U nukuch che’ilo’ob chiicho’ob yéetel noolo’ob
Spore hosts
Save the Date
Indexed Beings
Film screening and conversation between Indigenous guardian Soraida Chindoy and the director of the film Helen Knowles
21. November 2025
18.00-20.00
18.00-20.00
Save the Date
For free
all ages welcome
in Spanish/in English
Indigenous leader Soraida Chindoy and the film director Helen Knowles will be present at the screening and will discuss their respective work. Soraida Chindoy, a protagonist in the film, will talk about her duties as an Indigenous guardian, mother and activist dedicated to defending the sacred Putumayo mountains. This territory is home to 56 lagoons considered sacred by the Indigenous people and represents the meeting point between the Amazon rainforest and the Andes. However, this area is currently under threat from the proposed construction of a copper mine. Helen Knowles will discuss how she collaborated with the community in Mocoa, Colombia to create the film.
The film Indexed Beings (2024) centers on the re-enactment of a dispute that took place in the Ethno-Botanical Herbarium of Piedemonte, Mocoa, Putumayo, Colombia. Jorge Contreras, the chief botanist, recounts the dispute that occurred when a local taita (shaman) arrived in the lab, concerned about the methodologies of collecting plant specimens and keeping them on shelves in a scientific laboratory. Contreras was inclined to defend the Western approach to collecting plants as an important tool in defending the territory. Over the course of an afternoon, this perspective was contested, with the taita laying out his own indigenous view of plants as autonomous, sentient entities, and of the forest as intelligent, sacred and connected, and therefore uncollectable. In the film, this re-enactment is portrayed by Contreras and Manuel Mueses. Mueses is an indigenous 'knower' of plants, growing and conserving over 700 species of medicinal and healing plants.
Indexed Beings is a 42-minute film by Helen Knowles, in collaboration with Jorge Contreras, Manuel Mueses, Soraida Chindoy, and members of the Inga, Cofán, Siona, and Kamentsá communities of Mocoa, Putumayo. Spanish with English subtitles.
The day before the film screening, Soraida Chindoy will lead a workshop entitled Body–Territory: Extraction and Protecting Life. You can register to participate here (LINK).
