Half Past Dead 2 (2007)

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dana Ziyasheva (who is now a part of our Incluvie team!), who wrote and directed her featured film, Defenders of Life (2015). Ziyasheva was born in Kazakhstan, and went on to become a journalist and a UNESCO diplomat, where she spent 20 years working for the United Nations. As a UNESCO diplomat, she worked with indigenous tribes in Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Mexico. This was when she decided to make a career in filmmaking after she encountered the Ngäbe community in Costa Rica, and that’s how Defenders of Life was born. Interesting fact: FNX (First Nations Experience TV), the first and only national broadcast television network in the United States exclusively devoted to Native American and World Indigenous content, purchased the rights to broadcast Defenders of Life and was the first U.S. network to premiere the film in North America. Defenders of Life is about the Ngäbe community leader Doña Carmen, conflicted by her tribe’s traditional ways after her 12-year-old granddaughter is impregnated by their 70-year neighbor, who plans to marry her. While the film is based on the Ngäbe people in Costa Rica, the film can relate to the obstacles Native Americans face in present-day America. It is a perfect film for Native American Heritage Month. In this interview, Dana Ziyasheva gives us insights into the making of Defenders of Life, and the hardships Ngäbe girls endured in Costa Rica.

Editor's Note: This article might be triggering, for it contains topics of child rape and child brides.

What inspired you to make Defenders of Life?

I was inspired by the rich and ancient Ngäbe culture and women of the tribe. The Ngäbe people live in Costa Rica and Panama, often side by side with another indigenous group called Bugle. It is normal that the young generation of Ngäbe wants to enjoy what the modern world has to offer. But it often means abandoning their old customs and traditional way of living, moving to cities, speaking Spanish, and not Ngäbere. I felt this wind of change when I was working with women in La Casona, a big Ngäbe stretch of land in the northeastern part of Costa Rica. In fact, I was an actor of change, bringing in computers, TV crews, training, and radio equipment that would allow indigenous women to express their identity and have their voices heard. Whenever I was coming to La Casona, I stayed in the house of Ngäbe matriarch Doña Carmen Romero Palacios. We became friends. She shared with me stories of her childhood. Her daughters also confided in me, and from there, a picture of a complex web of destinies of men and women of the tribe started forming in front of my eyes. Doña Carmen told me that once her generation is gone, Ngäbe traditions might be lost forever. I suggested her to make a movie together, and she jumped at the opportunity of doing an artistic endeavor with me. 

How has the release of Defenders of Life impacted the Ngäbe Community?