Karuara, People of the River

Peru’s northern Amazon faces multiple threats, including oil spills, hydroelectric dams and a planned “water highway,” which would dredge 4 major rivers. The Amazon region is the world’s largest source of biodiversity; the lungs of our planet. It holds 20% of our fresh water and is crucial in mitigating the effects of climate change. The Amazon’s destruction is not just a local problem – it will be a global catastrophe.

Historically the Kukama people have been guardians of their rivers and forests. Today their culture is being attacked as never before and they risk assimilation. Peru’s Ministry of education lists the Kukama language as “endangered”. Only elders like Don Jose still speak it and within a decade this vibrant language and all the cultural knowledge it contains, could disappear.

The issues our film addresses are even more relevant today than when my Peruvian husband and I began filming in 2015. But this is not just a film about one Indigenous woman’s struggle to save her river - it is also a film made by that same woman and her community.

A decade ago, Leonardo Tello, director of a Kukama Indigenous radio station, asked Miguel “Miki” Araoz and I to make this film. He had watched my documentaries, seen Miki’s paintings and felt he could trust us.

Leonardo told us about the Karuara spirits and shared stories he’d been recording over the past decade. We were fascinated and agreed on one condition: that Leonardo and his radio team come onboard as co-producers.

Miki and I didn’t want to misrepresent Indigenous stories so we designed a participatory method with our Kukama partners. Leonardo became a co-producer and script writer. Mari Luz Canaquiri, the film’s inspiring protagonist, is also a co-producer and writer. Every phase of production brought Indigenous artists, elders and journalists together with experienced filmmakers. This is revolutionary in Latin America where most films are still made about Indigenous communities, and not by and with them.

I’ve been living and working in Peru for 28 years; it’s where I’ve spent my adult life and career as a filmmaker. As I delved further into the Karuara’s magical underwater world, I began to discover my own connections. The Kukama’s stories are unique and precious but there are also universal elements. My grandmother’s first husband disappeared while fishing on a lake in northern Ontario, Canada, in the ancestral territory of the Anishinaabeg people. Two decades later his son, my Uncle Lonnie, was lost while boating in Lake Ontario near land stolen from the Mississauga and Ojibwe nations. Their bodies were never found. Would their loved one’s grief have been lessened if they believed in water spirits?

Whether my uncle and his father transformed into lake spirits, or simply decomposed and were eaten by aquatic creatures, they became part of Canada’s fresh waterways. Physically or spiritually, they are in the lakes. And since roughly 60 percent of the human body is water, in essence we are all Karuara - water people. Isn’t it time we join our cousins in the Amazon region to protect our common home?