If you're interested in deepening your knowledge about the Bribri culture, I cordially invite you to explore the invaluable contributions of Alí García Segura, a distinguished Bribri ambassador and prominent scholar at the University of Costa Rica (UCR). You can access more information about his work by following the provided link.

https://www.lenguabribri.com/

Ritual speech is, for the Bribri, the language through which Sibö (the most important god and cultural hero in Bribri society) and his helpers communicated. That's why the awá (Bribri spiritual guide and healer) use this form of speech during healing rituals. Although to us, this ritual language sounds like singing, for the Bribri spiritual beings, this chant is their way of speaking and conversing. The Bribri believe that plants are a means of communication with ancestral spiritual beings. When an awá diagnoses an illness, they consult with the ancestors who reside in nature through Sibö's ritual language. Thus, the spiritual being residing within the plant helps it fulfill the function of healing or the purpose for which it exists.

"Cognitive Injustice: a concept referring to situations of inequality, discrimination, or epistemic and social exclusion caused by a global hegemonic cognitive model that limits, renders invisible, and denies recognition and validity to different forms of knowledge." - Antoni Aguiló Bonet

"Comprising less than 5% of the world's population, indigenous peoples protect 80% of global biodiversity." - Gleb Raygorodetsky

"For us, truth means speaking from the liver; our people don't use the heart to express the truth about something or to express emotions or anything else. In fact, for us, the heart is an organ that urges stealing because the word used in our language for 'steal' is the same as the one used for 'heart'. Speaking the truth, for us, means talking from the liver. When we say in Bribri, 'I tell you something from my liver,' it simply means speaking absolute truth. So, truth is speaking from the liver!"

Regarding resistance, in Bribri and Cabécar culture, one must see everything around us, every existing thing, not as an enemy, but search for the important part, the part of how to coexist without losing our identity. For example, one of our fundamental values for existence is not being stingy; we should share so that people or other beings feel good and respected. This allows us to have pleasant conversations while preserving some of our fundamental values. For instance, when someone comes to the community seeking information, people attend to them and answer their questions without going further. There's a lot of information that holds fundamental knowledge of our people that isn't shared. Hence, the language has certain ways of blocking words that one might use without giving details or in-depth explanations. This is a way of preserving knowledge and avoiding issues with neighbors. This is how people have safeguarded their knowledge, wisdom, way of life, and avoided rapid extinction. However, the situation has changed a lot. At present, the elderly in our community are seeking ways to continue preserving our knowledge. The way to resist is to continue publicly discussing our culture.

The most challenging obstacles our culture, our people, face are, ironically, education and the human development of our children according to external culture. It's curious how the external culture's development, far from being a real support or help, actually destroys. It's a destruction. It's curious and regrettable. But this is the challenge because we are in a time when the world talks about human development, the world talks about education, and we are a small people facing this situation. That's the challenge. Description of the element.

The underworld is a term commonly used by academics or researchers in the social sciences to refer to things that are on the other side, below the world. For us, the Bribri, we come from three stages beneath this world. Currently, we live in the stage we call the world of light. So, for us, the real world, the true world, is a place where we are born and where we arrive to live forever because the world of light, where we are now, is just a temporary step. Therefore, what academics call the underworld is, for us, the real world, the true world.

Yáblöla - Bribri Language: Sibö̀la, Sibö̀la, Sibö̀la, Sibö̀la Sibö̀ kẽ́ se’ dör syàmipa wö wa, wẽ́s sanàakdepé és, wẽ́ Awá yàblo yùeke syàmipa kö́nok Sulàyöm dör se’ e’ ã Sibö̀ sẽ̀ne tsiki’, e’ ã se’ dë́kã Be’ dör kṍ i’ blà, be’ dör Sibö̀ ù À sibö̀ sula’la, yáblöla, yáblöla ã Sibö̀ tsikinèés Yáblö suwẽ̀ sö shkàbaa, se’ làkölpa dör és És se’ dö̀lö dö, e’ se’ dör. Ema se’ tso’ e’tã, stsoíã, ditsö̀ tso’iã e’ kũẽ́kĩ, à yàblö be’ kö́pöwã, kö́pöwã i’ se’ sẽ̀rke e’ ã

Precious stone, rest on the path of life. Precious stone, rest on the path of life. We are like sacred places, for our people, like the lake, sacred as the great awá seeks its sacred stone to use for healing their relatives. You are like the center of the world where Sibö created, where life began, where the center lies. You are like the center of the world where Sibö created, where life began, where the center of the world and Sibö's house is. Look, little girl, at the sacred things, like the stone where Sibö was born, Sibö. Little girl, look, the stones are of many colors, and we women are like those shining stones, shining. We have equal value and equal importance because through us, life, the clans will exist for a long time. Precious stone, rest on the path of life.

