Features

JESSHEIM/HELSINKI — Norwegian electric car owners have a word for the way they feel when they look nervously at their battery indicators while driving in subfreezing weather: “rekkevideangst”, or “range anxiety”.

Tesla owner Philip Benassi has experienced it on cold winter days, but like other Norwegians, he has learned to cope with it.

With temperatures often falling below zero, rugged terrain and long stretches of remote roads, Norway may not seem like the most ideal place to drive an electric car, whose battery dies faster in cold weather.

Yet the country is the undisputed world champion when it comes to the zero-emission vehicles.

A record four out of five new autos sold in Norway last year were electric, in a major oil-producing country that aims to end the sale of new fossil fuel cars by 2025 — a decade ahead of the European Union’s planned ban.

Benassi took the plunge in 2018.

In his gleaming white Tesla S, the 38-year-old salesman for a cosmetics company clocks between 20,000 and 25,000 kilometres a year.

Like most new electric vehicle owners, he had moments of panic in the beginning when he saw the battery gauge drop quickly, with the prospect of it falling to zero on a deserted country road.

“I didn’t know the car well enough. But after all these years, I have a pretty good idea of how many kilowatts it needs and I know that it varies a lot depending on whether the car has spent the night outdoors or in a garage,” he told AFP.

The car uses much more battery when it is parked outside in temperatures that can reach minus 15ºC, Benassi said.

“It takes quite a while for it to go back to normal consumption,” he added.

In the cold season, how much range electric cars lose depends on the model and how low the temperature gets.

“But the following rules of thumb apply: A frost of around minus 10ºC will reduce the operating range by around a third compared to summer weather, and a severe one [minus 20ºC or more] by up to half,” said Finnish consultant Vesa Linja-aho.

“By storing the car in a warm garage, this phenomenon can be mitigated somewhat,” he added.

Charging stations

Drivers must plan their routes before long journeys, but car applications and Norway’s vast network of more than 5,600 fast and superfast charging stations help make the process easier.

Electric cars accounted for 54 per cent of new car registrations last year in Finnmark, Norway’s northernmost region in the Arctic where the mercury has at times fallen to minus 51ºC — a sign that the cold problem is not insurmountable.

Other Nordic countries that regularly experience chilly temperatures, such as Iceland and Sweden, also top world rankings for electric vehicles.

“Now more and more new electric cars have systems for pre-heating the batteries, which is very smart because you get more range and because if your car is heated before you charge, it will also charge faster,” said Christina Bu, head of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association.

Electric car owners are not the only ones who have to worry about the cold. 

“Actually, if it’s very, very cold — freezing temperatures — sometimes diesel engine cars can’t start and an electric car starts,” she said.

‘Everyone can do it’

Norwegians are clearly sold: More than 20 per cent of cars on Norway’s roads are now electric — and green, with the electricity they consume generated almost exclusively by hydro power.

Norway’s longstanding policy of tax rebates for electric cars has facilitated the transition, although the government has begun to roll back some of the incentives to make up for a budget shortfall estimated at nearly 40 billion kroner ($4 billion) last year.

There is “a simple answer to why we have this success in Norway and that’s green taxes”, Bu said.

“We tax what we don’t want, namely fossil fuel cars, and we promote what we do want, electric cars. It’s as simple as that,” she said.

“If Norway can do this, everyone else can do it as well.”

NEW YORK — Two 16th-century sculptures, jewels of French Renaissance art, have been on display since 1908 at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But thanks to modern technology and an unusual agreement, precise 3D copies will be made and installed in the French castle where the originals long resided.

The facsimiles plan is the fruit of a rare partnership between the Met, as the New York museum is known, and the Dordogne department in southwestern France.

The statues, both from the early 1500s and by an anonymous sculptor, represent Biblical scenes entitled “Entombment of Christ” and “Pieta With Donors”. 

A tourism promotion agency in the Dordogne, Semitour, will be working with the Atelier of Fac-Similes Perigord to make the replicas over the coming months.

For nearly 400 years, the originals graced the chapel of the Biron chateau in the Dordogne. 

Built on a strategic promontory, the sprawling fortress comprises buildings from different eras, including a dungeon dating to the 12th century.

