Nemonte Nenquimo: The forest is our teacher. It's time to respect it | TED Countdown

Translator:

My name is Nemonte Nenquimo.

I am a Waorani woman, a mother and a leader of my people.

When I was young, I went to the city to a missionary school,

so I could learn Spanish.

I never had the opportunity to go to university,

but I have the “Pikenanis”, the wise elders, who have taught me

how to respect, how to love the forest.

And from all of that, I have grown into a leader.

The forest is our teacher.

The “Pikenanis,” the wise, both women and men,

are our scientists, our teachers, who have taught us to value what we have.

And that knowledge, that love we have,

we say as Indigenous peoples,

that value has been lost on outsiders.

The forest is our home, the forest gives us life,

food, nourishment, water, spiritual connection.

But the arrival of roads, the arrival of colonization,

the arrival of evangelical missionaries, the arrival of oil companies

has destroyed our forest.

I have met other Indigenous peoples who live in the north,

and who were first contacted

by colonization, invasions and roads; it is very sad.

To the people watching and listening, I would like to say that in our Amazon,

the forests continue to burn, the oil continues to spill,

and the miners continue to enter our territory,

stealing our gold

And colonization continue to invade

to cut down and feed societies from abroad.

I want to let it be known that this is directly harming us,

that they are risking the lives of our Amazonian peoples

throughout the whole country.

We, as Indigenous peoples, have been fighting for our land

for thousands of years because we have a lot of love and respect for it.

That is why it is important that you listen to our voices, our cries,

so that the destruction of our forest stops.

That you stop harming our forest, because you are not listening.

More than 25 percent of the Earth is protected by Indigenous peoples.

This includes nearly half of the world’s forests.

I think people from the outside, who we call “cowori,”

are people who know less about the forest.

And therefore, they do not care about life in the forest.

They do not care about the spiritual life,

they do not care about the life as we have lived it,

connected for thousands of years, respecting mother Earth.

That’s why I think it’s important for me as a woman, as a young woman,

I have learned that cowori think

that technology and development are better,

but they have no awareness that

at the same time they are destroying the planet.

If they continue acting blind,

we say: “The people who know least about the forest are blind.”

We as Indigenous peoples are the ones whose eyes are open,

we know what is happening.

Cowori is for us a stranger, who does not value,

who has no knowledge about the forest.

What does forest mean to us?

For the Waorani people, the forest is our home, it is our life,

it is full of life, full of knowledge.

Right now I can walk and see plants around me that we can eat,

leaves we can use to heal,

vines to make our baskets with, to carry things,

wood to build our homes, good wood, leaves to cure a headache.

But if I bring a cowori here, they won’t see the way I’m seeing.

Cowori does not have that knowledge.

He thinks this is all a gift,

a place full of resources that he can keep extracting.

The word cowori does not have to be bad.

You are capable of having the same values,

the knowledge that we have as Amazonian peoples.

You can learn, you can respect. You can become our allies.

We as Indigenous peoples do not need satellite images,

because we live in the forest and we know what is happening in the forest.

The Amazon is burning.

The oil companies come to our territory

to say that they will develop our country,

that they will support our communities; they say it will not harm them.

They come with beautiful words and say that it will not affect

the environment or the water or the surrounding forests,

but it is a lie.

We see it with our own eyes, alongside other peoples, the oil spills,

how for months they haven’t been able to clean them up,

how they have contaminated our fish, our rivers, our spirits, our people.

Our people have been made sick.

If, as Indigenous peoples, we say

we do not want to participate, that we do not want exploitation,

the government must respect our decision and withdraw. It can’t circumvent us.

Although the communities, the grassroots say no and no, they do not listen,

they pretend to be blind and deaf, and they come anyway.

They do not respect our right to life,

nature’s rights, and they’re killing us.

That’s why we ask, we demand the government

to listen to our voices, our decisions.

The forest is our home, period.

We want them to listen, we want them to no longer consume oil,

no longer consume our food.

They tear down trees by the thousands, millions of hectares

because they are harming and they are killing our spirits,

our life, our forest, our pharmacy,

and so we ask where we are going to give water

to our children in future generations,

for our children and for your children as well.

What we do, what we love, what we respect, is not only for our people

but your lives as well, the lives of the entire world we live in.

We are taking risks.

We want them to listen and wake up and decide that enough is enough,

so that they no longer enter our territory to exploit and pollute.

I would ask you all, to reach an understanding

with Indigenous peoples in general, since we have had a deep love,

a true respect for thousands of years for the forest.

But I also cannot teach all that now, I can’t teach you to know what respect is,

what a connection with the land looks like,

a connection with the spiritual.

All I ask is ... for your respect.

Mother Earth is waiting for us to respect her.

Mother Earth is not waiting for us to save her,

and we as Indigenous peoples expect the same.