Wunku, thoughts from heaven
Wunku is the word for cotton in Ikun, the language of the Iku indigenous community, also called Arhuaca, which lives in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, with which we have been working together since 2018.
Wunku arrived at TdS in 2023 thanks to anthropologist Paula Rodríguez, a lover and protector of Scorpion Cotton. Along with her, weavers from the Wiwa and Kogui communities came to Tigre, who joined our artisan weaving. Behind all this work, we have had the support of the Prosierra Foundation, which works for conservation and rural development in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and the Chantecaille International Conservation Foundation.
Wunku's soul lives in the sky, in the form of a cloud. His dance with the wind moves to the rhythm of the universal spirit that flies silently beside him, whispering stories of pristine times, when the essence of the earth was ours.
To spin Wunku is to give shape to those stories he heard, and to weave him is to intertwine divine thoughts with our own, the past with the present, to remind us that we are united and that we are part of an infinite whole.
Carrying a Wunku backpack is, therefore, recognizing ourselves as a stitch in the fabric of life.
