The Story of The Kogi

posted by localmc | August 4, 2010

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A story about Pré Colombian Culture & Indigenous people called The Kogi also Kogius , the Arhuaco and the Assario.

The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is the highest coastal mountain in the world, and the indigenous groups which live on it - the Kogi, the Arhuaco and the Assario - are the descendants of the Tairona civilization which flourished there at the time of the Spanish Invasion. Gonavindua Tairona is the political organisation founded by the the Mamas (priests) of the three tribes in 1987 in order to represent their interests in the face of increasing Western pressures. The three tribes refer to themselves as ‘The Elder Brothers’, and to Westerners as ‘The Younger Brother’

While most other cultures have been eradicated or converted by the Spanish conquerors, Taironas have maintained theirs.
They had hid away for centuries... and became known as the Kogi, emerging rarely into our world to "keep a watch over it"

- The Kogi attach great importance to memory. The memory of events with which the community has been confronted, the memory of social regulations within the group and so forth. “Memory,” they say, “is like eyes which were made to see. If they close, everything becomes darkness.”

For them, this memory cannot be written down, it must be spoken, passed down by members of the group. In writing, memories are separated from the people and lose their effectiveness.

The Kogi view time as cyclical, whereas most of us in the modern world see it as linear. Cyclical time calls for the continual re-creation of the world, as opposed to linear time, which views the past as outdated and generally assumes the future will inevitably be better. Linked to the living world, from which their society takes its collective operating rules, the Kogi celebrate the existence of a vital cycle of birth, maturity, death and re-birth.

In this cyclical life, the fundamental stages of individual and collective life are marked by rituals; specific ceremonies which, through shared experience, allow the integration and the construction of an identity for each individual. Cyclical time also allows individuals their own experience of the world, within the framework of rules made by the elders. It allows each generation to take advantage of this experience, and thus to open up its field of conscience. For the Kogi, conscience is paramount, and this demands watchfulness at all times.