Damaged and rebuilt repeatedly through the centuries, the chateau has belonged since 1978 to the Dordogne department, which declared it a historic monument, Dordogne president Germinal Peiro said during a visit to the Met.

The technology to be employed in copying the sculptures was described to AFP by Francis Rigenbach, who heads the mediaeval atelier, and C. Griffith Mann, the Met’s medieval art curator.

Using 3D scanners to make digital images of the sculptures, artisans will be able to create replicas without having to move or disturb the monumental originals.

“By making a digital ‘cast,’” said Rigenbach, “we can employ non-invasive techniques” to produce identical copies.

He added that “90 per cent of the artistic work” will involve reproducing signs of wear, such as the patina on the ageing marble originals — though both statues are considered exceptionally well-preserved.

The replicas, to be returned to their original spots in the Biron chapel, will cost around 350,000 euros ($375,000), Rigenbach added. 

His atelier is famed for having copied the celebrated Lascaux cave — including its prehistoric wall art — for a museum in Montignac, in northern Perigord.

That allows visitors to feel as if they were visiting the cave itself, which was closed 60 years ago to avoid damage to the fragile site, said Sebastien Cailler, who manages the Biron chateau.

“And when you see these facsimile sculptures in Biron, you’ll surely feel the same emotion as if you were standing before the originals,” he told AFP in New York.

The two statues, whose value was recognised by historians and collectors in the late 18th century, were sold in 1907 by the last marquis of Biron to wealthy American banker John Pierpont Morgan, who was then president of the Met board.

In the 1950s, Dordogne and the Biron castle negotiated with the Met for four years in a vain effort to recover the statues. 

In 2018, Perigord officials revived talks with the Met; four years later, technological tests were undertaken, and then on February 15, the agreement was signed in New York.

This type of unusual deal ensures that art works can exist in two places, Mann said, while adding that his museum, with its millions of annual visitors, “seems like the safest place to have the sculptures for their long-term preservation”.

LONDON — A gut-wrenching war movie from Germany and pitch-black Irish comedy were the big winners as British cinema handed out its annual BAFTA awards on Sunday, with less than a month to go to the Oscars.

With 14 nods, German director Edward Berger’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” started the night as the joint most-nominated foreign-language film in the BAFTA academy’s 76-year history.

The Netflix drama triumphed with seven awards, including best film and best director for Berger, as well as original score and cinematography, in the buildup to the Academy Awards on March 12. 

Berger credited his daughter Matilda for turning his “doubts into trust”, after she told him he had to make a movie of Erich Maria Remarque’s powerful 1929 novel, which she was reading in school. 

Producer Malte Grunert said the British plaudits for a German-language film were “just incredible”, and it has also amassed nine Oscar nominations.

With a nod to modern-day conflicts including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said that the film and novel showed that “war is anything but an adventure”.

The German movie had tied with Ang Lee’s martial arts drama “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, co-starring Michelle Yeoh, which also earned 14 BAFTA nominations in 2001. 

Yeoh was nominated for best actress this year as a worn-down laundromat owner who transforms into a high-kicking heroine, in the wildly inventive “Everything Everywhere All At Once”.

Yeoh’s kung-fu science-fiction film received 10 BAFTA nominations, but only won one, for editing. She lost out to Cate Blanchett for her portrayal of a troubled classical music conductor in “Tar”.

“This is extraordinary. I didn’t prepare anything (to say) because it’s been such an extraordinary year for women,” the Australian actress said, convinced that the award would go to one of her fellow nominees.

Making sadness fun

Also on 10 nominations, but faring far better in London, was the Irish tragicomedy “The Banshees of Inisherin” co-starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson.

Its four wins included best supporting actor for Barry Keoghan and best supporting actress for Kerry Condon — who at first was not given the prize after a miscommunication on stage.

“Banshees” director Martin McDonagh, one of the rare UK nominees for this year’s top gongs, did win “best British film” despite the heavily Irish profile of “Banshees” and best original screenplay.

“Making a sad film shouldn’t be so much fun,” he said.

Beating out the favourite Farrell, US actor Austin Butler won the leading actor prize for his all-out portrayal of the king of rock and roll in “Elvis”.

