Before modern medicine imposed its standards for defining health and healing, Indigenous Peoples had already developed sophisticated forms of care that identified, treated, and alleviated illnesses. Developed over generations of intentional listening, communities maintained relationships through their traditional practices, grounded in deep ecological knowledge and the prioritization of communal ceremonies.
Through Cultural Survival’s Indigenous Youth Fellowship Program, three young Indigenous women sought to share this ancestral knowledge intergenerationally. Hailing from communities of the Muisca in Colombia, the Ngäbe in Costa Rica, and the Kichwa Otavalo in Ecuador, the Fellows are revitalizing pathways their maternal ancestors once walked. In recentering the lifeways of the feminine, Traditional Knowledge on midwifery, menstruation, herbalism, and womanhood are once again accessible to their communities.
2025 Fellow Gabriela Garibello Daza from Colombia.
Gabriela Garibello Daza (Muisca), Colombia
Gabriela Garibello Daza (Muisca) is from the territory formerly known as Mhuykytá, (now Bogotá), Colombia.
After studying literature at Javeriana University in Bogotá, she co-founded the Tinizí (“Bloom”) Indigenous Collective, and is a leader of the Bosa Native Language Revitalization Program. Her experience facilitating spaces for cultural identity, health, oral traditions, and Indigenous education have guided her work and efforts in her community.
She is currently an apprentice in Muisca ancestral medicine and midwifery.
Through Cultural Survival’s Indigenous Youth Fellowship program, Daza, along with Erika Samantha Galeano, Wendy Lorena Díaz Pachón, and Deina Catherine Tovar as co-coordinators, created a space for the retention of knowledge in women’s medicine, midwifery practices, and herbalism through the Muisca perspective. Named after an existing school, their project, “Escuela de Formación en Medicina Natural de Mujer y Partería Tradicional Muisca (School of Training in Natural Medicine for Women and Traditional Muisca Midwifery),” illustrated the significance of reintegrating Indigenous identities through community building and information exchange.
Their mission was to engage Muisca women in preventive care contributing to their physical, emotional, and spiritual well being. Daza says, “Women in these communities are usually caring for others, but they don’t often have the time to care for themselves.”
Twenty participants from four Muisca communities met once a month for eight months to engage in knowledge transfer. The work was divided into four spirals: Tasque (thought), Quyca (territory), Puyky (heart), and Sie (water). There were eight immersion, capacity-building workshops supporting the themes on topics such as weaving, menstruation and lunar cycles, womb work, traditional massages, baths, steams, and herbalism.
Daza says this knowledge has strengthened her desire to create spaces for women, by women, as she now understands that this level of connection is not only for learning and strengthening, but also for healing. In this intergenerational knowledge transmission, the women in the Muisca communities are pioneers. “The path of a leader is in company and not individually,” she says. “It’s not about one person leading everything; it’s a shared responsibility.”
2025 Fellow Thalia Jimenez Thomas from Costa Rica.
Thalia Jiménez Tomas (Ngäbe), Costa Rica
Thalia Jiménez Tomas (Ngäbe) resides in the Limón province of Costa Rica. She is a co-founder of the Ngäbe Women Leaders of Siaola and holds a degree in Local Management for Indigenous Peoples from the National Distance Education University. In 2018, she was a key figure in the creation of Law Number 9710, recognizing the identities of Indigenous and Tribal people and laying out protective procedures in respect to their being.
For her work with the Indigenous Women’s Organization and promoting the rights of the Ngäbe people, Tomás received the 2024 European Union Gender Equality Award.
The aim of her project, “Meritre krägae Denan nain, miagrtë gare monsotre ngäbere (Maternal Health as a Vision for Ngäbe Youth),” was to facilitate the recovery of intercultural maternal health knowledge among Ngäbe midwives, women, youth, and state-sanctioned healthcare providers.
It is difficult for Ngäbe women to access medical care because of the distance and travel required. When they do go to health centers to give birth or receive medical care, they often face a language barrier. Due to this lack of communication, they often do not understand what they’re consenting to. There is a law meant to prevent this, but many communities are not aware of it. Usually, mothers give birth at home, and when their children are school-aged, they face the issue of not having a birth certificate. These lived experiences highlight some of the reasons this project was born.
Tomás’s work benefited over 40 women across four Ngäbe communities. Women had access to knowledge exchange on medicinal herbs and engaged in dialogue with healthcare providers such as obstetricians, where they advocated for their needs and received information grounded in their cosmology. The University of Costa Rica even reached out to request a workshop.
For Tomás, it was an honor to do this project for her community, with Cultural Survival. Impassioned by the results, she is fighting to secure a state-recognized territory where the Ngäbe can reside and call home. When Indigenous Peoples are forced to live outside of their territory, their ancestral practices and identities begin to erode. To prevent forgetting where they came from and who they are, Tomás continues this fight with her community.
2025 Fellow Cenia Kaina Cordova Pichamba from Ecuador serving beverages during a fellowship activity.
Cenia Kaina Córdova Pichamba (Kichwa Otavalo), Ecuador
Cenia Kaina Córdova Pichamba (Kichwa Otavalo) is from Peguche, Imbabura, Ecuador. She graduated with a degree in Arts and Humanities and has continued her education in anthropology, research, and cultural heritage. Her community, Doctor Miguel Egas Cabezas Peguche, comprises several Indigenous communities. Due to the history of textiles there, it is often viewed as a relic of the past. Elders have expressed concern about the loss of identity and culturally significant customs, such as midwifery.
Midwives are hard to find for a variety of reasons, including language barriers and a lack of documentation of ancestral knowledge. The objective of “Yuyakuna (Knowledge)” is to assert Indigenous Knowledge not as folklore, but as a valuable part of everyday life. Pichamba describes her project as “an initiative to compile and recognize previous science and knowledge.”
To carry out this work, the project focused on documenting and collecting oral stories through interviews with Kichwa midwives, and taking photographs of the midwives and medicinal plants. Through curated photography, “Yuyaykuna” seeks to dismantle harmful stereotypes associated with Indigenous Peoples, creating a dialogue on the impacts of constructing identity.
Once documentation was complete, Pichamba organized a meeting with 10 midwives for them to exchange information and feedback on their experiences. The midwives and an obstetrician gave presentations on how to bridge between traditional customs and modern medicine can be crossed. Once the presentations were completed, communal food prepared in traditional ways from Indigenous recipes was provided for the attendees, and all received certificates of completion.
The midwives who attended this gathering live in the same city, though many have different cultural upbringings and practices. Despite these differences, Pichamba succeeded in creating a supportive network for Kichwa women and midwives.
Pichamba will compile a photobook from the data she collected to help safeguard the Kichwas’ ancestral knowledge from the forces of globalization that threaten to erase their history and forms of knowing. By disseminating the contents of this project to the community, she seeks to create tools that will enhance the longevity of her culture and identity.
