The Makers

Made by native hands

La Chamana is not a factory and not a label. It is three Indigenous Colombian craft traditions — each with its own language of color, symbol, and story — and the hands that turn them into shoes you can wear.

Kuna — the mola

The mola is a textile art handmade by the Indigenous Kuna community. It reflects not only a deep knowledge of nature and artistry, but the profound expressions of a highly original culture. The technique is appliqué — the result of layering cloths of different colors stitched together.

A single mola can take from a week to more than a month, depending on the complexity of the design and the number of layers. Kuna women create a different, unrepeatable piece each time, capturing their visions of the world, episodes of their lives, songs, poems and customs — drawing on nature and geometric forms. A significant element is duality: in Kuna belief, every being has a double, a hidden essence shared by people, animals and plants alike — and for this reason molas are made in pairs. The Kuna live in the Kuna Yala region (San Blas), Panama, and in Colombia in the Urabá of Antioquia and the Urabá of Chocó.

Wayuu — hand-crochet

The art of Wayuu weaving is a symbol of creativity, intelligence and wisdom. Each pair is hand-crocheted by a single artisan in one continuous thread — the tight, fine technique that lets the geometric figures, called kanas, emerge.

A kanas is never random. Passed from one generation to the next, each pattern reflects the maker's own life and the world around her — part landscape, part signature, so no two are ever the same. The Wayuu are among the few Latin American peoples to have preserved their culture through time: they speak their own language, wayuunaiki, and live on the Guajira peninsula.

Huipil — woven wool

The third tradition works in natural wool, woven and finished by hand into shoes that are warm, grounded, and made to last. Like the mola and the crochet, each piece carries the irregularity of real handwork — the mark of one maker, one pair, never repeated.

We're still gathering this community's full story, in their own words. It will live here soon.

When you buy a pair, you are not buying a product. You are keeping a story alive — and keeping a pair of hands working.

— Carmen Montenegro-Russo, Founder