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Animated short by Amazon Frontlines, in collaboration with Global Wildlife Conservation, from the series entitled “One Home”, celebrating the interconnectedness of all life on the planet for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.
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Amazonian indigenous activist Nemonte Nenquimo is living proof that a “David and Goliath” story is possible. When the Ecuadorian government announced it was going to auction off indigenous land to the highest bidder in the oil industry, Nemonte, who is the first female leader of the Waorani Nation of Pastaza, unified her people and took the Ecuadorean government to court over its plans to put their ancestral territories up for sale. Her actions led to a landmark ruling, protecting 500,000 acres of rainforest from oil exploration and drilling. This lawsuit will go down in history as setting a precedent that indigenous peoples have the right to decide the fate of their territory. The ripples of Nemonte's work and victory have brought hope to Indigenous communities everywhere.
Since winning the lawsuit, Nemonte has been recognized around the world for her leadership. She was named among Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, with a tribute written by Leonardo DiCaprio. She also won the Goldman environmental prize, an award that recognizes grassroots activism. She donated the 200,000$ prize to her nonprofit, Amazon Frontlines, an international group of human rights lawyers, environmental activists, farmers and storytellers, who work to defend indigenous peoples’ land rights.
Nemonte also launched the Frontlines Challenge, a call to the public to match her contribution in support of the indigenous movement. She is also the co-founder of Ceibo Alliance, an indigenous-led Ecuadorian nonprofit, empowering Indigenous communities with tools and resources needed to protect their rainforest territories and culture from the greatest threats to the Amazon—extractive industries, big agriculture and colonization.
The Ceibo Alliance’s Director, Alicia Salazar, who is from the Siona Nation, says that Ceibo Alliance and Amazon Frontlines are learning to use modern technology to their advantage.
“In the past, we saw how technology destroyed our forests,” shares Alicia. “Industries used big machines to extract resources from our lands. But now, we’re using technology to map our ancestral territories and to document everything we have—from our most sacred sites to our hunting trails and our medicinal plants. In this way, we are creating our own maps to show the government that our territories are full of life.
Our territories are not empty like the government or companies show them to be on their maps.”
Amazon Frontlines and Ceibo Alliance are developing tools for cultural recovery, and building their own educational systems and schools to ensure that the teachings of their elders can be preserved and transferred to the youth.
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Worldwide, Indigenous peoples are protecting 80% of Earth’s biodiversity, and they are doing so largely on their own. Only 2% of global philanthropy goes to protecting our climate, and of that, only a tiny fraction makes it to Indigenous communities on the frontlines.
We have an opportunity to show up for Indigenous peoples in a critical moment for the future of the Amazon. Stand with Indigenous rainforest defenders by making a donation to Amazon Frontlines, and/or signing the letter from Indigenous peoples to Ecuador's constitutional court to protect their ancestral lands. Your voice can make a difference.
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Here, you will find simple earth-based and nature-oriented practices, prompts and rituals inspired by Nemonte Nenquimo and Indigenous ways of being, that will help you connect with nature.
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What if we sincerely listened to nature? Nature is a vast resource of wisdom on revealing oneness and uniqueness. Nature teaches us at least three important things in the journey of Generous Listening.
First, nature offers us endless tools to internalize and to practice slowing down, being present in the moment and being open to surprises. Second, through connecting to nature, one develops the skills of humility and compassion for all living beings and becomes conscious of oneness.
Third, nature is always bountiful and generous. Nature teaches us about reciprocity and generous giving. Nature teaches us to weave a web of intimacy and reciprocity with the living world, to see ourselves as one kind of person in a much wider field of relatedness, in which all flourishing is mutual. When we listen to and learn from Nature, we are invited to enter into kinship, a form of relationship that acknowledges the deeper workings of reality by operating on the same principles as the very breath which keeps us alive: reciprocity, emergence, and sensuous awareness.
