Draft:Ati Gunnawi Viviam Villafaña

== Ati Gunnawi Viviam Villafaña ==

the new hero of the indigenous people

Ati Gunnawi Viviam Villafaña (Santa Marta; 17 of february 1998) lives in Santa Marta, the city where he was
born and lived much of his life before leaving for Bogotá. In the capital she became a political scientist with an emphasis on conflict resolution and research for peace from the Pontifical Javeriana University and began to consolidate a path as one of the indigenous leaders of Colombia with the greatest projection and recognition at the international level.

Villafaña, from the Arhuaco town of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, was recognized by Forbes Colombia as one of the 100 Powerful Women of 2023 and in recent years she has participated in the great climate encounters of the planet such as the Climate Conference in Bonn (Germany) or the United Nations Conference on Change Climate in Glasgow (Scotd) COP26.

There are several initiatives that we have been advancing in the Sierra de la Santa Marta to be able to conserve, protect and take care of those critical ecosystems. First of all, for example, it has been the strategy of recovering sacred spaces, which are demarcated on the black line, which is in Decree 1500 of 2018. The goal has been to buy those lands and 70 percent to 60 percent of what was purchased is for natural restoration, which is to leave the ecosystem back alone to its natural state. There is an important spiritual work to restore those areas.

The commitment of the indigenous leadership can be seen from this interview with Gunnawi in the newspaper El tiempo in the year 2022.

"I belong to the Arhuaco people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and if one placed it on the map of Colombia, for example, one would see that we as indigenous people of the Sierra Nevada consider it as the sacred territory, it is a triangle to the north of the country."

The situation of climate change due to the hand of men is increasingly worrying, so the young Samaria belonging to the Arhuaca indigenous community of the Sierra Nevada, Ati Gunnawi Viviam Villafaña, will go to Germany to talk about this issue.This young woman born in Santa Marta was constantly going to visit her community in the Sierra, that's why she understood from her older siblings the importance of taking care of nature and the relationship that man must have with the earth. The "Sail for Climate Action" project seeks to bring together young people from all over the world so that, through their life stories, their dreams and their thoughts, they can train themselves in climate issues and be a voice of young people.

This young woman has come throughout her life getting more and more involved with the communities, that's why, in 2019 she presented issues about conservation in the Sierra Nevada in front of a group of European activists. This was how, thanks to his knowledge in climate crisis issues, they gave him a place to travel this year to Germany from Cartagena through a sailboat. Ati Gunnawi Viviam Villafaña is one of those who continue the movement for indigenous rights and responsible management of the environment, a young leader and activist from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the highest mountain range in Colombia and the highest coastal mountain range in the world.

The Arhuacos are one of the four indigenous peoples who inhabit and care for the Sierra Nevada, a Caribbean territory united by an ancestral heritage and common visions. Ati's activism is driven by this shared vision and a deep sense of collective responsibility, so it strives to contribute to autonomous, sustainable and environmentally friendly practices on a national and international scale.