Cabeceras Aid Project

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Last updated: 17 December 2008

Cabeceras Aid Project is a non-profit organization founded in 1996 to provide humanitarian aid to geographically isolated indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin. Our goal is to provide aid and assistance in ways that support the well-being and autonomy of these peoples as they face the challenges of extended contact with other societies, peoples, and languages.

Nanti woman In the rainforests of Peru – where Cabeceras Aid Project is currently active – many small indigenous communities live in the remote cabeceras, or headwaters, of rivers that flow on to join the great Amazon River. Some of these groups are presently living in voluntary isolation, avoiding contact with the outside world. Others, for a variety of social and geographical reasons, have limited or intermittent contact with outsiders. But no matter what the current level of contact between these small indigenous communities and outsiders may be, many of these groups either have experienced or will soon experience dramatic changes and impacts resulting from their contacts with outsiders.

Frequently, contact between small indigenous groups and other societies has been devastating for the indigenous peoples involved. Because these groups lack resistance to introduced diseases, and largely lack the power and knowledge to navigate the new problems posed by contact with the outside world, the outcome for them has all too often been death, economic exploitation, and political subjugation.

Cabeceras Aid Project seeks to break this pattern by providing small, geographically-isolated indigenous groups with aid, in the forms of both material resources and knowledge, which will help these groups manage their interactions with the outside world in a manner that gives them greater control over their own future.

Please explore our site to see the work we have already done and the work we are planning for the future. Information about our working philosophy and strategies is also available at this site. We hope you will consider supporting our work.

Get to know Cabeceras:

Volunteer opportunities:

Cabeceras is looking for volunteer graduate student linguists interested in language documentation fieldwork in Peruvian Amazonia between May and August, 2009. Send a letter of interest and your CV to the email address listed here.
If other volunteer opportunities become available, they will be posted here, so feel free to check back in the future.

To donate online now: