About This Lesson

Reclaiming Historical Narratives through Collective Memory and Indigenous Knowledge

‍The Song of the Butterflies, directed by Núria Frigola, follows the story of, Rember Yahuarcani, an Indigenous painter from the White Heron clan of the Huitoto Nation in Peru. He left his family home in the Amazonian community of Pebas to pursue a successful career as an artist in the city of Lima. But, when he finds himself struggling to find inspiration, he returns home to seek guidance from his father, a painter, his mother, a sculptor, and the spirit of his beloved grandmother whose stories helped shape him as an artist. He soon finds himself on a journey to reconnect with his ancestors, their culture and the complex, beautiful, and at times, tragic history of his community. Through his journey, Rember reckons with the horrors of the rubber boom era that devastated his homeland and the atrocities of the rubber barons who slaughtered more than 100,000 indigenous people – a trauma that resonates through the Huitoto community a century later. He also reconnects with the stories, songs, rituals, dreams, and art of his community and is reminded of the power of culture to recall, reclaim, and bear witness to the past and his role in preserving and translating their collective memory in their own cultural language for future generations.