Tashka Yawanawa was the leader featured in 4REAL Yawanawa. In 2001, at 26 years old, Tashka became responsible for 600 people and 90,000 hectares of Amazon rainforest in Brazil as Chief of the Yawanawa. In just a few years, Tashka and his wife Laura, a Mixteca-Zapoteca leader from Oaxaca, Mexico, have managed to double...

Tashka Yawanawa was the leader featured in 4REAL Yawanawa. In 2001, at 26 years old, Tashka became responsible for 600 people and 90,000 hectares of Amazon rainforest in Brazil as Chief of the Yawanawa. In just a few years, Tashka and his wife Laura, a Mixteca-Zapoteca leader from Oaxaca, Mexico, have managed to double the Yawanawa territory, reinvigorate Yawanawa culture, and establish economically and socially empowering relationships with the outside world.

Tashka and Laura Yawanawa have led the remote Yawanawa people in the Brazilian Amazon back from the brink of ethnocide. Their work in sustaining the Yawanawa culture, wisdom, plant knowledge, cosmology and language is an immeasurable contribution to the legacy of humanity.

VISION OF YAWANAWA PEOPLE

Is to secure our unquestionable rights over our traditional territory and to avoid invasion by land squatters and land speculators and hunters that come to destroy our territory. To monitor the process of territorial border revision with the government and other relevant agencies. To strengthen and preserve our traditional knowledge through our language, spirituality, artistic expressions, and cultural manifestations. To secure the wellbeing of the Yawanawá people with healthcare, providing vaccination, awareness on basic personal care, and preservation of traditional healthcare treatment. To have a differentiated education system that respects the principles of traditional education and cosmology of the Yawanawá people. To maintain a bilingual school that prioritizes the mother language Nuke Tsai as the principal language for education for the Yawanawá.

To secure our economic self-sufficiency to keep our people living inside the community with peace and simplicity, utilizing what is basic and necessary.