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News & Updates
The Final Program for the 2nd Native Spirit Festival taking place in London between the 19th and 28th of October, is now available to view and download in PDF to see the program click here. Packed with over 116 films and 188 screenings at 10 locations over a 10 day period, plus workshops, talks, exhibitions, performances and more.
The Native Spirit Festival will also be touring in Spain during the month of October, for more details on events in Santander, Madrid, Barcelona and Asturias, check the websites.
We are also recieving invitations to tour other cities in the UK with highlights of this festival, so keep a loook out for updates, or why not invite us yourself!
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Native Spirit
 “When the Condor of the South meets the Eagle of the North, the warriors of the rainbow will be born. When the tears from these birds are merged, the warriors of light will be born."
This prophecy started to manifest long ago, and several encounters have come to pass throughout the years. In such gatherings, the memory of our ancestors and the ancestors of many peoples who lived in harmony with Mother Earth, are remembered.
There is a culture that has been imposed upon us: a fictitious world of ‘happiness’ through consumerism. A material world that has divided us as human beings. It has placed a distance between individuals and their peoples. By consuming double of what they recycle, consuming millennial woodlands and extracting from the womb of the great mother all that they consider of material value to be sold at the market, by poisoning the land so it can no longer support life, they are destroying the harmony through which we live.
The feelings of solidarity and respect among men, women and children mean being part of the whole human community, of respect towards Mother Earth. It is here where such prophecy summons us all. Each one of us, in each ancestral culture, finds the same keys that open the spirit to understand Life.
This festival is part of a drop of water that together with others form the rain and the sea. It is a grain of sand together with others that form the shores. Together, we reclaim our harmonious heritage and the responsibility that goes with it.”
NATIVE SPIRIT
MISSION STATEMENT
Native Spirit is formed with the ideals of promoting Native viewpoints, preserving and empowering indigenous communities and publicizing the traditions, identities and realities of surviving Amerindian cultures, for the education of indigenous peoples and the wider international community.
Some of the projects through which Native Spirit hopes to provide the opportunity to realise these objectives include four main ventures, The Native Spirit Festival, The Native Spirit Conference, The Native Spirit Foundation and The Native Spirit Art Collective.
The Native Spirit Festival 2008, will continue the tradition of holding an annual film and video festival of the indigenous peoples of the three Americas, which made its début last year at The Native Spirit Festival 4th-9th June 2007 in London. The Native Spirit Festival was conceived with the aim of allowing the British public to gain an invaluable insight into the lives of indigenous peoples that are surviving in the contemporary landscape of the three Americas and learn from their inspiring stories. As severely under-represented people in the global film and media industries, the festival is seen as a much-needed platform to celebrate and explore indigenous life and demonstrate that although these communities are culturally diverse, they share common views and plights; above all, their unique spiritual relationship with the natural world and their struggle to maintain their cultural identity in the face of modernisation and the encroachment of mainstream western culture.
Following the success of The Native Spirit Festival 2007, Native Spirit will be organizing another festival in October 2008 in London, as well as extending the festival to tour other sites within the UK and Europe, increasing the number of people to benefit from this enterprise in addition to developing a wider range of audiences by instigating programs for schools, youth organizations and universities.
The Native Spirit Conference proposes a gathering of representatives of indigenous communities world wide as well as government officials of the hosting country, the European Union, the International community and other appropriate persons, with the hopes of discussing current political and environmental issues, with the hopes of providing and implementing solutions from within indigenous cultures and Cosmo-Visions, to problems that humanity faces at these times, such as the sustaining mans place in the balance of nature within the bounty of Mother Earth.
The Native Spirit Foundations will endeavour to provid:
i) a Community fund, which will be available world wide, to support indigenous communities through the means of e.g.: sponsoring education projects, schools, environmental campaigns, sustainable health programs, research opportunities, maintaining resources, traditions and anything which may benefit indigenous communities and the Mother Earth and
ii) a Cinematography fund, will be available to provide necessary equipment or training to indigenous community members to make films about their cultural traditions, legends, artwork, cultural studies, documentary investigations into their histories, daily struggles and human rights issues with the hopes of including selected productions in the program of future Native Spirit Festival, thus providing the means and the forum for indigenous stories to be broadcast to a wider audience. Bias may be in favour of youth collaborations, though applications will be assessed on need and merit, and applicants can hope to receive a video camera and film (equivalent), or if they already have these materials are free to make a request for something which they feel will help to improve their filmmaking capabilities.
The Native Art Collective,  will be organized to exhibit and sell indigenous artwork and merchandise for the benefit of the artists and their communities as well as other communities, with a minimum of 10% of the proceeds going towards Native Spirit.
By providing these opportunities for indigenous peoples to raise their voice, express their cultural wisdoms and talents, make contacts with supportive organizations, share their traditions, and perspectives as well as provide for themselves and their communities, we strive to preserve ancient cultures, empower indigenous peoples, promote social and racial tolerance and enlighten the wider population as to the enormous cultural resources they have available to contribute to the diverse and multicultural fragile human existence upon this sacred, and nurturing Mother Earth.
The aims of Native Spirit are multiple but above all this organization hopes to educate, entertain, inspire and support indigenous communities and the audiences they reach. Celebrating human spirit and achievement.
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