Putting the spotlight on biocultural leadership: An unusual gathering

Putting the spotlight on biocultural
leadership: An unusual gathering in
Panama
Nathan Gray, Co-Executive Director, Earth Train
December 2, 2013
Graphic design and layout: Halit Khoshen
www.earthtrain.org
© Tito Herrera
© Tito Herrera
Dr. Jane Goodall with
the dancers of Emberá
Ipeti at the
Reconnecting the
Condor and the Eagle
Peoples of the Americas,
City of Knowledge,
Panama.
In the second week of November a
remarkable mix of people joined the
primatologist Jane Goodall in Panama for
five days of dialogue and cultural events
under the banner of “Biocultural Leadership”.
Gathering in a country known for centuries
as a place of trans continental passage and
biological and cultural diversity were
indigenous elders and youth from around
the Americas convened by the native
American leader Phil Lane, Jr.; business
and social venture innovators; scientists;
educators; and accomplished musicians.
We even had architect Frank Gehry’s senior
partner, Anand Devarajan, join a group of
architects and builders to discuss natural
design and his ideas for a landmark “green
steel biocultural pavilion”, a bamboo
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© Doug Bruce
sequel to the wildly colorful Frank
Gehry-designed Biomuseo now nearing
completion in Panama City at the Pacific
entrance to the inter-oceanic canal. What
a memorable mash up of talent, ideas and
activities!
Our workshops and cultural events at the
Biomuseo and the City of Knowledge, an
imaginatively repurposed US military base
near the Pacific locks of the canal, could
be seen as just another modest variation
on, say, the popular Bioneers Conference
held annually in Northern California.
While our multifaceted Spotlight on
Biocultural Leadership with Jane Goodall,
convened by Earth Train; Jane Goodall´s
Roots & Shoots, and the Four Worlds
International Institute, was comparatively
small scale, it represented a step toward
Chief Phil Lane, Jr. and
Mayan leader Alejandro Cirilo Pérez Oxlaj
Wandering Wolf at the
debut of the documentary Cambio de
Las Eras, the Spanish
version of Shift of the
Ages: A Mayan Journey
Through Time.
© Tarina Rodríguez
© Tarina Rodríguez
Performers from
Emberá Ipeti at
Reconnecting the
Condor and the Eagle
Peoples of the
Americas, City of
Knowledge, Panama.
achieving an ambitious goal. It marked
the beginning of our efforts to popularize a
new call-to-action phrase. We are
promoting biocultural leadership over,
say sustainable development, as it is more
pro-active. It effectively speaks to the
urgent quality-of-life and survival
challenges now facing us as a species.
Our definition of biocultural leadership is
a work in progress, a kind of masala buffet
of ideas. Given our organizations’ focus
on youth leadership development, our first
priority is to encourage a sense of personal
responsibility that goes beyond self interest.
We’re coaching young people to think for
themselves with rigor and responsibility for
the enduring good of the natural commons.
While we celebrate the potential of crowd
sourcing, we abhor crowd thinking. We’re
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emphasizing models of parenting, teaching and coaching that foster the values
and skills of cooperation and ecological
and systemic thinking that we believe are
required to ensure the long-term health of
our communities and of the planet.
However, instead of generalities, a more
fun way to introduce our notions of
biocultural leadership and renewal is to
glance at a few snapshots from our
eclectic week in Panama with Jane
Goodall, Chief Phil Lane, Jr., and friends.
Educators and nature
guides during
interactive activities
at the Reconnecting
Children with Nature
workshop, hosted by
Dawn Publications and
led by Carol and Bruce
Malnor at the City of
Knowledge.
By advancing biocultural leadership we’re moving away from
worldviews that, for millennia, have been holding us apart
from nature. We are declaring our commitment to creating
societies enriched with biological and cultural diversity and
forever evolving in harmony with nature.
On the Canopy Crane operated by Smithsonian
Tropical Research Institute (STRI) at the Metropolitan Park, Panama City. Left to right: Lidia Valencia,
Science Education Specialist, STRI; Dr. Jane Goodall;
Halit Khoshen, Earth Train’s Director of Wildlife
Conservation; Go Wild! winner Andrea Sánchez;
forest ecologist Joseph Wright, Ph.D., STRI; and Go
Wild! winner Saanvi Turki.
© Tarina Rodríguez
© Doug Bruce
www.earthtrain.org
© Tarina Rodríguez
“Gofrogoly is a board
game that shows all the
major threats that are
slaying golden frogs’
population, and what
we can do to benefit
them. The objective of
the game is to save as
many frogs and buy
and grow as many
habitats as you can.”
