Women behind the lens: a journey into the dream world of the Sápara people of Ecuador

We all dream, but for the women of the Sápara community dreams are vital to their wellbeing. Their dreams help guide their lives; they connect them to the forest. When they enter Makihaunu (dream world) their spirit communicates with the spirits of the trees, the animals and people who have died.

I first met the Sápara – and learned about the importance of dreams – in 2020 when I was doing my master’s thesis on the link between nature and human wellbeing. The Sápara are part of a dwindling Indigenous community who live in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon: there are only 600 members left, and only three elders continue to speak the Sápara language.

As with so many other Indigenous groups, oil exploitation and the climate crisis severely threaten Sápara land and ways of life – including the dream world. If the forest is destroyed the spirits will leave and they then lose their connection to the land. They say people in cities do not remember their dreams because their connection to the natural and spirit world is blocked by the concrete buildings.

My project is called In Between Dreams the Forest Echoes the Song of the Burning Anaconda. I named it because Sápara believe the anaconda is the creature that balances the Earth; if the Earth is threatened, the anaconda will “sing” and the Earth will burn.

The project encompasses a range of images: cyanotypes that I embroidered based on interviews with women and symbols from nature; digital photos; and Polaroids that I invited the women to embroider, showing what colonisation meant to them and how it has affected their identity and their dreams. One women remembered becoming a hawk in her dream and could see the forest from above.

This photo (top) is of Luisa Grefa – or Saweka, her Sápara name – in the Llanchama Cocha community in Pastaza province in the Ecuadorian Amazon. I invited the women to symbolically represent their names – Saweka is a type of bird so Luisa chose to use leaves as wings. I decided to photograph her at the river because the light was good in the afternoon.

Luisa is part of a collective called Yarishaya Itiumu – the Blooming Women of the Amazon – that she established with her sister, cousins and aunts. It started as a small group, an inclusive space where women felt safe to share their challenges and desires, but has since grown in size and scope to address threats from extractive industries and climate breakdown and how they particularly affect women.

My hope is to turn these images into a book to present the Sápara women’s vision and connection to nature – but also to remind people who don’t live in the Amazon that they have a role to play, too: we can all become allies to protect the forest.

As told to Isabel Choat