ACT HOLIDAY UPDATE   January 30, 2004

Dear Friends,

Happy Holidays from all of us at the Amazon Conservation Team!  We have already received many good tidings so far this holiday season.  And since our last update, our Northeast Amazon Program has received major recognition from two different sources. 

Our initiative with the tribes of southern Suriname to advance and integrate traditional health care has been selected as a WINNER of the 2003 World Bank Development Marketplace, receiving $71,000 in funding. ACT Suriname Ethnomedicine Director Dr. Chris Herndon and Dr. Edward van Eer, Director of the Medical Mission Suriname (the primary care provider to the Suriname interior), jointly presented the project and competed with projects from countries across the world at the World Bank in Washington DC on December 3-4. The recognition was notable not only for its high selectivity (only 48 of the 2700 initial entries were chosen as winners) but also as the first time that a Suriname-based initiative has entered and won this competition.

The Organization of American States also recently informed us that they will be awarding our Northeast Amazon Program a grant over the next two years to consolidate and expand our work on the Suriname-Brazil border. Please join us in congratulating the entire Northeast Amazon team for these terrific achievements!

We also wish to congratulate our Northwest Amazon Program Director, Dr. Germán Zuluaga for his latest publication "La Botella Curada," a  study on the traditional health systems among the Afro- Colombian communities of the Chocó region of Western Colombia.

Executive Director Liliana Madrigal has just returned from Colombia, where she participated in UMIYAC's year-end meeting and worked with Germán Zuluaga and Carolina Amaya in the planning session for the Gathering of Women Shamans to be held in February.  The planning process for the meeting is entering its final phase, and the elders of UMIYAC worked with the women in Mocoa over the last week on guidance for the conference.  We expect that it will be as ground breaking as the initial Gathering of Shamans held in 1999 that spurred the creation of UMIYAC and has led to the creation of Indi Wasi National Park, as well as to the establishment of the Predio UMIYAC - the first sanctuary for sacred plants in Colombia!

Brazil Program Director Vasco van Roosmalen reports that the 14 tribes of the Xingu region are completing the ethnographic conservation maps of their ancestral territories, and a major celebration will be held early next year. Details to follow.

Many of you have received our Holiday Appeal for funds, this year from taita Luciano Mutumbajoy.  We thank all of you who have responded, and encourage everyone else to contribute before the end of the year. And thanks to all of you for your encouragement, support, and contributions!