Keepers of the world: having guarded their spiritual way of life for centuries, the peoples of Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta now find their sanctuary violated by armed conflict and land abuse. Because they believe the Earth will suffer if this sacred place does, tribal priest allowed a rare glimpse of their imperiled home.

In a bloodstained continent, the Indians of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta were never truly vanquished by the Spaniards. Descendants of an ancient South American civilization called the Tayrona and numbering perhaps 45,000 today, the Kogi, Arhuaco, and Wiwa peoples fled death and pestilence four centuries ago, seeking refuge in a mountain paradise, whose peaks soar more than 18,000 feet above the Caribbean coast of Colombia.

In the wake of the conquest they developed an utterly new dream of the Earth, a revelation that balanced the baroque potential of the human mind and spirit ...

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