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About the Project
Digital Archive of the Indigenous Languages of the Amazon / Archivo Digital de las Lenguas Indígenas de la Amazonia (ARDILIA)
Project Grant
El proyecto abordó la restauración y digitalización de colecciones de casetes grabados en las décadas de 1990 y 2000, en las lenguas magütá (tikuna), miraña y murui (uitoto). Los archivos de la lengua magütá (con una duración total de 118,6 horas) son el resultado de un esfuerzo de recuperación de tradiciones orales llevado a cabo por agentes educativos magütá (padres y madres comunitarias) con numerosas personas de la tercera edad en 27 comunidades ubicadas a lo largo del río Amazonas durante el período comprendido entre 1991 y 2005. Estos casetes fueron almacenados por Abel Antonio Santos, maestro del pueblo magütá y doctor en estudios amazónicos por la Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Sede Amazonia), en bultos y cajas. El proyecto resultó en la restauración y digitalización de los casetes, así como en la vinculación de uno de los padres comunitarios y líder de la iniciativa en los años noventa, Sergio Ramos, y de tres jóvenes estudiantes de pregrado de la sede Amazonia, con el propósito de organizar y construir los metadatos de esta relevante colección. Los archivos de la lengua miraña (55,2 horas) son el resultado de grabaciones realizadas en la década de 1990 por Neeba Gwajko, reconocido como uno de los cantores más destacados de la comunidad. Su registro, realizado con el propósito de preservar el legado cultural para las generaciones futuras, documenta su profundo conocimiento sobre los cantos asociados a los diversos bailes tradicionales. La colección se encontraba asimismo en un estado de vulnerabilidad extrema, con un riesgo significativo de deterioro y perdida. El objetivo del proyecto fue la restauración y digitalización de los casetes. Elio Miraña, sobrino de Neeba Gwajko, junto con su familia, se ha hecho cargo de dicho material, bajo una Iniciativa que ha sido denominada Neeba Gwajko, cuyo propósito es el fortalecimiento de la lengua y la cultura miraña. El proyecto vinculó a un total de cuatro estudiantes de pregrado de la Universidad Nacional. La colección Murui (44,8 horas) contiene la digitalización de grabaciones realizadas en la década de 1990 por Juan Alvaro Echeverri, antropólogo y profesor de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, sede Amazonia, Hipólito Candre-Kɨneraɨ (río Igaraparaná) y Oscar Román-Enokakuiodo (río Caquetá). La primera contiene la palabra de coca y tabaco de Kɨneraɨ, mientras que la segunda contiene la palabra de sal de Enokakuiodo.
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Amazonian peoples have rich oral traditions. This project focused on collections of verbal art (chants, narratives, ceremonial discourses) from three peoples of the Colombian Amazon. They contain a rich lore recorded from 1975 to 2006, mostly by Indigenous peoples themselves, and many from deceased elders. These recordings are vital for younger generations interested in linguistic and cultural revitalization. The material (cassettes) was stored in precarious conditions and subject to deterioration and loss. The three languages are endangered, and this knowledge is rapidly disappearing as these peoples have been affected and displaced from their territories by the armed internal conflict in Colombia. We aimed to digitize and document two collections of cassette recordings from the Magütá (Tikuna) (130 cassettes) and Miraña (42 cassettes) peoples, and redigitize and document 83 narratives from the Murui people . The work was carried out by a team composed by a Magütá teacher and leader (first PhD of the Amazonia Campus of Universidad Nacional de Colombia), a Miraña activist and researcher (both directly involved in the collections of the two peoples), an anthropologist, with experience in language documentation and collector of the Murui collection, and a PhD student with previous experience in digitizing and archiving language and culture materials. This project was a first step in a larger objective of establishing a Digital Archive of Amazonian languages, which aims to make available to researchers and younger Indigenous generations a well-documented and publicly accessible repository of language materials to empower ongoing processes of cultural and linguistic revitalization.
Project Lead
Juan Alvaro Echeverri, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Amazonia Campus
Host Institution
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
More Information
Learn more about the collections
The Magütá collection
We were unaware of the contents of the collection because the cassette covers only provided very brief information. A careful review of this collection revealed that it is the result of a sustained and systematic documentation effort of the Magütá. oral traditions by an organized group of 23 "educational agents" (agentes educativos). These agents were community members, referred to as "community fathers" and "community mothers," who undertook this task for more than a decade. Restoring and digitizing this collection is one of the most valuable outcomes of this project. The project team hired one of the "community fathers," who was one of the leaders of that documentation effort. Through him, the collection preserved insight into the project's vision and the extent of the effort invested over nearly 15 years. Those recordings were deemed lost. At the community gathering, people were very happy to learn that the recordings had been recovered and were available again.
The Miraña collection
This is also a remarkable story. Neeba Gwajko ("Flower of Annatto") was one of the most knowledgeable Miraña singers. He was blind, and he passed away in 2009. In the 1990s, he collaborated with anthropologists and linguists, one of whom gave him a tape recorder. He began making recordings of his extensive knowledge of traditional chants. After his death, his sister, Elio’s mother, was about to burn all of his belongings, as is customary. Elio begged his mother not to do that. She kept the cassettes hidden somewhere. Many years passed. Elio moved away and began transcribing the chants from memory. He started asking his mother, who lived on the Caquetá River far from Leticia and is now a region plagued by illegal armed groups. In 2022, his mother sent the cassettes she had. Elio has encouraged his nephews and nieces to take an interest in these materials and has transcribed them all in what he calls the Neeba Gwajko Initiative. This collection was the most deteriorated, but all the cassettes could be repaired and are now available.
Ardilia: Expanding the Collection
The MEAP Project team launched Ardilia, a website, to highlight the collected materials, available online at https://ardilia.unal.edu.co/. "Ardilia" stands for Archivo Digital de Lenguas Indígenas de la Amazonia. This online part of the project will conitnue to grow as more materials are deposited into the new Sistema Digital de Oralidades Eetane at https://oralidades.unal.edu.co.
Academic Publications
- Prieto Mendoza, A. y Santos Angarita, A. (2024). Arrullos wawae magütá. Mundo Amazónico, 15(1), e111906. https://doi.org/10.15446/ma.v15n1.111906. (Based on part of the Magütá collection.)
- Mira.a, E.G., Echeverri, J.A., Prieto Mendoza, A. y Yucuna Mira.a, J.A. (in press). Memoria y archivo: la vida del cantor Luis Neeba Gwajko Miraña (1945- 2007). Boletín de Antropología, Universidad de Antioquia. (Based on the Miraña collection.)
- Echeverri, J. A., Santos Angarita, A. A., Mira.a, E. G., & Prieto Mendoza, A. (forthcoming). Memoria viva: Archivo Digital de las Lenguas Indígenas de la Amazonia (ARDILIA). In M. Haboud Buchamar (Ed.), Desafíos en la diversidad. Lenguas y variadades en desplazamiento: Documentación-revitalización con justicia social. Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador. (Presenting all the collections.)