Collection: Arhuaca Mochila Bags

The Arhuacos are profoundly spiritual and follow their own unique philosophy that tends to globalize their surroundings. Nature and society as a unity are ruled by a single sacred law, immutable, pre-existent, primitive and survivor to everyone and everything. The material world can exist or cease to exist but this law is believed to continue without being altered.

The Arhuaca Mochila (English: Arhuaca knapsack), or tutu iku in Ika, is a popular Colombian artisan bag made by the Arhuaco people of the Sierra Nevada. In recent years, the bags have turned into a cultural symbol for Colombian identity.

The colors with which the mochilas are woven are earth tones, ranging from brown and beige to black and gray. Originally they were woven with natural fibers from the Arahuaco lands, such as agave and cotton (the latter reserved for Mamos backpacks, which can not be traded). The bags usually carry indigenous drawings or representations of animals and other objects of their cosmology.

In the Arhuaca culture only the women weave, the men are dedicated to agriculture. They start weaving at the age of 4 years old in order not to lose the culture, the backpacks that the girls weave are all white and represent the purity of their soul and the peaks of the Sierra Nevada, these bags are called Bunsi and the weaving is called point to point as they are knots and they do it with a capotera needle.