Re-weaving the bond between People & Place
UYWANAKUY YAKU MAMA
June 10 - 13, 2026
Walking the memory of the water
Uywanakuy, or mutual upraising in Quechua, is a co-creative gathering and multidisciplinary arts initiative held at Lost Valley Education Center in the Southern Willamette Valley. Building upon the foundations set together in 2025, we will apply land-based skills and tools for regenerating soils and ecosystems as we engage in creative place-making through the arts.
This year carries the theme of the water ⎯ Yaku Mama or ‘Mother Water’.
We will orient ourselves to the local watershed, deepen relationships, and explore the practice of pilgrimage together towards the headwaters of Anthony Creek. This gathering is dedicated to the re-matriation of all peoples, healthy intercultural cross-pollination and diplomacy, and the recovery of viable seeds of culture for future generations.
In collaboration with Andean-Amazonian lineage keepers , we are inviting the active recuperation of ancestral seeds of knowledge and art: place-based stewardship, stories, songs and dances, resilient food ways, pilgrimage, medicine, and more. We will engage in cross-cultural pollination and dialogue on multiple scales, offering space for local and bioregional alliances to form through the mutual upraising of life-sustaining systems and waterways.
This gathering is educational, participatory, experimental, and celebratory in nature. As people of place, we aim to facilitate more connective, rooted and resilient individuals, communities, and watersheds. This is art for the sake of world renewal, peacemaking, and the seventh generation coming. This is art for relationship building, diplomacy, and community organizing. This is art for the sake of joyful hearts, healthy minds, and working hands ⎯
for living soil and fresh clean water!
A dance between our territories:
MENTORSHIP with Andean-Amazonian FRIENDS
"We are Nuhjay, from the Andean-Amazonian territory, right on the border between Colombia and Ecuador. Blessed with the heritage of our family lines and guided by the elders, we have passed on and shared healing ways of life in harmony with natural cycles. We have grown up in families, contexts, and experiences of recovering territories and traditions that were almost lost or forgotten, such as traditional dances, songs, stories, and seeds, which we have shaped into a path and way of supporting processes of transition toward more holistic ways of living. Currently, we care for a space in the Amazon where this entire cycle of recovery and regeneration of the memory of life develops and inspires people today...
”Now, we want to pass on these traditions, safeguarded, protected, and reconstructed with great effort and with the help and wisdom of the elders of different native communities in the Andean and Amazonian territories. The elders guided us throughout our journey, and now it's important to share this with other territories and families as a tool to navigate these times of change and evolve toward a more respectful way of life, more in tune with ourselves, with the living world, with planet Earth, and with the return to unity."
Other local friends, collaborators, and teachers yet to be announced!
Song ✸ Dance ✸ Story ✸ symbol
Come dance with us at the intersection of ART & STEWARDSHIP…
“For many ancestral peoples, dance, music, singing, poetry, and the spoken word are not acts created solely for representation, entertainment, or amusement. They are a way of accessing the world and its manifestations through a logic of caring for life...”
- Nuh Jay
The elders from the South tell us that song, dance, story, and symbol are the basis of what it means to be a People—to share an identity that binds us to each other and to the land within concentric circles of care, reciprocity, and responsibility. Thus, to participate in communal practices of song, dance, and story is not just a matter of joy-making and entertainment, but rather essential life-sustaining threads within the re-weaving of our collective sovereignty and ancestral memory. Here within the union art and stewardship, we offer our dance as part of a greater prayer to re-weave the bond between people and place and to strengthen our community alliances in service to the regeneration of land, community, and culture.
The land as active participant.
We “pay” the land through the offerings we weave, our dances and songs, and the profits we make—ALL proceeds go to support ecological & cultural regeneration for both the Andean-Amazonian & Cascadian foothills, such as:
Restoration of ecosystems, ongoing conservation of local native habitat and biodiversity
Amazonian gastronomy, local food sovereignty efforts for native and non-native peoples alike
Place-based education and ongoing public outreach in the fields holistic sustainability and wellness, regenerative/syntropic agriculture and land stewardship, community governance, ancestral/Indigenous knowledge systems, and more
Endogenous research, social justice, access to land and knowledge for low-income people and individuals of historically marginalized communities for the purposes of ecological living, sustainable agriculture and forestry, cottage industries and worker co-operatives.