“This means the world to me,” Butler told the ceremony, still using the Presley drawl that he learned for Baz Luhrmann’s movie.

Kremlin critic ‘banned’

The awards suffered controversy two years ago when BAFTA gave a lifetime achievement award to British actor and producer Noel Clarke, only for a series of sexual misconduct allegations to emerge against him.

This time, Bulgarian investigative journalist and Kremlin critic Christo Grozev said he has was “banned” from attending the awards, where a film about dissident Alexei Navalny won best documentary.

Grozev, who is credited with helping to reveal a plot to kill Navalny, appears in the documentary. He tweeted “wow” after the prize was announced.

“He is such an important part of this film, so it’s very sad for us that he is not here,” producer Odessa Rae told reporters at the awards.

London’s Metropolitan police said only that “some journalists face the hostile intentions of foreign states whilst in the UK”, while BAFTA said the safety of its guests and staff was a priority.

Blue ribbons

BAFTA also faced criticism for overlooking women. 

Only one, Gina Prince-Bythewood, was nominated for best director, for “The Woman King”. That was one more than the Oscars managed in that category this year.

Berger, Farrell, Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis were among many attendees who wore blue ribbons on their suits and gowns in support of refugees.

The gesture came after many more people were displaced by earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, and just ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Traditionally best known for its line of large state cars dating back to 1958 and their contemporary retro-futuristic Rolls Royce-rivalling ultra luxury Hongqi L5 successor circa 2014, the Chinese manufacturer has also dabbled in the executive segment with rebranded, locally produced variants of the third and fourth generation Audi 100 in the past. 

It is, however, only in very recent years that the automotive FAW Group’s luxury Hongqi brand has become a more commercially minded endeavour with a wider and more modern fleet of vehicles and new export markets.

Expanding at an exponential rate in terms of sales numbers since 2018, the Hongqi brand first began arriving in Gulf markets in the same year, and opened for business in Jordan late last year, with the H9 as its regional flagship saloon. Launched in 2020 and pitched as a luxury car, the elegantly imposing and sumptuously appointed Hongqi H9 however and perhaps more accurately slots in as analogous to something between a long wheelbase Mercedes-Benz E-Class executive car and standard wheelbase S-Class full-size luxury car, in terms of proportions, appointment and model segment.

Eastern elegance

Distinctively Chinese in character, the H9 however carries certain American flavours, as did Hongqi’s state cars of yesteryear. Most reminiscent of modern Cadillac saloons in its general design, style and lines, the H9 also features a Maybach-like sensibility at its rear lights. That said, the H9 also has hints of a perhaps nautical inspiration, with a grand and statuesque Rolls Rolls-like upright fascia and long bonnet giving way to a slinkier and tapered rear, across a gently arcing roofline and elegantly descending side creases.

Positioned behind its vast vertically slatted grille, prominently browed slim headlights and emblem representing the red flag, the Hongqi H9 is powered by a choice of turbocharged mild hybrid 2-litre four-cylinder or supercharged 3-litre V6 engine options, driving the rear wheels through a 7-speed automated dual clutch gearbox. Driven on Jordanian roads in former guise, the H9 2.0T produces 248BHP at 5,800rpm and abundant 280lb/ft torque throughout a broad and accessible 1,800-4,000rpm mid-range, while a 48V starter/generator hybrid system primarily powers ancillaries and improves efficiency.

Eager and efficient

Spooling up swiftly and with little of the low-end pre-boost lag typical to most turbocharged engine, the Hongqi H9 2.0T launches eagerly, carrying its 1,875kg heft through the 0-100km/h acceleration benchmark in 7.8-seconds and onto a potential 230km/h top speed. A confident and refined cruiser with muscular mid-range pull whether overtaking or storming steep inclines, the H9 is nevertheless eager to rev right to its redline, with a distant and well-subdued, yet still evocative snarl. Driven more sympathetically, the H9 meanwhile returns low 7.1l/100km combined fuel consumption.