The being is called Duwàlgo. This is a character that, in our world, represents challenges in the need to build. Sibö wants to construct a world, wants to create an important seed of life (the Bribri), and well, Duwàlgo sets out to obstruct this process of creating the seeds. However, instead of confronting Duwàlgo, Sibö seeks precisely the mechanism to attract him amiably, offering him food, offering friendship, offering drinks, and making him feel very important so that, using this mechanism, other helper beings of Sibö, like the karbunclos or fireflies, would enter Duwàlgo and cause a revolution in his stomach so that Sibö's seeds could be expelled since Duwàlgo had swallowed them. Really, in our society, this entire narration and representation are a way of teaching how we should seek and what work we must do to achieve an end, to seek the end one desires without losing sight of respect for others. Therefore, Duwàlgo is a representative character in our culture.

This story in our world is one of many we call Suwö', and this in our language means wind, air, wisdom, knowledge, philosophy, everything; all that signifies the word Suwö'. So, precisely when one wants someone to narrate, that person will say: 'ye’ a’ ã Suwö’ pàke,' which means 'I tell a story, a narration, I speak of a philosophy or knowledge or wisdom.' That's why it's associated with air and wisdom. Now, for us, these words are associated because we believe that even if we cease to exist, our knowledge and the wisdom of these peoples can never be eliminated. Like the air and the wind, Suwö’ will always remain. Therefore, we use the same term to reaffirm this point.

Centuries ago, the imposition of the outsider

Sin in the name of progress

All life massacred by greed

No empathy for the victim's longing

Walking backward begins to reveal

The resting question starts to rekindle

Fantasizing about the possibility

Of freedom, leaving the chains behind

Discovering my new self in the ancestors

The sound, the path to truth

Fantasizing about the possibility

Of discovering a new self in the ancestral

Walking backward begins to reveal

The resting question starts to rekindle

My mission in life is to awaken

Discovering my new self in the ancestors

The sound, the path to knowledge

Walking backward begins to reveal

The resting question starts to rekindle

The sound, the path to a truth

Discovering a new self in the ancestral

My mission in life is to awaken

Suwíköl is what it's called, and it means something like 'one's shadow,' someone resembling oneself or an image of oneself. And we don't say, as in Spanish, 'one's soul' or 'one's spirit.' Because we, the Bribri and Cabécares, are not just a single being; we are four beings in one. There's the image of oneself, exactly like oneself; there's the image of the bone, the image of the liver, and the image of the eye. So, there are four beings in one; any Bribri is four beings in one. Each of these beings serves its function in the human body, in this being of the seed. That's how we explain these beings, but the perception of the soul, as perceived in Spanish, doesn't exist for us.

With the influence of religious beliefs, many of our peers have joined religions that speak of the soul and such concepts. But that's very abstract for us, the Bribri. Even those who have already embraced these religions forget about the image of the four beings of these characters, so they really end up with just a single being, imposing the concept of the soul, which for the Bribri people is generally more abstract than anything else, ultimately, it's borrowed knowledge.

This is how the consequences we, the ancient peoples in Costa Rica, are experiencing, finding ourselves very few. In Costa Rica, the peoples with the largest populations are mainly the Cabécar; second, we are the Bribri. But as it stands so far, and all studies and surveys have shown, we are becoming fewer and fewer. The ancient peoples don't increase their population as such; they change. Therefore, the consequences of all this mixing are that our peoples are losing their identity, their knowledge, their wisdom, their rule, and even their family. They are becoming communities that have, as their central axis, communal life, transforming into individualistic communities.