Ique Etacore de Picanerai and Ines Hinojosa Uzquiano

Bolivia

Year(s) attended: 2009, 2010, 2011

Organización Cheque Oitedie in partnership with Earth Bound, Inc.

Woven Grass Bags

Ique is an Ayoreo Indian from the Bolivian savannah, an arid and somewhat desolate landscape.  Ayoreo hunter-gatherers once used net bags to collect native herbs and roots and for hundreds of years these bags have been made of a special grass gathered by the women.  In the last 35 years, as the Ayoreos became more settled, the sale of these stunning bags was their only source of cash income.  But soon the grass was overharvested.  A Bolivian ethnobotanist and MacArthur Fellow, Inés Hinojosa Ossio, helped the Ayoreos organize to replant the grass species on their reserves, and in personal gardens, in order to provide a ready resource for their bags.