On International Women’s Day, hundreds of Indigenous women from across the Ecuadorian Amazon traveled by foot, car, and canoe to Puyo with a single, unified demand: No more oil in the Amazon. Allies and supporters accompanied Amazon Watch’s team to join them for the march and to visit their territories in solidarity with Women Defenders of the Amazon confronting illegal mining, oil drilling, and gender-based violence. Together, a global group of women raised their voices for gender and climate justice, a powerful presentation that was summed up by one of the march’s signs: “La selva habla en voz de mujer,” the rainforest speaks in the voice of a woman.
A picture is worth a thousand tears. That was what I felt traveling to Ecuadorian Amazon with Amazon Watch on a woman donors delegation last month where we traveled from the Andes to the Amazon and deep into the remote Kichwa community of Sarayaku on the Bobonaza river, and then to the Napo river, at the headwaters of the Amazon, the world’s largest river.
Even a thousand words cannot capture my reaction to the week we spent living among the Kichwa of Sarayaku, who protect over 300,000 acres of their ancestral territory and living forests. I felt the beauty, resilience, strength, fearlessness, harmony, and integrity of the people and place. I experienced surprise, amazement, respect, awe, despair and hope, amid the threats they continue to face.
Together with the other members of our delegation, I witnessed the Kichwa people of Sarayaku survive and gain strength out of the generosity of Mother Nature – Pachamama. Through ancestral wisdom, they remain skilled in hunting using blow guns, have a hundred ways to use palm fronds, cook by wood fire, and use local roots and herbs for vigor and healing.
Over the past 30 years of tireless resistance to capitalist incursions, they have secured and defended their territorial land rights, and expelled oil companies leading to historic international rulings for Indigenous rights; built strong local, national, and international coalitions; and played a leading role in influencing the Ecuadorian government to recognize nature as an entity with fundamental rights. But this could not have been done alone. It was done with fierce determination, respect, long-standing, and trusted solidarity!
For 30 years, Amazon Watch has been by their side, accompanying but never leading, providing strategic resources but never directing. As a lean, mean organization, Amazon Watch can, within hours, deploy urgent resources to support an Indigenous leaders facing a death threat for defending their land, or provide cell phones or solar panels for communities to coordinate its efforts.
This year, Patricia Gualinga, Kichwa Indigenous woman leader from Sarayaku will be the first Amazonian person to become a member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Yet, with the rise of cartels, mining and drilling interests become ever more terrifying. The devastation is something I have now seen – water so poisoned by mercury it has caused children to be born with malformations, a people surrounded by rivers with nothing to drink.
Despite Indigenous efforts over a quarter of the Amazon rainforest has died! It has been deforested and devastated to a tipping point of ecological collapse and it will get worse, if proposed destruction is not stopped.
So how has what I learned impacted my life?
I feel sad for the corrupt materialism and lack of harmony with nature with which I have lived my life. I am terrified by the possibility that the fight may be lost and my grandchildren may inhabit a world devoid of beauty and sustenance. But the main lesson learned is how imperative it is to honor and support the brave warriors protecting and defending Pachamama, for their future and all of ours. With this, I vow to give even more generously to support the critical work of Amazon Watch. I hope you will too.
Please join me in supporting Amazon Watch in honor of Earth Day, which should be every day!
