Cabeceras Aid Project

Lots of different reasons to support our work

Our Effectiveness

Cabeceras Aid Project's commitments to direct involvement with the indigenous communities in which we are active and to thorough and responsible linguistic and cultural research make us sensitive to the complexities of each early contact situation, and allow us to tailor our strategies to the task at hand. Though our goals are practical and modest, our activities have a substantial impact on the problems being faced by the indigenous groups we work with. For example, we have taught Nanti mothers how to treat diarrhea due to introduced diseases, by simply using sufficient quantities of water to rehydrate their sick children. This easy but essential technique can eliminate most, if not all, deaths due to diarrhea among the Nanti.

Our language work enables us to work in situations where other organizations and government agencies cannot, since isolated indigenous groups often do not speak a previously-known language. Similarly, our cultural work allows us to understand the threats and pressures from outsiders that these groups often face to their traditions and culture.

Cabeceras Aid Project is an excellent investment in a small but important piece of the future. Our organization is unique in its approach, and in many cases we are the only disinterested group involved in early contact situations.
Defense of Human Rights

Cabeceras Aid Project is dedicated to helping small indigenous groups preserve their autonomy and their right to self-determination. Frequently, indigenous groups have little or no assistance from knowledgeable outsiders in their attempts to gain recognition and enforcement of their rights as guaranteed by international and national laws. Our presence ensures that their voices will be heard, not only in the country in which they live, but on the international level.
Promoting Cultural and Linguistic Diversity

Few cultures on this planet remain untouched by the expanding global culture of the modern world. Maintaining diversity of thought and culture within our species is essential to our long-term survival. Small indigenous cultures are extremely vulnerable to the pressures of the modern world, however, and a concerted effort must be made if we are to preserve human cultural and linguistic diversity.

The magnitude of the problem, is illustrated by the fact that of the approximately 5,000 to 6,000 languages currently spoken on our planet, linguists expect fewer than 1,000 to survive for another century.

Cabeceras Aid Project, with its commitments to language research and to the promotion of literacy within groups that speak endangered languages, is part of a larger effort to avert this tragic mass extinction of human diversity.
Concern for our shared Environment

The residents of the earth's rainforests have coexisted with their complex ecosystems for millennia. If small indigenous groups can maintain their territories and traditional lifestyles, the integrity and health of the rainforests they live in will also be sustained. Protecting the territorial rights, culture, and language of Amazonian indigenous groups thereby also protects the earth's precious rainforests and all their various inhabitants.
History

In recent decades, we have seen a growing awareness in the United States of the suffering and injustices inflicted upon the indigenous populations of North America who previously inhabited that land. Although much of the damage done in North America cannot effectively be reversed, the opportunity exists to curtail the magnitude of a similar tragedy in South America. We must use what we have learned in the five centuries since Europeans arrived in the Americas to create a new kind of relationship between the powerful modern societies of the Americas and its remaining indigenous peoples.
The Wealth of Nations

The United States is an incredibly wealthy nation. Cabeceras Aid Project offers us the opportunity to share some of that wealth — of both resources and information — with some of the most under-privileged and under-valued people on earth. A little money goes a long way in the remote rainforest of Peru, so your donation is a very real and significant contribution to the welfare of the indigenous people with whom we work. And the contribution those people make to our understanding of ourselves as humans is priceless.

Please, support the efforts of Cabeceras Aid Project with a donation of money or time. To volunteer your time, contact Christine Beier at: chris at cabeceras dot org. To make a secure donation to Cabeceras Aid Project over the internet, just click this button:

Thank you for your interest in and support of our organization!

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Camisea River 2006 Last updated: 20 September 2010