“…everyone is someone else’s other”.     - Mary Gentile -

The Amazon Interdisciplinary Field School (AIFS) is a partnership between KPU and the Calanoa Project, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in Colombia. The field study site, Calanoa Natural Reserve, is a private natural reserve located at the very heart of the Amazon Rainforest and on the banks of the Amazon River. Calanoa is an initiative by Colombian Canadians Marlene and Diego Samper, which is committed to the conservation of the biological and cultural diversity of the Amazon Rainforest and has initiated long-term community development projects with six Indigenous villages that share their traditional territory with the Amacayacu National Park in the Colombian Amazon. These projects, which are interdisciplinary by nature, are focused on issues such as education and cultural memory, identity and arts revival, community health, materiality, traditional uses of medicinal plants, food security, and innovative design solutions for sustainable livelihoods.

The Amazon region is rich in culture and houses the greatest biodiversity on the planet; it is a place of fertility, interconnectivity, and nourishment.  As part of the AIFS, students take a ‘deep dive’ into an educational journey that is, for most of them, like nothing they have experienced before. They are disconnected from anything familiar, immersed into a different language, the wilderness, a challenging environment, Indigenous culture.  Floating down the Amazon River, canoeing through flooded forests, making pottery with clay from the Amazon riverbed, and trekking through the jungle to visit a shaman are a few of the ways that students engage in direct sensorial experiences. Mindfulness, imagination, and creativity play a key role in this experience, as exposure to the Colombian and Amazonian cultures opens students to exploring new forms of scholarship, ways of knowing and being, storytelling, cultural expressions, and perspectives on the interrelationship between nature and society.

The Amazon Rainforest and the people who live there have much to teach and can offer us a broader understanding of being in and looking at the world that we share; different perspectives on creativity, culture, sustainability, philosophy, spirituality, environmental design, and community development. The AIFS focuses on developing contextual and empathic understanding and awareness of the Amazon region, its flora and fauna, and its peoples and culture through direct interaction with host communities, integrating Indigenous cultural practices such as art, music, and storytelling as well as Indigenous ways of knowing about conservation and sustainability into the curriculum. Encounters with difference and interacting with local Indigenous communities introduces students to different ways of knowing and living with each other, and our planet.