The Boa Woman: creation stories from the Amazon

A decade ago, Leonardo Tello Imaina, director of an Indigenous radio station in Peru’s Amazon region, asked my co-director Miguel Araoz and I to make animations to revive his people’s ancestral stories and help protect their rivers. In the old days, when Leonardo was a child, he listened to elders tell these stories around the fire at night. Now, the pace of technology and change in the Amazon region is so great that Leonardo’s children are growing up watching American animations on tablets and cell phones, like The Little Mermaid and Peppa Pig. Leonardo's dream was to use new media technologies, like animation, to keep his people’s language and culture alive and reach young people.

And so, Miguel and I embarked on a 10-year journey with Leonardo and a group of Indigenous elders and communicators, creating the three animated shorts in this collection, as well as the feature documentary Karuara, People of the River, (also available with New Day: https://www.newday.com/films/karuara-people-of-the-river).

Every phase of production brought Indigenous artists, elders and story-tellers together with experienced filmmakers. This participatory model is revolutionary in Latin America where most films are still made about Indigenous communities instead of by and with them. Each short is narrated in Kukama-Kukamiria, an endangered language that is only spoken by elders. If bilingual education programs fail, this vibrant language will disappear taking with it a wealth of knowledge about the world's largest surviving tropical rainforest.

The Amazon region is the world’s largest source of biodiversity; the lungs of our planet. It holds 20 percent of our fresh water and is crucial in mitigating the effects of climate change. But the forest is being destroyed at an alarming rate and the Amazon’s waterways are contaminated by oil spills, illegal mining, hydroelectric dams and other modern threats. The Amazon’s destruction is not just a local problem – it will be a global catastrophe. These animations became part of a historic campaign that won legal personhood for the Marañón River. The case marked the first time a Peruvian court has recognized the rights of nature and has inspired similar movements in Peru and around the world.

Our film team is dedicating this collection to the memory of Don Jose Huaymacari, the narrator of the first animation, “And that is how the rivers came to be.” Don Jose was a member of the Escuela Ikuari, a group of elders who teach their native language to children in the town of Nauta, on the banks of the Marañón River. He was also the model for his animation’s protagonist, the Kukama God who created the Amazon’s rivers. We filmed Don Jose acting out all the character’s movements – he even built a traditional bow and arrow for verisimilitude. Our artists based the character on him. Although Don Jose passed away unexpectedly at the end of 2023, the animation lives on, a reminder of his passionate defense of the Marañón River and Kukama culture.

---- by Stephanie Boyd, codirector/producer