Practice by Vuslat Foundation
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“Go to the oak tree and ask for its story. Go to the river and ask for its story. Go to the goldenrod and ask without saying anything. Ask with your nose, your belly, your eyes. The answer won’t always be words. Won’t always be sound. Sometimes it will be a feeling in your body. Sometimes it will be a smell. Stories don’t belong to human beings. But human beings belong to stories. Let’s enter back into the complex, tangled work of letting go of authorship and letting ourselves be told.”
by Sophie Strand, from her essay ‘Myco Eco Mytho Storytelling’
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Start your day by summoning and acknowledging all the beings—humans, animals and plants—who live in close proximity to you. Author Sophie Strand explains: “By the time I’m done summoning and sending thanks to every being I know in a twenty-mile radius of my home, I’m surrounded by a world of witnesses. The day begins within a more-than-human community. And my decisions henceforth—practical, creative, and spiritual—will be made with the knowledge that I exist in relationship. Everything I do is ecological. When I used the word ecological, I root back to the original etymology: Greek oikos for household. I am not a noun on an empty page. I do nothing alone. I am a syntactical being, strung together by my metabolism and needs and desires, to thousands of other beings. Together we are all a household, and every choice we make, mundane or explosive, takes place within the networked household of relationships.
How best may I act? How may I act knowing you are watching tenderly and attentively? What stories do I need to notice? What stories want to be told? Who needs my help today? And whose help can I receive?
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This is not a taxonomical exercise. Any name will do. Any way of tracking that invisible and intimate line of connection between you and another being. You exist, not as one end of that thread, but vibrating along its connection. Anything you do to harm yourself, harms other animals and trees and insects. Anything that nourishes other beings, may ultimately nourish you. And when you are suffering, when you are very scared, you do not need to remember a single prayer, or say a holy word. Your body, a doorway poured through with matter, a spider-webbing of relatedness, is prayer enough. Every second you stay present with your connectivity to your ecosystem is sacred, somatic, lived epiphany.
If you pray, ask yourself, does your prayer have roots? Does your god sometimes grow fur? Do your holy words grow leaves? Does your spirituality connect you into your situated ecosystem? If you want, it is a lovely thing to slowly name all those beings that make up your environment. And to seek out new relationships to further flesh out this relational prayer. Gather counsel as you would wildflowers. Pick the ones that show up brightly, insistently, and show you they notice you, just as much as you notice them. Gather counsel as you would pick up a few flat stones to skip across the river. Gather counsel as you would stars, without your hands, held only as a flash of light, in the prismatic blink of an open eye.”
by Sophie Strand, from the essay “Gathering Council”
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Learn more about Nemonte Nenquimo and the Indigenous fight to protect the Amazon, and dive deeper into Indigenous wisdom, with these resources.
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✴ Video
‘Indigenous Women Are Leading the Fight to Save the Amazon’
by Brut America -
✦ Article
‘A Message of Indigenous Resistance and Inspiration From the Amazon’
by Nemonte Nenquimo -
✦ Article
‘The 100 most influential people: Nemonte Nenquimo’
by Leonardo Di Caprio -
✦ Article
‘How This Indigenous Leader Beat The Oil Industry To Protect The Amazon And What You Can Do To Help’
by Melissa Jun Rowley -
✴ Video
‘Nemonte Nenquimo, TIME 100 2020’,
by Time -
✦ Article
‘Nemonte Nenquimo: The indigenous leader named environmental hero'
by Vanessa Buschschlüter -
✦ Article
‘Environmental Hero: Nemonte Nenquimo’,
by Chezza Zoeller -
✦ Article
‘Protecting indigenous territory and life in the Amazon’
by Nemonte Nenquimo -
✎ Book
‘Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants’
by Robin Wall Kimmerer -
✎ Book
‘As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock’
by Dina Gilio-Whitaker -
✎ Book
‘Sacred Ecology’
by Fikret Berkes -
✎ Book
‘Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing’,
by Robert Wolff -
☾ Project
‘Waorani: Mapping Ancestral Lands in Ecuador’
by Earth Defenders Toolkit -
✎ Book
‘The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth’,
by The Red Nation -
✎ Book
‘Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence’,
by Gregory Cajete -
✎ Book
‘Red Alert!: Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge’,
by Daniel Wildcat -
✎ Book
‘Wisdom of the Elders: Sacred Native Stories of Nature’,
by David Suzuki & Peter Knudtson
Image Credits:
Jimmy Nelson • Amazon Frontlines • Marlene Solorio for Amazon Frontlines • Global Wildfire Conservation