A keen handling saloon with its balanced and classic front engine and rear drive weighting, double wishbone front and integral-link rear suspension, and predictable dynamics, the H9 2.0T proved unexpectedly tidy and direct on turn-in, despite its considerable weight and length. Eager through sprawling switchbacks, the H9 is easy to place on road and rewarding as it makes brisk progress. However, its diligently effective electronic stability controls remain fully active when driven in Sport mode, erring on the side of caution in cutting power at even a whiff of a rear grip loss.

Smooth 

and sophisticated

If prevented from better exploring the H9’s impressive dynamic envelope when using Sport mode (with its more responsive and aggressive gearbox shift pattern), one found that counter intuitively electing Snow driving mode loosened up stability controls for a more fluent experience through winding roads — even at the expense of slower shift times and reduced throttle response — and allowed for more leeway to tighten and adjust cornering lines. That said, more control over stability control functionality in different modes could be an easy enough update for the H9.

With light, quick and direct steering, progressive weight transfer to the rear, and good body control through corners, the H9 is a sportier and more engaging drive than expected. On highway meanwhile, it is a refined, stable and a settled high-speed luxury express. In terms of ride quality, the H9 processes most bumps and textural imperfections in its stride, with a smooth yet forgivingly comfortable confidence. That said, it rides somewhat firm over some more jagged and sudden potholes and bumps, as equipped with 245/40R20 tyres.

Stylish and spacious

With that in mind, the H9 might be better served with smaller entry-level specification 18-inch alloy wheels, fitted with more compliant 235/50R18 tyres for local roads. Settled and well controlled in vertical movements for most occasions, the H9 might also benefit from slightly firmer dampers over sudden road dips, and to keep tyres more firmly pressed into the tarmac over deep cracks and high frequency ripples in road surfaces. Nevertheless, and regardless of any possibilities for further fine-tuning, the H9 provides otherwise excellent overall comfort.

Luxuriously appointed and inviting, the H9’s stylish, sophisticated and user-friendly cabin incorporates quality leathers, surfaces and trim, including brushed aluminium accents. Extensively well-equipped with convenience, safety, driver assistance and infotainment features including pop-out door handles, four zone climate control and adjustable, ventilated and massaging front and rear seats, the H9 provides a supportive and comfortable driving position and good boot space. Rear passengers meanwhile benefit from easy access, generous legroom and above average headroom, even with a panoramic roof. Meanwhile, the V6 model feature two-tone paint and twin individual rear seat options.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2-litre, turbocharged, in-line 4-cylinders

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC, variable timing, direct injection

Gearbox: 7-speed automated dual clutch, rear-wheel-drive

Mild hybrid system: 48V starter/alternator

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 248 (252) [185] @5,500rpm

Specific power: 124.7BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 132.2BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 280 (380) @1,800-4,000rpm

Specific torque: 191Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 202.6Nm/tonne

0-100km/h: 7.8-seconds

Top speed: 230km/h

Fuel economy, combined: 7.1-litres/100km

Fuel capacity: 62-litres

Length: 5,137mm

Width: 1,905mm

Height: 1,493mm

Wheelbase: 3,060mm

Ground clearance: 110mm

Boot capacity: 380-litres (estimate)

Kerb weight: 1,875kg

Suspension: Double wishbone/integral-link

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning circle: 12.27-metres (estimate)

Brakes: Ventilated discs

Tyres: 245/40R20

Price, on-the-road: Starting from JD85,000 (with comprehensive insurance)

Warranty: 7-years

By Nathalie Khalaf
Holistic Counsellor

We have all heard about guiltless food and sweets. But what about guiltless living? Guilt is that heavy feeling which does not allow for joy or pleasure in our lives.

Self-love

I became introduced to the concept of self-love through the professional I worked with in Jordan who helped me get through my depression. Self-love was a big topic; it is about being true to ourselves first and above all as well as learning to feel good about what makes us feel good without feeling guilty. It is challenging, I know, especially when it comes to relationships and social duties. But releasing guilt can help us find happiness in our lives as well as with the relationships we have.

Emotions: energy in motion

When I got introduced to the concept of self-love and leaving guilt behind, the biggest challenge was when it came to releasing pent-up emotions towards those I loved the most, and not feel guilty about it. I learnt that all our emotions are, in fact, energy-in-motion and those are a crucial part of our existence. All we need to do is become aware of the emotion and allow it to flow through and out of us. 

