Module 6: Cultural identity & local landscapes

The message
Cultural identity is often rooted in the local landscape. A community’s ability to continue making choices about that landscape is essential to preserving quality of life.

The experience
Visitors enter an intimate, enclosed space. At first, the space is filled with the bright, geometric patterns of Shipibo embroidery. The lights dim and a projected image wraps around the interior, creating the illusion of standing inside a forest clearing in the Shipibo territory in Cordillera Azul National Park. Within the 360° scene, a group of Shipibo teens pose on one wall while water laps at a canoe at the edge of a river on the opposite wall. A Shipbo narrator begins to describe the decision to form Cordillera Azul and the community’s hopes for the land.

As this vignette fades, close-up images of flowers from gardens in Pullman and Calumet region prairies fill the space. A new scene wraps around the interior, this time showing Hazel and Cheryl Johnson in a green lot in Pullman. Narration from the mother and daughter describes their efforts to mobilize the community and reclaim the health of their neighborhood after the collapse of heavy industry.

The story
Alaka Wali and her team identify the intertwined nature of place, culture, and identity as a major asset towards conservation. ECCo examines the choices communities make as they balance concerns about meeting basic needs and desires to have more with the value they place on maintaining the natural landscape. For the Shipibo, this may mean balancing the desire to make money from cattle ranching against the fear of losing local forests. In the Calumet region, this might be rejecting a new factory that could mean jobs in favor of more sustainable development to ensure clean air and clean water. By alternating between stories from Cordillera Azul and Calumet, the common concerns of communities can be highlighted.

To further illustrate this theme, a display could features objects from these communities (and perhaps others) that demonstrate material links to the land: Shipibo embroidery, Cofan headdresses made from feathers, or sculptures made from industrial scrap metal from the Calumet region.