Exhibition II | Page 5

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The loss of ancestral knowledge has two sides since one is the loss of culture and that culture is one of the most important things that indigenous groups because culture are as indeed are those groups and are things people They never want to lose because they know they can come for a long time in their families. The loss of culture is also closely related to the movement because they might lose their culture when for various reasons means that it can move beyond society and teach them new things that cause them to lose their culture.

The extinction of the indigenous groups is a really important and alarming matter, since we could lose a very important part of our culture and ourselves. The indigenous people work really hard to maintain their ancestral lifestyle, and they want to preserve it. They want everyone to know that they deserve their human rights to be respected, and that they are in a difficult situation because of the different factors that are making them lose a part of themselves. Therefore, we also lose a part of who we are, even if we are not part of a indigenous group, we are part of a country, in which it is important to maintain our ancestral knowledge to recognize who we are.

There is a big risk of extinction of the cultural and physical indigenous group.

Some of the causes of the extinction of the indigenous groups in the past were that in some cases the Spanish crown commanded to kill those communities, or even used them as slaves in the colonial times. Nowadays, they are poorly treated and some are dying from abuse, and others are being extincted little by little.

At the present, many indigenous groups are losing their ancestral knowledge because we are teaching them our customs, and they are learning and practicing them, forgetting theirs. There are different reasons that make indigenous people go to the big cities, such as mining.

There are terrorist groups that are taking out the indigenous people off their lands, and they are losing all their crops and belongings. Another cause of the displacement of the indigenous groups is mining, because they are forced to give away their lands to the mining projects, and they have to go to the big cities, losing their culture, and eventually disappearing.

The ancestral knowlge depends on other factors like: animals, trees, plants, the harvests of fruits and vegetables, among others.

Actually there are more than 30 endangered indigenous groups!

Barbara Abondano Arciniegas

Extinction of the Indigenous Groups