I moved to Colombia to work as a freelance journalist in 2002 and quickly learned that there are two Colombias. In urban Colombia, social conflict is concealed. Residents of wealthy neighborhoods do not see the nation's four million displaced people who live in burgeoning barrios and comunas. In rural Colombia, armed fighters – which include army, paramilitary and guerrillas – are always nearby, and killings and tension are constant. Colombia's 102 indigenous nations disproportionately suffer the conflict's violence because they refuse to abandon their land. In my reporting, I was shocked to learn that 18 of Colombia's indigenous nations are in danger of extinction because of the 60-year-old armed conflict. At least 1,244 indigenous people have been killed since 2002.

The first footage I shot in Bogotá was a demonstration protesting the assassination of Freddy Arias, an outspoken Kankuamo indigenous leader, who was gunned down in broad daylight by paramilitaries on August 3, 2004. His murder came days after the Inter-American Court on Human Rights ruled the Colombian government must do more to protect the Kankaumo people from systematic killings.

A month later, I traveled to northern Colombia to further investigate Freddy Arias's story. Among majestic mountain ranges of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a region that the Kankuamo people consider to be the earth's heart, I recorded testimonies about a genocide committed against the Kankuamos. It was a tragic killing spree of civilians performed mostly by the right-wing paramilitaries, but by guerrilla and security forces as well, the worst years of which were 2000-2005 when 228 Kankuamos were slain. Sadly, the world knows very little about this tragedy.

Though the ONIC (the National Indigenous Authority of Colomiba), the United Nations and the highest human rights court of the Americas have continually denounced the systematic human rights abuses committed against indigenous peoples, I believed it would take a character-driven film to wake up a U.S. and world audience. Amid some minimal coverage of Colombia's violence, the drug trade, kidnappings and hostage releases, the peril of Colombia's indigenous peoples and their nonviolent struggle rarely makes the headlines.

I decided that this documentary should chronicle indigenous women's stories in several territories over a couple of years. Soon after, I met the three women. They were each facing compelling choices, representative of the many life-and-death situations in Colombia that remain unknown to many.

In northern Colombia, I met Ludis Rodriguez while she was imprisoned in November 2005. Ludis is a Kankuamo woman widowed by the violence and left a single mother of four. I was granted permission to film inside the prison, very rare in Colombia, so Ludis and other Kankuamos took advantage of the situation and denounced how they were framed and falsely charged with rebelllion. Ludis's story represents that of thousands of people in the countryside who were captured in mass detentions and falsely charged with rebellion during the President Alvaro Uribe's first term, 2002-2006. Ludis is also a victim of the paramilitary violence that slaughtered hundreds of Kankuamos; her husband was killed in December 2002, along with three other men that day. Once Ludis was released from prison, she introduced me to a group of widows in her village, Atánquez. I documented their process as they organized amid paramilitary demobilizations and the government's problematic truth and justice law for victims. The stories reveal the magnitude of the paramilitary's gruesome violence and the Colombian army's and government's complicity. Ludis's testimony intertwines with that of the other widows, forming a collective voice that recounts the violence, pays homage to the victims and demands justice.

Amid the Andean mountains of Cauca in southern Colombia, I met Nasa governor Flor Ilva Trochez and filmed her as she addressed thousands of fellow Nasa people gathered in an assembly after the army killed a 10-year-old boy in September 2006. I was amazed to watch this tiny woman with her baton of authority command thousands of nonviolent indigenous guards and employing Nasa cosmology to argue for the legalization of indigenous autonomy. I had covered the region in April 2005, during intense combat between the FARC and the Colombian army, when the FARC launched their cylinder bombs at the police barracks. At the time, Flor Ilva's village was evacuated and there were dozens of casualties. So it was rather remarkable, a year and a half later, to film Flor Ilva and other Nasa indigenous governors as they exercised their autonomy by invoking the indigenous tribunal. The tension and exhilaration are still palpable in the footage of the collective actions to dismantle the police barracks that had threatened their collective security for more than three years.

I met Awá governor Doris Puchana, the third of the film's protagonists, inside the ONIC office in Bogotá in August 2006 when her trip to the capital to speak at a press conference spared her from being killed alongside five other Awá people in her village. I was impressed with such a young but powerful indigenous leader denouncing how combat had displaced people in her territory. From the beginning it was evident that the Colombian army perpetrated the massacre, and Doris could not return to her village for several months. She passed up an opportunity to go into exile and returned to work as governor of her territory for another year and a half. The massacre of five Awá people committed on August 9, 2006, that Doris miraculously missed, continues without justice, even though Colombian authorities have determined that the Colombian army was responsible.

The three women's stories are deeply connected as the women and indigenous nations defend their land and life from the same U.S. sponsored-conflict.

It's a great privilege that these incredible women and indigenous communities entrusted me with their stories to share with the world despite the risks involved. (insert foto of me with them) Their voices weave together the documentary's narrative, and through these three women's eyes the audience can come to grips with life in the conflict-ridden indigenous territories of Colombia. Weaving Wisdom brings viewers face-to-face with survivors of multiple human rights abuses and yet emphasizes indigenous women's empowerment and the quest for justice. While the stories are denouncements and tributes to historical memory, they are also stories of hope, zest for life, courage to move onward, faith in indigenous culture, and teachings for future generations who will end the conflict.