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Last Updated: March 21, 2009
1: 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.
2: 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.
3: Promoting Cultural and Linguistic Diversity
Few cultures on this planet remain unaltered 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.
4: Concern for the 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.
5: 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.
6: 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!
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