature.
The effort of climbing a mountain
is one way to show the respect.
Everyone who climbs that pass for the first time
takes a rock.
And you see actually quite large piles of rocks on passes.
When the small Q'eros group arrives at the Sinakara Valley,
they join more than 40,000 faithful from hundreds
of Peruvian communities.
Although a Catholic celebration, the pilgrimage
is rooted in pre-Hispanic reverence for glaciers,
mountains, and water.
The church near Mount Ausangate was
built in a place indigenous people already saw as powerful.
The culture and the religion was Westernized,
so they have taken into Catholic religion
a syncretism which through the cross or through the saints,
they are really worshipping their own deities
or their own sacred places.
In Q'eros villages, reverence for the land
permeates daily life.
Everyone prays and makes offerings throughout the day.
One of the most important offerings is coca leaves.
For the Q'eros, this mild stimulant
provides a powerful connection to the spirits of the land.
Different families give things to different deities.
And they also do a ceremony when they plow the fields,
because they feel they're hurting Pachamama.
And when you have frosts and droughts,
they think that is Pachamama turning on you.
Climate change has given the Q'eros
many reasons to believe that Pachamama is angry.
For centuries, the meat and wool of their llamas and alpacas
have made it possible to survive the bitter wind
and cold of the highlands.
But now, changing weather patterns
have reduced grazing areas for the herds.
The glaciers in Peru are shrinking,
and they're shrinking fast.
At elevations of 16,000, even 17,000 feet,
you see the water coming down from the glacier.
And you can also see how the stream has shrunk,
how what was once continuously flowing water
is now a series of pools.
You can see the areas where the grasses had grown
before that are now barren.
So there's this deep concern that the pasture
is going to be gone, and with that end of the pasture,
their livelihood.
There is no place for them to turn.
The shrinking glaciers have also forced the Qoyllur
Rit'i pilgrims to change their traditions.
As always, they dance dressed as mythological characters,
including the ukuku, shaggy bears who are both tricksters
and guardians of the festival.
Hundreds of ukukus spend the night
on the glacier, holding secret rituals on the ice.
They march up to the ice and carve the ice
from the face of the glacier itself,
this ice that brings to them health, that
brings to them strength, that reaffirms
the connection to this mountain that is just such
a center to their world.
But pilgrims see that their revered Colquepunku
glacier is also receding--
more than 600 feet in 20 years.
So they realized that it was time for them
to stop taking the ice.
Festival authorities have forbidden
any harvest of the sacred glacial ice since 2003.
Scientists say that all of Peru's glaciers
could disappear as early as 2045.
Peru holds around 75% of the tropic glaciers of the world.
And that has been the basic source
for water and agriculture in the last 5,000 years.
If that fails for a couple of years,
we'll have social unrest.
We have unemployed people.
We'll have problems there.
On every continent, there are glaciers.
And on every continent, they've been shrinking.
When the glaciers are gone, you're
not going to be able to grow the crops.
You're not going to be able to feed the animals.
And the people in the cities just
don't know where they're going to get their water.
Less than 2% of the water on earth is-- you can drink.
That's what we're facing.
We're facing serious calamity.
The problem lies in industrial life.
And the United States has the biggest carbon footprint
in our world.
We're forcing the rest of the world to accommodate to us
and how it can be mitigated.
It's up to us right now.
All over the world, indigenous peoples
have contributed the least to global emissions
that are responsible for this global warming.
Because they live in the most fragile ecosystems,
people are facing a dramatic change.
Through times of change, the Q'eros
stay close to their indigenous roots.
At Qoyllur Rit'i, they never adopted the ritual of taking
glacier ice or lighting fireworks to draw the attention
of the Apus.
Every year, an elder divines the location
for the Q'eros offering.
Blowing on coca leaves, sends a greeting
to the Apus of the area, nourishing the deities
and appealing for their protection.
But even here, the pilgrims cannot practice in peace.
The ukuku orders the Q'eros to stop their ceremony
and clear out.
The Q'eros relocate nearby, this time
hidden from the ukuku and other pilgrims.
Once again, the group assembles their offering
called a despacho.
They add sweets, seeds, nuts, and feathers
and a drop of earthly spirits.
As the despacho burns, the smoke rises to the mountaintops
and the offering reaches the Apu.
After the despacho is consumed, this area is sacred,
and the pilgrims must leave it.
They will return home under the watchful gaze of Apu Ausangate.
Leaving their prayers in the mountains.
Alarmed by changes to the ecosystem,
communities have created an indigenous protected area
called the Potato Park.
We have to be open to changes without losing
our own identity.
So what people are doing here is trying
to see how best crops are adapted here so they can later
move them lower or back.
It's the best answer to climate change.
The park has drawn visitors from around the world, including
Ethiopians who share their concerns of preserving
biodiversity and food security.
They are part of a growing network
of indigenous people sharing strategies
to protect their land.
The indigenous people have the right
to take their future in their hands
and organize and also propagate their own cultures.
Protecting biodiversity has global importance.
Will the Andes sustain their farming communities?
The best way to protect biodiversity
is to have a healthy culture living inside that ecosystem,
because they have been preserving it.
It's so fragile, really, in the end.
People are very much attached spiritually to crops
and to the land, to the mountains.
It's not in books or in classrooms.
You had to practice.
You had to touch it in your hands, and you had to eat it.
You had to be part of it.
For us, that's the way.
I'm an optimist, and I think we have a beautiful country
and a responsibility towards the rest of the world
because of what the Andean civilization
and living in this part of the world means.