When we feel joy and love, we have no problem sharing them. They seem to pour out of every cell of our body and are hard to conceal. When it comes to undesirable emotions such as hatred, sadness, jealousy, guilt and anger, it is quite normal for us not to want to feel them, so most of us learn to suppress them in order not to feel them.

Most of us are not taught how to address our “undesired” feelings. We are, perhaps shamed or punished for feeling them, so most of us go through life suppressing that energy and not giving it a second thought. So that energy-in-motion becomes stagnant. 

Suppressed emotion

Energy cannot be controlled, nor can it be contained for long and will eventually find its way out. A suppressed emotion will somehow find its way to the surface. We have outbursts of anger, or feel extreme jealousy, hatred, or sadness. We feel overwhelmed and out of control and judge ourselves to be “too emotional or bad”.

If we feel jealous of or angry at someone we love, we feel guilty! This happens because a part in us makes us judge ourselves as bad and we feel guilty for having such an emotion. This judgment is ingrained since childhood when one is told off by parents; thus we judge ourselves as being bad children and this continues into adult years. Feeling guilty really stops us from even wanting to have pleasure or feel joy. As energy, unless released, it can trigger resentment which could build up into anger; anger towards others as well as towards ourselves. When we do not allow the energies in our body to flow through and out (by simply feeling the emotion), that energy gets suppressed and becomes stagnant. Stagnant energy — just like stagnant water — turns bad and may create physical illness at a later stage. 

Once aware of thoughts such as “I don’t deserve this thing or person”, or “I am not good enough”, they must be stopped. We can train ourselves to become mindful of what we are doing now, of living in the moment and then add a lot of self-love to that.

Guilt versus self-love

The amount of guilt we feel is inversely proportional to the amount of self-love we have for ourselves. To put it plainly: If we have a lot of guilt, we probably have little self-love. If we have a lot of self-love, we feel little guilt. 

Only when we work on loving ourselves for everything that we are, accept everything about ourselves with no judgement and forgive ourselves for all we judge as wrong, will we achieve inner peace. That inner peace needs us to release all other energies and all undesired emotions: Anger, hatred, sadness, jealousy and resentment (to name a few).

We need to allow ourselves to feel, to express sadness and anger, to allow for the flow of stagnant energy. Once we are no longer holding on to any stagnant emotions, we can have inner peace and health.

When we love ourselves fully and place ourselves first, it means not engaging in what we do not wish such as social duties, or putting up with something that does not bring us joy. We stop doing things and saying things just to please others — because we understand the importance of pleasing ourselves first.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft’s nascent Bing chatbot turning testy or even threatening is likely because it essentially mimics what it learned from online conversations, analysts and academics said on Friday.

Tales of disturbing exchanges with the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot — including it issuing threats and speaking of desires to steal nuclear code, create a deadly virus, or to be alive — have gone viral this week.

“I think this is basically mimicking conversations that it’s seen online,” said Graham Neubig, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s language technologies institute.

“So once the conversation takes a turn, it’s probably going to stick in that kind of angry state, or say ‘I love you’ and other things like this, because all of this is stuff that’s been online before.”

A chatbot, by design, serves up words it predicts are the most likely responses, without understanding meaning or context.

However, humans taking part in banter with programs naturally tend to read emotion and intent into what a chatbot says.

“Large language models have no concept of ‘truth’ — they just know how to best complete a sentence in a way that’s statistically probable based on their inputs and training set,” programmer Simon Willison said in a blog post.

“So they make things up, and then state them with extreme confidence.”

Laurent Daudet, co-founder of French AI company LightOn, theorised that the chatbot seemingly-gone-rogue was trained on exchanges that themselves turned aggressive or inconsistent.

“Addressing this requires a lot of effort and a lot of human feedback, which is also the reason why we chose to restrict ourselves for now to business uses and not more conversational ones,” Daudet told AFP.

‘Off the rails’

The Bing chatbot was designed by Microsoft and the start-up OpenAI, which has been causing a sensation since the November launch of ChatGPT, the headline-grabbing app capable of generating all sorts of written content in seconds on a simple request.

Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene, the technology behind it, known as generative AI, has been stirring up fascination and concern.

“The model at times tries to respond or reflect in the tone in which it is being asked to provide responses [and] that can lead to a style we didn’t intend,” Microsoft said in a blog post, noting the bot is a work in progress.

Bing chatbot said in some shared exchanges that it had been codenamed “Sydney” during development, and that it was given rules of behavior.

Those rules include “Sydney’s responses should also be positive, interesting, entertaining and engaging,” according to online posts.

Disturbing dialogues that combine steely threats and professions of love could be due to duelling directives to stay positive while mimicking what the AI mined from human exchanges, Willison theorised.

Chatbots seem to be more prone to disturbing or bizarre responses during lengthy conversations, losing a sense of where exchanges are going, eMarketer principal analyst Yoram Wurmser told AFP.

“They can really go off the rails,” Wurmser said.

“It’s very lifelike, because [the chatbot] is very good at sort of predicting next words that would make it seem like it has feelings or give it human-like qualities; but it’s still statistical outputs.”

Microsoft announced on Friday it had capped the amount of back-and-forth people can have with its chatbot over a given question, because “very long chat sessions can confuse the underlying chat model in the new Bing”.

MANOKO, Peru — They call themselves “the multicoloured people”, or Siekopai, after the eye-catching traditional body paint and adornments they used to wear in their ancestral home in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. 

But the feathered crowns and animal tooth necklaces are now stored away for special occasions as the Siekopai live scattered between villages straddling the Ecuador-Peru border, far from their hunter-gatherer way of life and ancestral territory, which they are fighting to reclaim.

Displaced by decades of war as well as commercial and cultural intrusions, the Siekopai eke out a living doing odd jobs in rural towns bordered by oil fields, palm plantations and a network of busy roads.

The children wear jeans, T-shirts and sneakers, listen to reggaeton and — instead of learning to fish, hunt and make traditional plant brews when not in school — stare transfixed at cell phone or tablet screens just like teenagers anywhere else.

With the Siekopai teetering on the brink of cultural extinction, their leaders say it is a matter of survival to reclaim their ancestral land — still largely untouched in the remote heart of the Amazon.

They call the homeland Pe’keya in the Paicoca language.

“Our big dream is to rebuild our territory — to reunite our nation, our families along these rivers that are home to the spirits and creatures my grandfather used to tell me about,” community leader Justino Piaguaje told AFP at a recent, rare Siekopai reunion in Pe’keya.

The Siekopai are one of 14 recognised Indigenous groups in Ecuador, a country where seven per cent of the population identifies as such.

There are not many of them: an estimated 1,200 Siekopai are divided between Ecuador and Peru.

During the war between the neighbours from 1941 to 1998, intense fighting drove them from Pe’keya — which the Siekopai claim once stretched some three million hectares along the Lagartococha River, which forms part of the Ecuador-Peru border.

On the Ecuadoran side, most of the displaced ended up some 160 kilometres west of their homeland in the rural settlement of San Pablo de Kantesiya, a riverside village that subsists mainly on palm oil and petroleum.

“Since the war, we have never really been able to return to our territory. Brothers and families were separated... and we were cut off from our nourishing roots,” said Piaguaje.

‘Everything 

comes from here’

In January, some 200 Siekopai from San Pablo and elsewhere congregated in the village of Manoko on the Peruvian side of the border in Pe’keya, where a handful of their people dwell in wooden houses poised on stilts near the sacred burial grounds of their revered shamans.

It is about a 12-hour journey by motorised boat from San Pablo to Manoko, which is located on the banks of the Lagartococha River.

Lagartococha means Caiman in Paicoca — the river is named after the feared reptiles that dwell in its depths.

Along the journey, the unseen antics of mystery fish and unknown beasts ripple the surface of the dark waters, as colourful birds fly overhead and monkeys howl from giant trees whose roots cling to muddy banks. 

Once in Manoko, the Siekopai disembark and erect tents among the hamlet’s few houses before falling in line at a community kitchen for a meal of rice, lentils and fish freshly caught from the river.

Over the next days, groups meet on the rudimentary football field or in the school’s sole classroom to listen to the stories of elders decked out for the occasion in colourful traditional tunics and feathered headgear, with necklaces of pearls, seeds and animal teeth.

