We present Nacer Matsigenka!

We are proud to present  Nacer Matsigenka / Omechotaganira Matsigenkaku which brings to the world our work documenting and making visible the knowledge of the Matsigenka community of Camisea through the voices of women. Nacer Matsigenka is a bilingual (Spanish/Matsigenka) book illustrated by Yaquemilsa Matiashi Vicente about the practices and beliefs related to childbirth in Camisea, an indigenous Matsigenka community of the Lower Urubamba, in the Peruvian Amazon.

The creators of the book are Yaquemilsa Matiashi Vicente, a young Matsigenka mother and artist who is currently a student of environmental engineering at UPEU-Tarapoto and Brenda Araujo Salas, who researches traditional knowledge focused on women's health. 

The aim in the creation of this book is to honor the knowledge of the Matsigenka people. With the money from this campaign we will be presenting the women of Camisea who lent their voices to this project a copy of the book. We will also be presenting the book to women in 3 other communities around the Lower Urubamba (Ticumpinia, Timpia and Shivankoreni) with the aim of creating dialogues about their traditional birth practices and their rights as indigenous women to receive health care that respects these practices.

We think it is critical that this information is visible, and we hope this book can help support the continued passing of this knowledge down through the generations. We believe these traditional practices and knowledge make us stronger as people and can help revitalize indigenous Amazon identity. Having a strong identity and pride as indigenous Matsigenka people is important in the defense of ourselves and our territories.

What will you find in this book?

This bilingual book contains some answers and we hope will inspire many questions. It will provide illustrations and the words (in Spanish and Matsigenka) of women of Camisea to explain their traditions around the birth. It will ask you to think about the way your culture brings children into the world and what we are doing to bring them in to the world with love.

As mentioned, your support makes it possible for us to publish and present 1500 copies of Nacer Matsigenka/Omechotaganira Matsigenkaku to the women of Camisea and 3 other communities of the Lower Urubamba in the Amazon of Peru.

The printing will be done in the second half of June 2018 and we are planning to travel to the Lower Urubamba to present the books to the communities in early July. We will begin in Camisea and travel to the other three communities explaining the process of creating these books.

During these presentations we will also be holding workshops in Matsigenka and Spanish ​​on reproductive health and the rights of indigenous women to give birth in the way they choose and to receive culturally responsive health care. 

We are also planning to deliver PDF versions of Nacer Matsigenka/Omechotaganira Matsigenkaku to the nurses and OBGYNs who work with women in these communities.  We are excited to use this book to strengthen conversations between these health workers and community leaders about what culturally responsive healthcare can look like.

Supporting with $10 will get you a PDF version of Nacer Matsigenka/Omechotaganira Matsigenkaku.  We are excited for you to see the beautiful illustrations by Yaquemilsa!

There will also be postcards and posters for sale depicting 5 stages of women’s health and childbirth: the first menstruation, pregnancy, delivery, care of the newborn and care of the baby as it grows.  The postcards will feature illustrations and a brief explanation in Matsigenka and Spanish.  

The explanations of the posters and postcards and additional information will also be in English, Italian, German, Portuguese and French on our blog, http://omoguitoinkite.blogspot.com thanks to our dear friends and supporters of this project.

One last request: If you decide to support this project, please send us a photograph of you  with your full name. These will go on the Acknowledgments page of the blog, and, if we receive them before May 30th, we can show your pictures to the women of Camisea during our presentations.  We want to be able to show the women all the individuals who donated to support their knowledge and words and create Nacer Matsigenka.

What is happening and why it is so urgent to value cultural practices

We believe that strengthening identity from birth is very important, especially now that there is more and more of a foreign presence in the indigenous communities in the Amazon. 30 years ago there were not many outsiders in the region, but since 1980, oil and gas extraction have started taking place and more and more outside workers and merchants have been arriving. In the last 30 years there has also been a more consistent presence of the Peruvian government, which has created public projects such as health clinics and schools.

It is critical these health clinics and schools provide culturally appropriate and responsive services, but this is usually not the case.  A clear example: in schools in the Lower Urubamba children often want to stop speaking in their mother tongue.  This was not found before public schools entered the region and reflects a deep need to create similar dialogues around respectful, culturally responsive education.

With healthcare, it is now considered more “civilized” to give birth in one of the public health clinics.  Traditional midwives and other health workers in the community are gradually giving up their work. As they stop, community members are losing traditional practices and remedies to keep themselves healthy and balanced within themselves and with their environment.  While there are some clinic personnel who are respectful and want to learn and provide culturally responsive care, they are not the majority.

We believe that these communities deserve knowledge about their rights as indigenous people and specifically as indigenous women. We believe that the solutions to providing this culturally relevant health care, health care with dignity, will not only come from the Ministry of Health, the Peruvian government, but the communities themselves. And we believe that strengthening cultural practices around health is an important way to strengthen cultural identity as a whole.

Nacer Matsigenka is the first step that we have developed to revitalize Matsigenka indigenous identity in the Lower Urubamba. We have the support of the leadership of Camisea and are looking forward to use this work to continue to strengthen cultural identity with the Matsigenka youth of Camisea.