The Elder Brothers Tried to Tell Us (1990

The Elder Brothers Tried to Tell Us (1990)

Back when we only had television — no scrolling, no doom feeds, no algorithm pushing the next outrage — I remember watching a BBC documentary that has never left me.

It was called From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brothers’ Warning by Alan Ereira, featuring the Kogi of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

The Kogi are deeply private. They rarely speak to outsiders. But in 1990, they chose to.

They sent one of their own — someone who had learned some English — to deliver a message to the “Younger Brother.” That’s what they call the rest of us.

The message was simple.

If there is no snow at the top of the mountain…
there is no water below.

If the high places dry out, the rivers will not flow.
If the rivers do not flow, life below suffers.

It wasn’t dramatic.
It wasn’t political.
It wasn’t angry.

It was observational.

They showed receding snow. They spoke about imbalance. They warned that the world was being destabilized by human behavior — long before climate change became a mainstream headline.

They trusted a filmmaker.
They trusted television.
They trusted that we would listen.

We didn’t.

---

We Knew

That’s the part that stays with me.

People talk like climate change is some new revelation. But it isn’t.

In 1990, Indigenous elders were already explaining the water cycle collapse in spiritual and ecological language. Scientists were publishing data. Environmentalists were warning about fossil fuels.

The Kogi didn’t use graphs.

They used mountains.

They said: when the snow stops falling at the top, the balance below breaks.

And now?

Wildfires rage across the U.S.
Snowpacks shrink.
Reservoirs drop.
Forests burn.
Communities choke on smoke.

It’s not abstract anymore.

It’s happening.

---

The Grief of Being Ignored

There’s something deeply sad about remembering that program now.

They broke centuries of silence to speak.

They believed we would hear them.

Years later, they made a second film — Aluna — because they realized the message had not been understood.

Imagine carrying that grief.

Imagine watching the mountains dry while the “Younger Brother” debates economics and growth