The first Freedom and Peace Award by David Wared is presented to the spiritual leader of the Kogi on April April 16^th,2022 / Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta / Colombia

The Freedom and Peace Award by David Wared is an award for outstanding pioneers who have dedicated their life's work to freedom and peace. 

Endowed with a gold medal, this special form of honor is a symbol of the highest recognition and appreciation of a service to peace and freedom with significance for all of humanity.

The first Freedom and Peace Award was presented to Mamo Santuno Zarabata, a highly respected spiritual leader (Mamo) of the Kogi, on April 16, 2022. On behalf of the Guardians of the Earth, the indigenous people of the Kogi and their brother peoples the Arhuaco, Wiwa and Kankuamo, he accepted the award high up in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta / Colombia.

With this award, we honor, appreciate and value the spiritual work of the Guardians of the Earth, who have been working for freedom and peace on our planet for thousands of years in a healing and completely unconditional way. They have preserved their cultural and spiritual knowledge for the good of all humanity. Their devotion to Mother Earth and their contribution to peace for all of humanity is exemplary.

The Kogi and their brother peoples, descendants of the Tairona culture, live in close connection with Mother Earth in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. With their cultural and spiritual knowledge, which has been preserved for thousands of years, they continually harmonize and protect Mother Earth through spiritual practices. Their ancestral wisdom says that everything Mother Earth gives must be balanced in order to maintain the balance of the world. Exploitation and thus abuse of Mother Earth by humans also has a great influence on the balance of Mother Earth. With spiritual work at sacred places, for which they travel great distances within the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, mostly on foot, they have been fulfilling the energetic harmonization tasks of their tradition for thousands of years.

For the Kogi and their brother peoples, the Sierra Nevada is the heart of the earth, whose protection has a healing effect on the whole world.

As an outward sign of respect and philosophical significance, their sustained commitment to the fundamental values of freedom and peace is now awarded a medal. This medal makes visible what has an eternal, infinite and immortal significance beyond all human evaluations and ideas, because it can be explained, explored and originated from essence-reality, the source of all existence.

With our award ceremony, we are highlighting the important work of indigenous peoples on this earth for peace and freedom and express our eternal gratitude.