Logistics
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FULL 3.5-DAY WORKSHOP
ALL-INCLUSIVE: Tent camping + lunches and dinners are provided.Community Supported $330
This tier is offered in recognition that our dominant economic system often neglects to provide a living wage to those of us who are most deeply invested in the service of our communities. We want to affirm that we are all in this together and continue to provide accessible quality education offerings to all those who are truly dedicated to the path of mutual upliftment.Community Sustaining $450
This tier provides a more equitable exchange of financial support for the teachers and organizers of this opportunity, and covers most basic institutional costs of operation of Lost Valley.Community Regenerative $700
This tier helps support our staff and teachers, increases total donations to ecological projects both North & South, and helps to cover the cost for economically marginalized participants. We are deeply grateful for any additional financial support to help us further our mission and goals!
Please inquire about special accommodations, scholarships, and work trade opportunities at vanessam@lostvalley.org
Limited to 35 participants.
All Families are welcome to attend! No pets please.
Children under 12 may attend for free under the supervision of a guardian.
Elders welcome – please reach out so that we may accommodate you well! -
Arrival: Wednesday afternoon, June 10th
Departure: Saturday afternoon, June 13th before 3pm
More details and itinerary coming soon!
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Tent camping provided with access to shared outdoor bathing facilities, restrooms, outdoor kitchen, and meals with a strong emphasis on local, organic, wildcrafted, and ethically sourced ingredients. Guests will also have access to nature sanctuary trails, creek, and meadow.
Lunch and dinner provided. Please bring your own breakfast foods! Outdoor kitchen access provided.
*Dorm rooms are available and may be booked separately through Lost Valley.
Please reach out to vanessam@lostvalley.org any special accommodations or considerations.
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Personal camping gear (tent, rain fly, sleeping bag, headlamp), unless you are booking a dorm room in which case all bedding is provided.
Garden & forest-worthy boots, rain jacket.
Snacks, fruits, seeds, teas etc. to share (extra bonus for cacao!)
Music instruments, songs & stories!
Please inquire about scholarships, work trades, and special agreements at outreach@lostvalley.org
Cross-Cultural Pollination
We are extending this invitation especially to those who come as representatives of distinct communities, groups, or initiatives, that we may use our time of study, celebration, and sharing together to weave stronger alliances locally and bioregionally.
As dominant systems and modern displaced peoples strain under the weight of disconnection and isolation—from land, spirit, heritage, cultural identity, and each other—learning from cultures that have sustained life through reciprocity, oral memory, and deep ecological knowledge offers us a path toward whole-systems regeneration. These kinds of mutually upraising exchanges are acts of healing and service to the whole. We are rebalancing narratives, awakening the memory of our bodies and territories, and reweaving a collective future rooted in respect, diversity, interdependence, and belonging.
While it is a privilege and an honor to welcome our Colombian family and to help build this bridge between the global North and South, we also want to recognize the prolific and diverse local efforts, seeds, projects, and communities working towards community, land, and cultural regeneration here in the Willamette Valley and Cascadia bioregion. We want to strengthen these local alliances and promote cross-pollination of diverse ideas, visions, tools and arts.
Together, we aim to address the root and foundation of what bonds us together as people of place and equips us to act coherently for the regeneration of our communities and ecologies.
Thus, we are offering some special discounted rates for groups, communities, and those representing regenerative-minded projects, with special consideration for historically marginalized populations.
If this corresponds to you, please send an email to vanessam@lostvalley.org with a statement of interest and brief introduction to your group or project.
We look forward to dancing, weaving, and working together!
calling all…
Artists, culture-bearers, bridge-builders & peacemakers…
Musicians, singers, poets, storytellers, weavers, dancers…
Keepers of fire, water, and seeds for future generations…
Educators, advocates, Earth defenders, farmers & forest folk…
How can we advance towards a new way of life that is more respectful and in tune with all living beings?
What can we do to take our place as healthy cells in a greater living body – as a humanity that is an integral part of Mother Earth?
Please contact outreach@lostvalley.org for questions and considerations!