Using plant-based paints, men and women decorate their faces with motifs inspired by jungle animals — snakes, panthers and spiders.

Everyone speaks Paicoca, but Spanish is heard too.

“This return to Pe’keya is to rediscover ourselves. For the Siekopai, everything comes from here,” said community leader Elias Piyahuaje — a common family name in the area that comes in a variety of spellings.

“New generations do not know this place, its history, its special energy. This meeting aims to strengthen the bonds between the elders and the young,” added Piyahuaje, his forehead adorned with a shimmering band of red and yellow feathers.

Among those who made the journey were teens such as 18-year-old Milena, who said she came from San Pedro to “learn about the medicinal herbs and listen to the stories of the elders”.

Proud to be Siekopai but tired of “discrimination at school”, she told AFP she would like to return to the ancestral homeland with her family.

“I am happy here, among my family and my community. These are my roots,” she said.

The Siekopai youth, said Sophie Pinchetti of the nongovernmental organisation Amazon Frontlines, “live in a complex reality: one foot in the modern, Western world and the other in their territory”.

‘Violation of rights’

With a 1998 peace agreement between Peru and Ecuador, the Siekopai regained hope of finally returning to their land.

In 2017, a demand was sent to the environment ministry for title to a 42,000-hectare portion of Pe’keya.

Since then, “we had discussions with four successive ministers, without any results”, said Justino Piaguaje. 

And in 2021, the community launched a court case demanding recognition of its territorial rights. 

The legal action, still pending, seeks title deeds, an apology from the Ecuadoran state for “violations of rights” of the Siekopai, and guarantees for a safe return to the land. 

There is a major complication, however: Pe’keya lies in the heart of a vast protected area — the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve — that was created in 1979 and covers nearly 600,000 hectares.

The reserve is part of a complex ecosystem with hundreds of rivers, lakes and pools, that was listed by the Ecuadoran government in 2017 as a Wetland of International Importance under the global Ramsar Convention.

It hosts more than 200 species of reptiles and amphibians, some 600 types of birds and 167 mammal types. Many are threatened species, including the Amazon river dolphin, the giant otter, the manatee and the arapaima, one of the world’s largest freshwater fish.

In 2007, Indigenous groups signed an agreement with the government that granted the Siekopai rights to use, but not own, 8,000 hectares of the reserve in an area that overlaps with Pe’keya.

Members of the Kichwa, Shuar, Cofan, Zabalo and Siona Indigenous groups were given rights to other land nearby.

Observers say the government and oil and mining companies stoke rivalries between the groups to thwart their land claims and maintain access to territory containing natural resources such as oil that may yet be found in the Amazon.

“The state doesn’t want to protect us. It just wants to exploit the wealth of our territories,” charged Piaguaje.

The government did not respond to AFP’s requests for comment on the matter.

‘Cannot abandon

 the struggle’

The meeting in Manoko offered a glimpse into the past — and a look at a culture in peril.

“We are people of the rivers... with knowledge of plants and lagoons,” said Piaguaje, who like many Siekopai dreams of returning to the earlier life of fishing, hunting and itinerant farming.

At Manoko, elders hosted informal workshops explaining traditional fishing techniques using ant eggs, fruit and seeds to a younger generation.

Youngsters are also schooled in the hunting of caimans — at night and with harpoons — a hazardous endeavour as the metres-long reptiles are known to attack small boats.

Monkeys, too, are a favoured meat source — hunted no longer with a blowpipe and poison darts as in the old days, but with shotguns.

The Siekopai boast knowledge of more than 1,000 plants, including the “yage” hallucinogenic vine used in shamanic rites that create a bridge to the spirit world.

“Yage is vital to us,” said Piaguaje. “If we lose the yage, we lose our spirituality. We will fall into ignorance, we will lose the wisdom of the elders. We will no longer listen to the animals and spirits of the jungle and the rivers.”

To retain this knowledge, he insisted, the Siekopai must return to their territory.

“We cannot abandon the struggle... or the Siekopai will disappear like some jungle animals disappeared overnight,” added Elias Piyahuaje.