Healing Bridges

“Description;Amount^TRAVEL;8987|PHONE AND IT;1722|AV SUPPLIES;285|FIELD COSTS EXCLUDING AV;25576|OFFICE SUPPLIES;1328|FEES CHARGES AND TAXES;841|FUNDRAISING;2306^Total;41045^”

“Liabilities were not reflected in 2016 Balance Sheet report resulting in an overstatement of Assets for 2016. The accounts payable that should have been reflected is noted here.”

“Description;EOY Amount^ACCOUNTS PAYABLE;4778^Total;4778^”

“Healing Bridges produces audiovisual products about traditional communities and beliefs, seeks to strengthen traditional communities, and looks to bridge the gap between traditional communities and the modern world, ensuring mutual benefit. This currently takes the form of aiming to stop the extinction of the Kofan indigenous people in Colombia and looking for ways that the Kofan and the modern world can have mutually beneficial relations. The Kofan traditional authorities, the curacas (shamans) and their traditional medicine are the center of Kofan culture, are the key to the Kofan renaissance, and have priceless contributions to offer the modern world. To reverse the extinction, Healing Bridges acts under the consent of the Kofan curacas to put pressure on the Colombian Government so that it will restore Kofan territorial boundaries to those it recognized in the 70s and ensure that the Kofan can reclaim their cultural sovereignty in their reservations. Healing Bridges develops its goals and strategy by gathering the Kofan curacas of five territories, exchanging information in both western and ceremonial settings, and then translating the curacas' desires into targeted petitions to the Colombian Government. Healing Bridges then engages outside actors such as the United Nations or the U.S. Government so that the petitions are respected. Healing Bridges organizes periodic gatherings to review relevant events and jointly determine next steps, mediated by ceremonies of traditional indigenous medicine, the cultural center of the Kofan people. The curacas lead these ceremonies, which are the meeting point of the intercultural dialogue that is fundamental to our work. Our work in 2017 was centered on denouncing three separate incursions of the Colombian Government to the Santa Rosa del Guamuéz reservation that represented direct affronts to Kofan cultural sovereignty and continuing to engage the Colombian Interior Ministry to address extensive complaints we had provided in 2014 and 2015 (the Interior Ministry has jurisdiction over indigenous affairs). At our seven gatherings in Colombia, four in Santa Rosa del Guamuéz and three in Bogotá, we developed documents and letters and videotaped direct messages from the curacas and the process of developing their responses to demonstrate their ownership of the complaints. Since we meet in a reservation that is relatively remote and many of the participants come from even more remote locations, our field expenditures cover their travel (both ground and riverine), the purchase of food to prepare, the hiring of cooks and woodcutter (fuel), honoraria for the carrying out of the traditional ceremony and honoraria for the coordination of the meetings. We have also been amassing a small inventory of traditional handicrafts for eventual fundraising campaigns. Our gatherings in Bogotá involve renting out a small country house. We have also engaged a Colombian cameraman and occasionally a Colombian lawyer.”