The Kogis / Sierra Nevada Colombia

The breathtaking mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast of Colombia are the sacred ancestral lands of four Indigenous Peoples: the Kogi, Arhuaco, Wiwa, and Kankuamo. It is the world’s tallest coastal mountain range, containing nearly every ecosystem on the planet: glaciers, tundra, alpine lakes, deserts, rainforests, wetlands, and coral reefs.

The inhabitants, direct descendants of an ancient civilization known as the Tayrona, speak distinct languages but share the belief that they are the guardians of the heart of the world. At the core of their spirituality and cosmology is the belief that the mountain range is a living entity, whom, before being created by the great creator Sezhankwa, existed in the spiritual universe. The great creator then birthed the people of the Sierra Nevada and gave the mandate to uphold her Original Law: that all creation must be protected and nurtured.

Through deep meditation, ritual offerings, songs, and prayers carried out along a network of interconnected sacred sites, the Mamos (Kogi priests) follow the law of caring for the Sierra Nevada—thus maintaining the equilibrium of life for their sacred mountains, and the entire world. The Kogi are concerned that non-Indigenous people, the “younger brothers,” are plundering and dismembering the Earth. They see this evidenced in the prolonged droughts and disappearing glaciers in their own mountains. Jose de Los Santos Sauna, Kogi Cabildo governor, cautions, “If the sacred sites in the heart of the world are not protected...calamity will befall the entire world. The younger brother is not heeding our warnings.”

The Kogi were one of only a handful of tribes in Colombia that defied the Spanish conquistadores by moving high up into the mountains to their traditional spiritual centers, where they continued to live for centuries in relative isolation. Over the 500 years since colonization, however, the Kogi and other peoples of Sierra Nevada have lost most of the mid-to-lower elevation reaches of their ancestral lands.