- Natalia Chapman, 8th
grade, Balboa
Academy.
Saanvi Turki, a six grader in the
international school Balboa Academy in
Panama City, was one of 38 school children
finalists in Go Wild! with Jane Goodall, the
Earth Train/Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots’
wildlife conservation and well-being
program. However, as an extra reward for
submitting a winning educational project
without any help from her teachers, we
invited her to join “Dr. Jane” and the
forest ecologist Joseph Wright, Ph.D., on a
vertical voyage to the forest canopy on a
crane operated by the Smithsonian Tropical
Research Institute. While waiting below,
I started chatting with Saanvi’s parents. I
was curious about the source of her
extraordinary determination. How did they
get their daughter, from early childhood, to
take an interest in environmental
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© Tarina Rodríguez
“Our project, ‘Killing is Not a Solution’, came about due to a problem
we encounter almost every time we speak to out friends about animals.
They like the pretty ones and are afraid of the ones that are strange or
are known as dangerous, as much as that many times they even kill
them. We love all animals and want to achieve a change of attitude
in children our age, who will in turn reach their parents and family
members.
We believe that the solution to the fear is to educate about them, not
to kill them! We want to teach children to love and appreciate animals
such as spiders and snakes, and make them understand they cannot be
judged by their appearance. These animals are very important and do
so much for us, even if people do not know that.” - Pablo Arosemena
and Paola Espino, 5th grade, Academia Interamericana de Panamá.
protection? Rather than focus on obligation and
environmental crises, they explained, they encouraged their
child’s natural caring for animals, starting with bunnies and
gerbils. Home-style zoology combined with lots of outdoor
activities, soon had their daughter falling madly in love with
nature. Is there a better way than through direct experience and
love to grow a determined defender of the environment?
© Doug Bruce
Dr. Jane Goodall and Earth Train staff members Líder Sucre and Halit
Khoshen in conversation with the winners of Go Wild! with Jane Goodall
during a live-webcast hosted by APRENDO/Corporación La Prensa at the
Metropolitian School of Panama.
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with bamboo and other natural materials. This will be really
fun!” Creativity and cooperation applied to the challenge of
using local resources, all moving toward the creation of a
structure that is fully in harmony with nature. How better to
illustrate the possibilities for biocultural leadership in design?
© Doug Bruce
Architect Anand
Devarajan at the
former Fort Clayton
firing range, City of
Knowledge, a site
under consideration
for the Green Steel
Biocultural Pavilion.
For more than 15 years, the young and
highly accomplished architect Anand
Devarajan has been mentored by Frank
Gehry, widely regarded as one of this
century’s greatest architects. I took great
pleasure in observing his discussion of
the Green Steel Biocultural Pavilion, now
only in it’s earliest conceptual stage. I half
expected to see a future celebrity architect
in action, getting ready to create his own
signature work of art and craft. “Hey, I
don’t want to do this by myself,” he told me
with a big boyish grin on his face. “I want
to work like a chef with a team of people,
individuals like the Colombian architect
Simon Velez; the Panamanian architect
Patrick Dillon; even humble carpenters
from Bangladesh and Bali who really know
something about designing and building
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The businessman and Earth Train advisor Daniel Spitzer, the
founder of China’s largest sustainable forestry company,
participated in our workshop on Natural Capital live via
internet video from Thimphu, Bhutan. Though late at night his
time and bitter cold, he warmed to the topic of his latest venture,
the Mountain Hazelnuts Group. The company is well on its
way toward achieving their five-year goal of planting 10 million
blight-resistant and nutritious hazelnut trees on the deforested
and erosion-prone mountain slopes of this fabled country in the
eastern Himalayas. He was especially pleased with the progress
they were making using simple and collaborative management
tools ultimately enabling the participation of 15,000 poor
rural households in tending 22,000 acres of productively planted
land. What a great way to start our conversation about
biocultural leadership and natural capital. Many of us, after so
many years of dealing with small “model” community
development projects, were inspired by this glimpse of
biocultural innovation on a grand scale.
Daniel Spitzer,
Chairman and CEO
of Mountain
Hazelnuts Group,
Bhutan.
© Tito Herrera
Musicians performing at Panama Is Our Museum, Frank Gehry-designed
Biomuseo. Left to right: Shea Welsh; Julian Lage; Graciela Nuñez; Brad
Barrett; Juanito Pascual and Tupac Mantilla. (with Adriano Dias Gray,
Metropolitan School of Panama).
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Cándido Metsua, Chief
of the Comarca (semi
autonomous territory)
Emberá standing in
front of the Frank
Gehry-designed
Biomuseo.
