The Aeta in this video are Indigenous Peoples with a hunter-gatherer background, living in their ancestral domain in a mountainous region around Mount Pinatubo in the Province of Tarlac, Luzon Island. The Aeta are one of the ethnic groups that make up the Negritos – the country’s most ancient inhabitants – which also include the Agta, Ati, Ata and Batak. The Aeta have a strong relationship with their forests and rivers, and hunt bushmeat and gather wild foods like ferns, yams, mushrooms, forest honey, wild banana, flowers, and palm heart, and catch fish, clams, and crabs. The forest of the Aeta has always been an excellent provider for the communities, but today the shrinking of ancestral domain lands, degradation of forests, and cultural pressures, have contributed to a diminishing reliance on wild foods. To restore their forests, and empower the youth, the Aeta formed the Labayku organization, which is one of the founding members of SPNKK, the national umbrella network organization of Negrito communities, and PPI’s partner in The Philippines.

Rosa Canelos is an Amazonian indigenous Kichwa from the Tsatsapi community in Pastaza, Ecuador. Her community is the gateway to the vast territory of the Kichwa, one the most biologically diverse and best conserved forests in Ecuador. The Kichwa have a close connection to the forest, and a profound knowledge of its cycles, relying on the forest for food, medicine, and shelter, and for the spiritual life of the community. However, predatory economic interests constantly threaten their territories and way of life, including road-building, deforestation for large-scale agriculture, mining and oil exploration concessions granted by the government. They also suffer from imposed modernization of cultural practices. Rosa is a fierce advocate and spokesperson for her people, working with PPI’s partner in Ecuador, the SachaWarmi Foundation, to organize the Kichwa people to defend their territory and celebrate and protect their culture. In this video, Rosa shows how to make mayto, a savoury and popular traditional dish, as a way of reflecting on their connection to the forest and its cycles, and some of their struggles to resist and adapt to the changes threatening their territories and way of life.

Martha Dialle, of the Bakossi tribe and from a mountainous region in Southwest Province, now lives in Likombe village, high up on Mt Cameroon. In this video, she prepares black soup, or ngonyawembe and water fufu. This dish includes spices from forest and fallow, the source of many important spices and flavorings used throughout Cameroon including bush pepper, njangsang, erekereke, and country onion.

Emilia and Cecilia Ndive are sisters and Indigenous Bakweri living in Likombe village. In this video, they prepare traditional kwakoko and mbanga soup, including ingredients from farms managed for generations by their family, and ingredients harvested from fallow, forest and home gardens. While all households rely primarily on farms as a source of food, Indigenous households in the region rely to a much greater extent on foods from home gardens, fallow and forest than migrant households, and consume a far greater range and diversity of foods, and foods that are seasonal, wild-harvested and native to the region.

Sophie Eposi is Indigenous Bakweri from the village of Mokunda, lower down on Mt Cameroon and closer to the coast. She lives now in the local town, Limbe. In this video, she prepares a traditional dish called kwakoko bible, a dish often prepared for special occasions like weddings, funerals and to bring as a gift. She maintains a home garden to harvest food during the rainy season, but also has a farm and fallow in her village of Mokunda, and buys many foods from the market in town, where sellers from across the region sell a wide range of foods.

Immaculate Sambit lives in the town of Limbe, but is originally from Balikumbat in the Northwest region of Cameroon. In this video she cooks fufu corn, njamajama and fish, with ingredients bought at the market and harvested from her farm in Ngeme, outside of town. Immaculate and her family are migrants to the region. She does not use local fallow and forest species to the same extent as Indigenous Bakweri cooks, but buys many food ingredients in the market, including spices and other ingredients used in dishes from Balikumbat and the Northwest. She also has a sewing stall in the market to earn extra income.

Traditional cooks from the community of Otilpan present a full menu of dishes cooked with ingredients from their milpa and home gardens. Marcelina, Petra, Juanita and Faustina, are both cooks and farmers. Their knowledge of how to prepare these dishes is interwoven with their knowledge of how to harvest wild plants, and farm the milpa, a traditional Mexican polyculture in which the main crop, corn, is grown in association with other seasonal foods such as beans, squash, chili, chayote and others. They also gather wild edibles from small, family-owned plots. To support their families, these women have created the Manos Mágicas group, to prepare and sell traditional food and to fight the discrimination they face when selling their products in the city – low prices and the constant harassment by police, who do not allow them to sell their products on public areas.

Florina Martínez is from the community of Baxtla, a fertile region in the state of Veracruz, where she and her husband have their milpa and a shade-grown coffee plantation, which includes indigenous tree species as shade, many used by local communities. They also have a beautiful home garden with orchids and medicinal plants, and they gather wild edibles from the surrounding fallow such as the xonequi leaf that she uses to cook this traditional bean recipe. Florina cooks with ingredients from all of these places – home garden, farm, fallow, and forest – and sells the prepared foods in local food markets where she is known for offering delicious and healthy dishes. She also teaches young people about traditional foods from the region, to encourage them to enjoy and save their local foodways currently being lost due to modernization, misleading advertising that suggests processed foods are healthier, and expansion of the urban life and values into the countryside.

Rosita and Tani are from the Iban Dayak Tribe. They live in traditional longhouses in the border area between Sarawak-Malaysia and Indonesia, Kapuas Hulu Regency, in the West Kalimantan Province. The Iban Dayak’s main livelihood is traditional farming of rice, and they also depend on the forest for hunting animals, fishing and foraging wild foods such as ferns, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and fruits. Even though half of Kapuas Hulu’s territory is part of the Danau Sentarum and Betung Kerihun National Parks, conservation of these wetlands and forest is threatened by the expansion of industrial agriculture, forest fires, logging, mining, and illegal hunting. The on-going marginalization of Indigenous communities and the exposure of the young to a culturally homogenizing schooling system has eroded their traditional foodways. To promote and conserve traditional Iban Dayak cuisine, Rosita and Tani work together with PPI’s partner in Indonesia, the Riak Bumi Foundation, in the revitalization of their culture through Traditional Food Festivals and education activities.

Dahniar and Juliani are part of the Malay Tribe ethnic group, that lives around the lakes of the Danau Sentarum National Park, in Kapuas Hulu, West Kalimantan. The Malay is a fisherman tribe. During the forest honey season, they also collect honey as an additional source of income, and follow ancient local rules for the sustainable use of their natural resources. However, the opening of large-scale oil palm plantations has become a threat to their livelihoods: water pollution is leading to a decline in fish populations and soil erosion is producing forest fires during the dry season. Dahniar and Juliani work with Riak Bumi to promote traditional fishing and cooking practices and raise awareness among the youth about the importance of conserving the wetlands of Kapuas Hulu and the traditional foodways of the Malay.