Indigenous Colombians fret as sacred mountain glaciers melt

In the shade of a sacred tree, Indigenous wise men chew coca leaves as they mull the threats to their home among the melting, snow-capped peaks of Colombia's Sierra Nevada mountains.

As a “consequence of man's actions, it is slowly warming, more every year,” one of the men says in the Iku language, according to a translator, at a meeting of dozens of Indigenous people from different communities.

The inhabitants of the Sierra Nevada range in north Colombia believe it is the center of the universe, its rivers, stones and plants part of one living body. They see it as their job to protect its balance.
 
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