© Doug Bruce
www.earthtrain.org
Panama Is Our Museum is a program that
Earth Train is organizing with the
Biomuseo aimed at getting children and
youth in communities around Panama
involved in creating their own
Biomuseo-quality natural history and
cultural exhibits. For the program’s
Spotlight on Biocultural Leadership debut,
we selected eight grassroots inner city and
rural organizations involving more than
90 children and youth, from an Antillean
black congo team from the province of
Colón to a group from a remote village in
the territory of the indigenous
Ngobé-Bugle in the province of Chiriquí.
They had the honor of being the first group
of young people to tour the Biomuseo and
to perform, for the shooting of a film
documentary, the cultural representations
© Tito Herrera
Children from the
NGO Cambio Creativo,
Colón, Panama,
drumming and
dancing to Congo
rhythms during Panama
is Our Museum at the
Biomuseo.
© Doug Bruce
www.earthtrain.org
Children from the NGO
Gramo Danse,
performing a
representation of the
Panama Tree through
aereal dance during
Panama is Our Museum
at the Biomuseo.
© Tarina Rodríguez
© Tito Herrera
© Tito Herrera
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Ngobé Bugle, Guna, and
Emberá indigenous children
and youth drumming on
reused paint buckets during
the drum circle that took place
during Panama is Our
Museum at the Biomuseo.
© Doug Bruce
Village of Gangandi,
overlooking Río
Gangandi, Guna Yala.
they had been working on for several
months.
Many of us on the Earth Train team were
curious to see which community would
emerge to represent the rich cultural
offering of the Guna. Much to our delight,
one of the two groups invited to
participate was the village of Gangandi
from the western section of the
semi-autonomous indigenous territory
Guna Yala that borders Earth Train’s campus
in the Mamoní Valley Preserve. While
almost all of Guna Yala’s communities are
on islands, Gangandi is located on the
Children of Gangandi,
overlooking Río
Gangandi, Guna Yala.
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© Doug Bruce
mainland on the banks of Guna Yala’s longest river by the same
name. Relatively isolated and one of the poorest communities
in Guna Yala, Gangandi began suffering life-threatening floods
during the rainy seasons as the river reached increasingly
extreme record levels. Finally in 2010, the elders, tired of being
the victims of global warming, decided to make a move. They
held off on hunting, gathering and tending their gardens to
concentrate all hands on the arduous task of moving their
village, from the low-lying north bank of the river to its steeply
elevated south bank. Hoisting post and beam, teams of men,
women and children managed to complete the move within a
period of four months, though at the cost of great hardship
lasting for over a year.
One of Earth Train’s projects with the people of Gangandi since
their move to high ground has been the building of a cultural
center, an airy open space with a view of river and sea where the
village could both host paying guests and, no less importantly,
hold its cultural events. The young chief of the village,
Manidinguipe Walton, held the view that authentic traditional
and artistic expression were essential to their development as a
people, both culturally and economically.
© Doug Bruce
When the chief heard about the opportunity to participate in
Panama Is Our Museum, he got the teachers to start working
with the children on creating a set of story-telling, song and
dance productions. They knew, however, that they were facing
stiff competition from the Guna Yala island communities that
were relatively sophisticated and well off due to a booming
tourist trade. Tough and independent, they just worked harder.
Mariel Walton
performing at Panama
is Our Museum, at the
Frank Gehry-designed
Biomuseo.
The moment the troupe of eight Gangandi children started their
Panama Is The Museum production in the Biomuseo, we knew
we were in for a special treat. The lead dancer, 8-year old
Mariel Walton, acted out his part with such poise and
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expressiveness that the audience went
silent –something that rarely happens in
Panama. We were spellbound. They
concluded their set with a popular Guna
song sung with grace and gusto by 9-year
old Yulinet Castillo, accompanied by a
group of internationally renowned
musicians –including three who had
previously trekked to the hilltop village
with their instruments to perform and
support the creation of the Gangandi
cultural center. I looked over and noticed
that the three chiefs of the Guna General
Congress and chief Manidinguipe were
sitting together, straight backed against the
far wall. The expressions on their faces
very subtly mirrored the feeling that all of
us, elders, youth and children alike, we’re
experiencing at that moment. Joy.
Did our little festival in Panama succeed in
giving the phrase biocultural leadership its
hoped-for lift off? I’m not sure. But I know
we have the beginning of an
inspiring documentary -- certainly its
opening soundtrack. It’s the song of nature
and culture sung by a child star named
Yulinet.
© Tito Herrera
Yulinet Castillo,
performing at Panama
Is Our Museum, at the
Frank Gehry-designed
Biomuseo.
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