Qotzuñi: People of the Lake

"The lake was our mother, our father. Now, we are orphans." The Uru community lived in floating houses and spent weeks on their boats in the lake; hunting and fishing was their main source of subsistence. But industrial mining contaminated and diverted Lake Poopó's tributary streams, which, along with extensive drought, caused the lake's waters to disappear entirely by 2016. Despite its absence, the Urus continue to call themselves Qotzuñis -- their ancestral word for "people of the lake."