Native Cultural Alliance (NCA)

Native Cultural Alliance - NCA

Tarumã Environmental Education Programs: View info on upcoming trips to the rainforest.

Welcome to the Native Cultural Alliance website. We sincerely hope that you will take some time to learn about NCA, its goals, projects, and opportunities. We invite you to participate in this exciting and worthwhile effort to preserve the culture and great knowledge that resides in an area which now, perhaps more than ever, is so important to the well-being and future of the entire planet - the great rainforests of the Amazon.

An urgent need now exists to preserve the cultures and traditional ways of life of this region's native people. NCA's goal is to support these rapidly disappearing communities by providing intense environmental education as well as the resources to improve their health, housing and education. In addition, NCA seeks to develop cross-cultural exchanges, designed to foster independence while enabling the native people to become active participants not only locally, but also globally.

NCA has undertaken several projects as the beginning of these efforts. Each one has its unique requirements and priorities, but they all have the same goal - the preservation of mankind's oldest and greatest knowledge of its relationship with the very planet it inhabits.

Native Cultural Alliance

NCA understands the urgent need that exists throughout the world to preserve the culture and traditional way of life of its native people. It seeks to support these rapidly disappearing communities by providing intense environmental education as well as resources to improve their health, housing and education. Additionally, NCA seeks to develop cross-cultural exchanges, designed to foster independence while enabling the native people to become active participants not only locally, but globally.

NCA has chosen to undertake several projects as the beginning of these efforts. Each one has its unique requirements and priorities, but they all have the same goal--the preservation of mankind's oldest and greatest knowledge of its relationship with the very planet it inhabits.

The Native Cultural Alliance (NCA) was established with the primary goal of identifying and determining how to preserve the great amount of knowledge which exists in the Amazonian rainforest.

This is knowledge which is now in the hands of its indigenous people. It is vital information about the natural world that surrounds them, a natural world that is now on the verge of disappearing.

This is knowledge which is of great importance to the entire world. It is ancient, yet so vital to the diverse and cultural well-being of humanity. It is knowledge of the delicate balance between nature and man. It includes information about traditional subjects such as healing with natural plants, intelligent use and preservation of the rainforest, unique ideas about the spirituality of mankind, and so much more.

The guardians and preservers of this knowledge, the indigenous people of the Amazon, face such plights as discrimination, loss of basic human rights, and the destruction of their cultural and social freedoms, as well as the destruction of their physical environment.

Therefore, it is the goal of NCA to assist these indigenous people by:

Providing them with the resources to sustain their traditional ways of life while adapting to the changing world around them
Improving their living conditions without denying them their unique cultural, social and spiritual traditions.
Providing them with the opportunities to further their education and self-determination with culturally and environmentally conscious schools, workshops and trade groups.
Providing them with the opportunity to share and exchange their knowledge and information with the rest of the world by the presentation of such knowledge through cultural exchange programs, such as visitations between them and members of various other cultures around the world.
Providing them with the opportunity to present the circumstances of their existence, their needs, hopes and dreams, to a responsive world arena.

"Indigenous people have rich storehouses of information about nature, man and the balanced relationship of the two. From their beliefs about the spiritual world to their traditional knowledge of rain forests, healing and agriculture, these societies provide the opportunity for new interpretations about the world and our selves. Many of these populations face severe discrimination, denial of human rights, loss of cultural and religious freedoms, or in the worst cases, cultural or physical destruction. . . . If current trends in many parts of the world continue the cultural, social and linguistic diversity of humankind will be radically and irrevocably diminished . . . . immense undocumented repositories of ecological, biological and pharmacological knowledge will be lost, as well as immeasurable wealth of cultural, social, religious, and artistic expression."

-- United States Congress, International Cultural Survival Act of 1988