In recent years I have lived and studied with various tribal healers in South America about their culture, their worldview, their way of life and their traditional medicine. As part of my research in medical anthropology I came to live with the Kogi tribe that lives in northeastern Colombia in a beautiful area called the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, Colombia. My research examines the effect of the proximity of the Kogi tribe, in recent years, to western cities and villages, on their health.

The Kogi preserve a unique holistic worldview and extensive traditional medicine. They live in connection with nature and the earth, which they call "mother" and remind us to protect and respect it. In the last five hundred years since the Spanish conquest of South America, the Kogi lived in villages in high and remote areas in the mountains, far from modern civilization, which helped to isolate them almost completely and preserve their unique culture.

In recent decades, they are beginning to descend from the mountains to lower lands in order to reclaim their original lands, to connect with the sacred sites that are so important to them, and above all to ask us, the white man, to stop harming Mother Earth.

Following the change of the Kogi\\\'s living areas and their proximity to modern villages and cities, they encounter a variety of political, economic, social and geographical difficulties.

They are more exposed to modern diseases without understanding how to deal with them or the financial ability to treat them. Simple illnesses like a cold become more difficult and complicated due to air and water pollution. Their living spaces are shrinking due to villagers surrounding them, huge drilling or deforestation projects threaten their lands, and the government is trying to get them to change their indigenous way of life to a modern way of life.

At the moment the Kogi are at a crisis point where, from a thriving native population they become a weakened population without the language or knowledge to deal with the new world they are pushed into, with no desire to assimilate into it.

For these reasons I decided to help Kogi and raise donations in order to promote projects in the fields of health, preserving tradition, increasing and maintaining their living areas, and through my thesis to promote projects in the field of health with the government.

Here I am asking for your help.

First, any donation will help improve the quality of life for the Kogi and help them maintain their traditional way of life.

Second, in order to reach as many people as possible and obtain significant donations, I want to create visual content that includes a short documentary that will show and illustrate the uniqueness of the Kogi as a culture that is important to preserve. that will present their longevity and their very special world view, from which we too can learn a lot. In addition, that will show their distress and the need for outside help.

For this purpose, a small part of the money will go towards the purchase of equipment and the shooting of the film.

The rest of the money, including the potential income from the film itself, will go to projects to contribute and preserve the way of life of the Kogi in Colombia.

The projects:

First step, there are several plots of land that the Kogi are interested in buying from villagers who surround them and reduce their living areas or divide their areas in the middle. According to the worldview of the Kogi, their connection with the land is the source of their health and sickness as a community. This means that preserving the land, living a 100% sustainable life from the land and praying at the sacred sites for them, is the most important element for maintaining harmony and health with the land which is basically a mother for them.

Second phase: treatment of skin diseases caused by the change in weather and air pollution, projects of preserving medicinal plants and building a new ceremonial house where their healers can teach future generations and preserve their traditional medicine.

What is the added value you can get from the project?

Optimal health is created when there is balance and connection between the physical, emotional and spiritual body. Modern life is full of abundance but also stress, loneliness and disconnection from our inner and outer nature, something that creates a lot of sickness. It\\\'s no secret and more people every day are looking for alternative ways to balance and calm down. We probably won\\\'t turn the wheel back and go back to living in nature like indigenous communities around the world, but we certainly have a lot to learn from them about stress management, rituals, gratitude, love and listening, respect for nature, for the people around us and for ourselves. Or in short how to live a healthier and happier life.

I want to create a film that will not only be used to collect these donations and that will bring the insights of my research to the general public,

I believe that the contribution of the research and the film on understanding this way of life, its acceptance and adoption in our laps, will be able to have a great impact on the way we live in terms of health, physically, mentally and spiritually. The purpose of the film, apart from being an important historical and anthropological item, is to make accessible and bring closer to us, living in a modern lifestyle, the principles, lessons and conclusions I learned from living alongside them, and to emphasize their importance and degree of relevance to our lives. In addition, we will be able to see how our lifestyle affects a population that was not exposed to it before, and how much harm and benefit it can bring them.

So a little about me - my name is Daniel Taller, 29 years old, a paramedic at the MDA, a mentor for individuals and groups for personal development and recovery in the shamanic way and with dream work. a master\\\'s degree student in medical anthropology.

Since childhood I have been interested in distant tribal cultures. In their different world view and the ancient knowledge they preserve and we have already forgotten.

Like many others, I also went to South America after the army, and fell deeply in love. My journey has been waiting for me since I was 13 and its main goal was to find a tribal healer to teach me. Since then I have studied with several teachers in Peru, Chile and Colombia. I discovered worlds of medicine, values, worldviews and ways of life that are different and more beautiful than anything I could have imagined. This is why I feel a call to give back and help those who gave me so much.