indigenous nationalities we tend to talk
about them in terms of the others
sometimes we have this exaggerated
reverence or sometimes were
condescending or infantilizing or exotic
izing but whatever the case we seem to
always talk in terms of us and them as
if there’s this massive divide
separating us from indigenous people and
indigenous cultures and I think that’s
really too bad I think that that causes
some big problems I’m not here to
lecture you at all and I understand why
we do that in my experience with
indigenous people I’ve seen that they
have qualities and abilities that are
amazing to me like I think about being
in an Amazonian community and how the
kids there will notice a plane coming
minutes before I notice it or something
even bigger how they can live without
buying food live only on the food that
they grow or hunt or fish but I think
this tendency to see them is so
different from us causes problems in
that it prevents collaborations and by
preventing those collaborations with
indigenous people
I think we’re depriving the world of
what perhaps is most needed at this time
in history and that’s to discover the
wisdom and the power that indigenous
communities have I’m here today to tell
you about a project called kara solar
that is a explicit attempt to create
collaborations between the indigenous
world and non-indigenous world and to
blur that gap
kada is an amazing word from the a to
our language that means a dream or a
vision that’s going to come to pass it’s
kind of hard to turn
into English or or into Spanish but
maybe you’re the best equivalent would
be like a premonition we decided to to
name this project console R because we
have a dream for a new model of
transportation in the Amazon and it’s a
dream that’s shared by many people I
just happen to be the person that’s
designated to be here talking to you
today but there’s a huge group behind
this project and I speak on behalf of
them I want to bring these people here
today because I think one of the most
powerful things about this project is
that it’s a collective dream and one of
the things I learned about that word
cada is that it can be shared by many
people that the ajvar feel that dreams
don’t belong to any one person and that
we all can contribute to the same cada
and I feel that that’s what this what
this project is about but to tell you my
my story with Escada
I have to take you to my first visit to
add to our territory it was 2007 I was a
senior in in University in the United
States I was studying history and I was
looking for what to do next and I had
the opportunity to visit to our
territory and I was totally amazed by
what I found there it’s about seven
hundred thousand hectares of the most
biodiverse forest on the planet and so I
knew I wanted to come back in two years
later I had the opportunity to go and
live in a nod to our community for two
years no that’s a lie for two months and
the first day I got there I think is the
day that this project codicil art began
for me I arrived and they called a
community meeting and gave me a document
that said the utens a community internet
project and they said Oliver we’re
working on this project to bring
Internet to you soon sir and we want you
to help us and I in my head I screamed
myself no this is terrible
I had this this really visceral reaction
that they shouldn’t have internet they
shouldn’t bring Internet to their
territory but I didn’t say anything and
I stayed there and I started talking to
them and got to know people and started
to learn about how roads are arriving in
our to our territory if we if we zoom in
on this map of roads we can see how
roads bring deforestation and I learned
about how a lot of the people in the
community wanted the road to arrive and
a lot of people didn’t want the road to
arrive and there was this internal
debate going on but the fact was is that
the roads were arriving there are two
different roads that have now reached
out to our territory from the north and
the West and I learned from the
communities about the question of oil
this huge question for the ecuadorian
amazon and how the oil blocks were
steadily expanding southward being sold
off and approaching to our territory and
again there were people in the community
who wanted the oil to to come in people
who didn’t and there was this internal
debate going on and i went back to that
first day when they had given me the
document asking me to collaborate with
them on internet and I saw the request
in a whole new way and I realized that
technology and the outside world is
coming to our to our territory whether
it’s in the form of a road or in the
form of the internet or in the form of
oil drilling it’s coming technology and
indigenous cultures are colliding and
that to me was a fascinating encounter
and something that I decided I wanted to
work on so I went back to the United
States for a year and I studied solar
energy and then I came back to Ecuador
and went back to our communities and
started talking to the people there
about how can we use technology in the
best possible way in your communities
and I would love to say that there was a
an amazing aha moment but there wasn’t
it was a slow development a series of
conversations and this idea of a boat
emerged transportation is the most
difficult aspect of life in our charter
taury gasoline is flown in on planes and
then used in motor boats they cost about
five times what it costs in the rest of
the country and so there’s this dream in
our to our territory of being able to
travel using the power of the Sun and
it’s a dream shared by a lot of people
it’s a cada shared by a lot of people
and as we began to work on it in earnest
we discovered that the boats that have
been used in the Ecuadorian Amazon for
thousands of years these traditional
canoes are the most appropriate hull
forms to be used with solar panels and
electric motors to create solar powered
boats we did velocity tests and found
that the that very small electric motors
