Our First Initiative
Santa Marta, Colombia
Working with the Ancestral Pueblos from the Spirit of the Heart of the World, we support their defense of right relationship and culture, and are exploring how to help rebuild that relationship where it has been severed: in the city below.
Rising directly from the Caribbean Sea to nearly 19,000 feet in just 26 miles, the Spirit of the Heart of the World, otherwise known as La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, is the highest coastal mountain on Earth. In that short distance, the mountain compresses nearly every ecological zone on the planet: tropical rainforest, cloud forest, high-altitude páramo, glacier. La Sierra is identified as the most ecologically irreplaceable place on Earth, home to nearly 2,800 species, with 133 found nowhere else in the world.
The Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa, and Kankuamo Peoples have stewarded La Sierra for thousands of years, and their relationship with the mountain is why that abundance endures.
So far, we’ve resourced:
Rematriated
1
sacred site
30
acres of land
Cultural Transmission & Revitalization
100
children reached
1
Escuela Viva built
Our founder, born and raised in Santa Marta, has built a strong, lasting relationship with the Pueblos, one that carries forward into KinshipNow’s own: supporting rematriation, resourcing Escuelas Vivas, walking alongside cultural transmission and revitalization on the Pueblos’ own terms.
The Pueblos hold right relationship as a living practice, an unbroken bond nurtured through millennia. The urban communities below live with what happens when that relationship is severed. There, KinshipNow is exploring opportunities across neighborhoods to support communities in rebuilding their relationship with the living richness and abundance already around them.
We aim to continue resourcing the work the Pueblos already lead, to build regenerative livelihoods with urban communities over time, and to create the conditions for knowledge-sharing between the two, on the Pueblos’ terms. Together, these aims bring all three levers of our model into one place.
La Sierra remains one of the most breathtaking places on Earth. Resourcing the Pueblos’ relationship and supporting the communities below as they rebuild their own is how the abundance of these lands and waters can keep flowing for generations to come.