By Jessica Minor
Nestled inside a narrow moat of rainforest between the famous Arenal volcano and the Nicaraguan border lies the Maleku Indigenous Reserve of Guatuso, Costa Rica. Within the three small neighborhoods inside the reserve – Palenque Tonjibe, Palenque Margarita, and Palenque El Sol – around six hundred Maleku spend their days farming the land, painting wooden masks and jícara, or gourd bowls, performing for tourists in their traditional palm clothing, or planting trees in an ongoing reforestation effort.
On September 12, 2011 the Contentious Administrative Court of Costa Rican ruled that the ancestral lands of the Bribri people of the Keköldi Reserve must be returned. The Bribri live in the Talamanca Canton in Limón Province of Costa Rica and number between 11,000-35,000 people. Keköldi Reserve was created in 1977 on the Caribbean coast, after non-Indigenous groups began settling on the land.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.
