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This animated story presents the oral tradition of how the Emberá Dobida indigenous
community recounts their origin creation story passed down through generations. It provides a glimpse into
their spiritual beliefs and sacred connection to nature, as told in their own words and language from ancient
times.
This project was an amazing teaching experience for me as I had the opportunity to be a teacher for the Emberá
Dobidá community located in Chocó, Colombia. I served as their film and animation instructor, along with a
former professor of mine, together we conducted a 7-day workshop in which we introduced them to animation
as a powerful tool to tell stories. At first, they did not understand the term “audiovisual”, yet they were familiar
with TV and movies. As we did exercises with clay, the physicality of the matter helped them understand how
a moving object can morph, transform, and evoke life through animation. They were fascinated by the concept
as they had never been exposed to it. Around halfway through the workshop, they were struggling with
discrepancies as to what story to tell, since the ancestors spoke of many origin stories, they had to choose one,
write it down and come together as a community in order to bring it alive with their own hands and ideas.
It was a great experience since it showed me first-hand the ways indigenous histories are preserved and passed
on through generations, in this case, many of them knew about the generality of their origin story, but only the
elder members of the community knew the full story in detail. Finally, as we approached the end, they were
able to sculpt, manipulate and breathe life onto the puppets and human-shaped clay figures they created,
ultimately they re-enacted with their hand and bodies the very story that tells how they came to be in the world.