By Nathaly Pinto and Andrea Botero, Design Department, Aalto University, Finland.
In a gathering called Conversando, haciendo y conociendo (nos) (Talking, doing and getting to know (us)), we explored ways of knowing through making, guided by Amazonian knowledge bearers/researchers. Local and Amazonía-related researchers and designers joined to exchange experiences grounded in practice, engage in dialogue across indigenous and non-indigenous knowledges, and strengthen ties across South–North territories.
Hosted by the Department of Design at Aalto University in Espoo (Photo 1), just outside Finland’s capital on the country’s southern coast, the gathering brought together a diverse group of actors connected to Amazonian research who were in Finland for the XV SALSA Biennial Conference 2025. Building on the conference’s international convening around co-creation and (de)colonial practices in Amazonian research, the post-conference gathering extended these dialogues, deepening exchanges around making practices and materials.
The gathering focused on indigenous pictograms as complex image systems that provide technological and cognitive support to processes of knowledge-building, an issue explored over time through collaboration between indigenous co-researchers and Aalto researchers. It unfolded as a multi-activity day, creating spaces for dialogue and reflection while actively engaging in pictogram making.
The gathering
The one-day gathering was structured around two sharing circles, where indigenous speakers and makers shared their practices, with a communal meal in nature bringing the whole group together. The sharing circles were led by Susana Chicunque of the Kamëntšá people from the Colombian Andes, Efrén Nango of the Shiwiar nationality, and Lizbeth Tanguila of the Kichwa nationality from the Ecuadorian Amazon, and took place both in Aalto Design Department’s classroom and in natural areas around the campus. We used sharing or conversation circles as a collaborative method rooted in indigenous knowledge-transfer traditions and dialogical approaches, where participants come together in a circle to exchange experiences, insights, and perspectives while exploring a device or practice.
Indoors, the classroom was used to create and learn from pictograms drawn from facial painting designs practiced by Shiwiar and Kichwa nationalities, employing natural dies, projectors for large-scale displays, and walls for exhibiting printed posters and fabrics. Outdoors, the land was incorporated into the process of weaving and discussing pictograms present in the tšombiach (woven sash) woven by the Kamëntŝa people of Colombia, allowing participants to engage with and connect to the late summer of the territory, as the meeting took place in August 2025 (Figure 1).
By transiting between talking and making, participants collectively reflected on indigenous histories, methods, and epistemologies, weaving dialogue and practice into a shared learning experience.
Sharing circle 1: Visual knowledge systems in facial painting
Lizbeth, Efrén, and Susana opened the first sharing circle in the classroom by presenting elements of the garments they had brought: the tawasam (Shiwiar crown made of toucan feathers), shakap wearmau (Shiwiar crossed collar made of Amazonian seeds and animal bones), rinrina (Kichwa feather earrings), and the Kamëntŝa tšombiach (see Figure 2). This helped attune the group to the nuances of tangible material culture, especially as the indigenous speakers consistently highlighted each object’s connections to the environment, history, and cultural knowledge tied to specific territories.
Lizbeth and Efrén then introduced us to the pictograms used in facial painting. While showing the dyes and tools used in their application, they explained how these dyes are prepared in their cultures: achiote (from the seeds of the achiote tree) among the Kichwa, and karawir among the Shiwiar (a mixture of vegetal dyes). Their explanation highlighted the land knowledge embedded in these practices, including the understanding, care, and respectful use of the plants involved, as well as the methods for obtaining and preserving the dyes.
They then moved to the application. Lizbeth, a young woman in leadership formation, painted awina (pictogram designs) on her face with achiote (Figure 3). She drew crossed figures and dots, representing a meeting point or resembling crossed jaguar whiskers or anaconda skin, symbols of connection and respect appropriate for the occasion. She added that elders describe awina as a form of science that conveys detailed information, such as expressing thought and organizational capacity when a sun is painted on the forehead.
Efrén then applied a facial design to one participant and invited others to try it themselves (Figure 3). Speaking as an attained indigenous leader, he reflected on pictograms from a historical perspective. While explaining different uses of facial designs for war or collective decisions meetings when his nationality was forming, the roles of the people who prepare and wear them, and how those uses translate into political meetings now with other nationalities or other worlds.
While making pictograms with dyes, we experienced and learned from embodied ways of remembering and passing knowledge of communities. In this practice, visual materials and systems helped us engage in sense-making otherwise, by exploring these particular research skills and materials.
For further reading: Politicizing the Pictogram: Participatory Design Approaches within Indigenous Community Communication
Sharing circle 2: Beautiful learning through weaving the tšombiach
For the second sharing circle, the group gathered outdoors under a tree. Susana opened the session by assembling a warper placing wooden sticks in the ground to form a diamond shape, a version used to create the warp that is needed before starting to weave a tšombiach (traditional belt or sash), adapted here for teaching. Using a finished tšombiach, she explained how this woven sash serves multiple interconnected purposes: protecting the womb, regarded as a sacred space for the creation of life; carrying babies; and functioning as a belt to secure clothing, and how these creation processes start already during the warping. She emphasized that although there are these ‘practical’ functions, the making of the sash is not product-oriented but a spiritual and cultural practice, often carried out collectively by women as a way of creating knowledge and strengthening social bonds.
Then while warping, she started to tell how this whole weaving practice allows Kamëntŝa woman to tell their personal and collective stories, through symbolic patterns. Each pattern is a pictogram or ideogram that tells a story, such as the shin ac (sun), joashkòn (moon), or bejay (water). By weaving the pictograms, wisdom and history are narrated and materialized into a tangible object. She had previously prepared the wool for the warp and showed us the colors hold symbolic meaning. Susana clarified that the weaved designs are not based on a written guide; instead, they are passed down through generations of oral tradition, memory and reference to the surroundings. Efrén noted that in this way of learning, the learner is not forced to absorb something foreign but instead experiences and reflects on the learning through direct connection and personal interpretation (Figure 4).
“It is not the same as having paper copies that show you how to do it” Susana highlighted, when you pass down knowledge from person to person, you pass care, bonding with nature, the spirit of your stories. “Enseñas bonito” (you teach beautifully), and then you can learn beautifully.
Beautiful learning expanded our understanding of indigenous research capacities grounded in human–material–territory relations, prompting critical reflection on the relationship between research documentation and the embodied transmission of knowledge. Listening to Susana invited us to reconsider where and how cultural, aesthetic, technical, and scientific production occur; beyond the classroom, laboratory, and university.
For further reading: Inter-weavings of Practice and Research in the Tšombiach (Woven Sashes) of the Kamëntŝa Biya People).
Final thoughts
Through embodied engagement with indigenous ways of knowing and making, we learned not only about the materials and techniques but also about the relations that sustain them across territories. These shared practices deepened our understanding of knowledge as relational, situated, and continually made through encounter. In doing so, the gathering strengthened our translocal connections, weaving ties between Amazonian and Nordic contexts and reaffirming our commitment to dialogue across lands, languages, and research traditions.
Importantly, this collective experience offered a moment of attunement, helping us refine our participatory and making-based methodologies in preparation for the next MAST Network workshop at Aalto, where we will further explore making knowledge: using land-based dyes and colors to explore visual materials and systems that sustain memory and transmit knowledge within communities.
