 This panel will have some time. Global Just Recovery Gathering. Good evening and welcome to our global meeting. The session is called the Guardians of the Earth. I am Fenton Lutumare-Tuba and I have an absolute privilege to be here with you today with these incredible human beings. Ariel de Rangel is an indigenous activist from the Atabasca Nation, Francisco Manzanares, living in the Colombian forest. And Nolín Nabulov, she represents marginalized women. She is in the Pacific, Francisco Ariel and Nolín. It's an honor for me to be here with you today. Thank you for being here with us. I wanted to start by talking a little bit about what it is to protect, to take care of the Earth and it's a lot of the activities you are doing. And at the moment it's a very important issue for the people, for the communities, for the people, the pieces that we have to protect. People like you are out there doing resistance. They are trying to mold reality, to make a better existence, to achieve reconciliation between the climate crisis and the pandemic. People are exhausted, people have had a horrible year. And then how do we reconcile these two parts? So I want to start, first of all, to first thank you for being here today. And I want all of us, before we start, to recognize these sacred spaces for all of us, wherever we are. And you are representing them today. I want to talk to you, with all of you, wherever you are, so we can be together. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that being here, please. I just introduced myself. I just introduced myself in my native language, and I come from the North of Alberta, in what we probably call Canada. And it's a great question. How do we, in our relationship with our land, manage or direct the work that we do? I can speak for my history. I've been in my language and I recognized the names of my city. In the names of my sites, of my places. This is Reserva Atabasca Chipeba. This was the name that the colonists gave to our land, which is not our name. And my nation is in the process of reclaiming the original name. Our true name is Kanaje Dorerika, and it's a reference to people originated from the land, which is where the people who are here come from. They come from the Atabasca Delta. It's a kind of a beautiful forest. And in this moment, it's the greatest delta of fresh water that's inside the land in the world. So it's very important for us, so much so that UNESCO has recognized it as one of the world's most important reserves. It's filled with the entire amount of plants that you can imagine. For example, we have the last and the last migratory grills. These huge, beautiful birds. We have the whole forest. We have all the plants. We have alces. We have wild bisons. We have castors. We have alms rats. We have all these creatures. And that's why it's so important, because they tell us who we are as a person. We are people of the tree, and we are people of the tree. But we are much more than this. There is a very common phrase through all the indigenous nations in the North America, and it's always to be in connection with my relationship. It's always to respect my relationship and that everything has to do with my relationship. I always think of the way I was raised. I was always convinced from the beginning that I have a relationship with the migratory grills, with the wolves, with the forests, with the pandas, and that they and all these things are part of my landscape. They are part of what I am. And with the medicines that we have in our lands, for example, we are given names of plants, of medicines. One should see the world as a relationship, opposed to a vision that is a world that I have to dominate and color and extract from there. And they gave me a small one. They named me as the mint plant, the mint leaf. And I have this story. I was five years old, and I wanted to go with my mother to pick up these mint leaves. And I went with her, I walked towards the panthers. I was looking and looking and looking, and I couldn't find it. I asked my mother, how do you see the leaves? I can't find them. My mother said, they are there, girls, they are there. I can't find anything, I can't find anything. And she said to me for a moment, I told her, you talked to the plants, you talked to the mint leaves, I told her no, you offered them something, you were going to offer them a gift, and I said no. And she said, take it. She gave me a lot of tobacco, and she told me to see the plants and offer them your gift. And I went back to the panthers again and I sat down. And there on the side, I was sitting on the edge, and I started talking to the mint leaves, to my eyes. I'm here, I respect them, I honor them. And I'm here to offer them my little gift, and in the name of my relationship. And I opened my eyes, and I had been sitting all the time, this huge piece of mint leaves, what I hadn't seen them, it was because I hadn't talked to them, I hadn't related them to me. And this is to say that our relationship is not something mystical, it's not there, and they allow us to talk to them, they allow us to relate to them, and when you are not connected to these places, and when you start to see them as something that is not part of one, that is an object that I am the owner of, and I have to exploit, and I colonize, this concept that man dominates over nature, and the destruction, this is not the real concept. Colonization is not something that happened millennia ago, for example, the treatment of the lands in my area was in 1899, my grandfather was not my great grandfather, he was my grandfather, he didn't speak English, nothing, he only spoke Danish, and when he signed the treatment of this territory, he was a child. That's not it, those centuries, those memories are distant, they are experiences that our people, our people have had, they continue to experiment every day with colonization, they continue to be pushed and removed from these lands, our lands, the lands that they gave us, medicines, the lands that taught us our language, the ecosystem that raised us, we all have systems that are named after the animals of our territories and that are extremely important for our people, our relationship, because they are super important for them to continue to live, and the colonizers don't listen to the language, they don't listen to the language of the castles, of the Alps, and that's why we are having a project of perforation in this delta of the Altabasca River that is trying to destroy all this area, the sacred places that nourished my grandparents, my grandparents, my parents, my brothers, and our boss tells us if we destroy the delta, they