can move these indigenous style boats
very quickly they’re so efficient and we
found that we could fit enough solar
panels on the roof to keep the batteries
charged in – to create a functioning
solar powered transportation system we
combined disciplines in a way that I
think has never been done we worked with
electrical engineers naval engineers
industrial designers and with the Attar
themselves to create a design that
that’s appropriate for the rivers of
about your territory and all of this
happened in Lago Agrio
in the capital of the oil industry here
in Ecuador and I’m still haunted by
something that happened during the
construction we built on the the shores
of the agua Rico River and there was a
guy who lived in the in the neighborhood
where we were building the boat and he
would walk up and down the shore every
day yelling at the top of his lungs
Bombay and muchachos pumped boys Bombay
inand petróleo crew though pumped the
crude oil he was in some kind of a
delusion I think he was a former oil
worker who had these kind of daydreams
going on and it formed this incredible
bizarre situation where we were creating
the solar-powered boat with that as our
our soundtrack we finished the boat in
August of last year and put it in the
river for the for the first inaugural
trip and in that moment this dream this
collective dream of a solar-powered
community run transportation system was
real and I want to just show you a
really brief video is new generation of
achieved on the game for this Laura
so no tiene su motivo de inform our nose
donde vamos a llegar despues de muchos
in Kazama Kawa Salada
es un Barco que kiva trabajar otra vez
de la energía solar y no con el
combustible con la idea de de mejorar
una buena conservación de nuestro
ambiente
[Music]
there’s so many people that worked on
this boat and it’s amazing for me to
have Lewis and ghido and dahveed and
Pasquale and those people that you saw
in the video here in the room today so
we put the boat in the water everything
worked and then we had a dilemma how do
we get the boat from su cumbias in the
north of the ecuadorian amazon to a chor
territory in the south of the Ecuadorian
Amazon and we decided to go the River
route we decided to take an 1800
kilometer trip down through Peru and
back up into Ecuador in order to extend
this dream to a wider public so we set
off on March 28th of this year we camped
in beaches along the way we built a
support boat that was also a hundred
percent solar that was that went behind
our boat just in case there were any
emergencies we never had to to use it
which was great but it was it was an
amazing adventure I think the part about
it but I liked the most was waking up
every morning and not knowing where we
were gonna sleep that night and knowing
that you can have a real adventure in
the year 2017 it was also really
difficult there was you know all the
technical difficulties we broke
propellers on by hitting rocks we had
really cloudy days where we couldn’t
advanced very far we had all the
interpersonal dynamics that you can
imagine with nine men on a very
relatively small boat trying to make
decisions together but it was an amazing
group there were nine people there were
two of our one gringo a German – two
Quechua one from the Amazon and one from
the Sierra and three Keith Daniels and I
think we made a pretty good team and we
we made it to – out to our territory
stopping along the way and showing the
boat along the way and connecting with
communities along the way and also
seeing the state of the Amazon today
which was I think pretty devastating for
all of us we expected to see this
massive beautiful intact forest and
found instead an absolutely devastated
contaminated polluted Amazon with very
few forest like a to our territory like
the one that we were bringing the boat
to here we are
the night before the arrival celebrating
and when we made it to our territory my
my daughter was there waiting for me
along with my wife which I which I
didn’t know I saw them in the binoculars
as we as we approached and it was one of
the more exciting moments of my life to
to see them and to get to share this
dream with them and I’ll always remember
being in the HR community after arriving
and seen my daughter play with the with
the odd to our kids and play completely
naturally no problems there is no us and
them to her and that was really powerful
for me to see that that there was no
that this divided that I thought existed
so I think that’s the central message
that I’ve taken from this project and
that I want to try to share with you
we’ve built this kata that’s been shared
across cultures between indigenous
people between universities between
companies between gringos between all
these different people who have a dream
and have made it real what I would I
take from this dream and what I think is
the most powerful thing that I’ve
you remember in the beginning when I
said how cata is a short word that
doesn’t have a definition in in other
languages as I’ve been preparing for
this for this talk I’ve been thinking
and thinking a lot about that and I
realized that that’s actually not true
that when we speak we have we use
concepts similar taqaddas all the time
like you might say I had a feeling that
might happen or I had an inkling that
might have and I had an intuition that
might happen I think those are the exact
same way those are the exact same idea
so this idea that indigenous people are
tapped into this secret source of
knowledge I’ve actually realized it’s
kind of an illusion and that we all have
access to that same knowledge I think
that the difference might be more like
we we have the same hardware we just
have different software and we’ve been
trained for years and years and years to
think that with our software we’re not
capable of tapping into this knowledge
in this wisdom and I have learned that I
think I think we can I think all of you
can I think that all of us contain
multitudes I think all of us are maps to
the stars thank you [Applause]