Summertime

Thirty years ago, a rubber company enslaved a group of Asháninka people, manipulating them into tapping the trees in the lush borderland between Peru and Brazil. The company was expelled by a coalition of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, led by one mixed race couple. Now the adult children of this marriage combat political corruption and ongoing environmental disaster.

Shomõtsi is a witty and engaging Ashaninka Indian, a father who has raised his children alone. A neighbor and friend of the filmmaker, he discusses the Ashaninka uses of anatto dye, cassava and of Coca. Unlike whites, he says, Indians respect coca's medicinal power. Shomõtsi and two other elders go to a neighboring city to collect their pensions. They have to set up camp overnight waiting for their money and grumble about the materialism of the Brazilian shopkeepers. After making a few modest purchases, Shomõtsi gladly heads back to the village.

Asháninka videomakers create a loving portrait of their own community, located in Acre, Brazil, near the border with Peru. The people organized to preserve a sustainable way of life on their forest lands, threatened by logging. Their efforts were recognized in 2007 with the Chico Mendes Prize for the Environment.