destroy us, they destroy us. Who are we if we don't have the delta? If we can't see the delta, if they destroy us, the intrinsic part that they saw us do, that nourished us and that we carry on in ourselves, and the memory of our thoughts, the memories of the languages, of all the important things for us. This fascinated me. Hello, hello, it's wonderful to be here, it's a very important session to be part of. I'm going to talk about the person I am and where I come from. The people of my father came from the southern part, the southernmost part of the Fiji Islands in the Pacific, the southern Pacific is a series of islands. My mother came from the European and Australian colonizers. So I'm in this two forces that are making force between them, colonization and origin. And then I grew up with both of them. I grew up in Fiji, since I was 16, 17 years old, and then I went to Australia. And when I was trying to find my place in that place, in Australia, and what is my relationship to the indigenous people of Australia, my experiences, I was experiencing a dislocation. And then I came back home, what for me is home, and I'm still living here in my house, and I came back to my house at a different time in my life, and it was beautiful. I think that I am part of both cacophony, of both noise and music. And we are making the music as we walk. I came from a very, very early understanding of what injustice was. And I was first disconcerted, after Chiquita was curious. I was wondering why, why are you in injustice? And it was when I began to work in liberation, in injustice. And we, as humans, are constantly trying to make an idea, to understand what is going on since I was three years old. I have been trying to complement the work that we have to do in the communities, where we live, what we are. And then I always try to fill a collective mission in our communities of well-being. And it's not just because we need it for our bodies, because we have to learn to listen a little better. It's necessary to learn to listen, to hear, to be able to repair the eco-sphere, the world, and this wonderful support for us, the Earth, and all the species of the planet. We are destroying, we are breaking this base that originated us. For example, it's not the water, it's the bees, it's the microorganisms, the Germans, the antibiotics. They are telling us, we are destroying everything, we are killing the ecosystem, after the ecosystem. The bees abandoned their panels, the whales are dying on the beaches. Why? It must be all this noise that they hear in the deep currents of the seas, of the oceans, when these giant ships go on the surface. The children are also showing us clearly the effect of all this noise on their energies, on their mental health. We are always silent, we are always trying to start our voices, these internal screams of us, with drugs, with alcohol, with calming drugs. And then we are trying to jump around the problem without finding the main part of the problem, that our central system is changing. We women, for example, and binary women of all colors are telling us, we are absolutely exhausted from serving false patriotic systems for patriarchy, when we have to be... For example, the world is closing its eyes to this immense amount of work that is not paid, work that all these types of women do, care for them, and then we have to open our eyes and ears, and see what we take from this message and how we can fortify the message of all these people, because the ecosystems are agonizing. They are wonderful, they are beautiful, these systems are the basis of our lives. I started talking a lot about breaking and building, breaking and building, but I think it's an important idea, which is going to happen, because people are trying to find meaning in all these mechanisms and work hours. But suddenly we see the purpose, the purposes, the proposals that our groups are putting out there, saying, yes, we can break, but we are proposing how to rebuild. We are trying to recover from a patriarchy culture, colonialism, destructionism, from the policies that have done so much damage to the nuclear policy, the weapons, the wars, they manifest themselves everywhere. We have to find the relationship of each of us with all these environments. I want... ...the climate crisis, the environmental crisis and the loss of biodiversity that we are living. The environment should be something that we should focus on, as Minos, as citizens, and mainly because of that. But also something that inspired me and that motivated me to do what I do today and to do the life that I have today. So I think it was also about living and growing for the last two years in a beautiful environment, in a beautiful territory surrounded by quenches, surrounded by mountains, surrounded by birds. Also by ducks, swans, chickens, like that. And I think that being in that environment is something that inspires you, that hooks you in love with that, in that territory. Because if I had lived in a city with no electricity, with visual pollution, with auditory pollution, like the one in the capital of Colombia, Bogota, it would have been different. I was born in Bogota, but I live in a village in Bogota, which is a very beautiful territory because we are the second most diverse country in the world. And that has been the life I have. Thank you so much, Francisco. Much appreciated. Thank you, Francisco, for what you said. We appreciate it a lot. In the context of everything, of what we are living, what Francisco was talking about, it's very important that to know who we are, we have to know exactly where we live, our origins, our land. Eria also talked about how we need to be in permanent conversation with the naturalist. We don't need to extract, to destroy this world. We don't need to integrate ourselves with him. This day of listening, of eliminating cacophony, of how our bodies are exhausted, tired, and of how we talk about destruction and construction. It's not one thing or the other. They are both together and take recovery. And thinking in the form of recovery with the crisis, not only climate, but also health. How is this for you? I think I want to talk a little bit about what we are recovering from here. And we are recovering from re-envigrating ourselves from one of the fast things that come to my mind. I want to say that for us, many of us, for indigenous women and migrant women who really experience a lot of that pain and that conflict and that marginalization of patriarchal societies, and of the bigotry, one of the things is not just to return to practices that may also have a lot of patriarchy in their center, it is to return to the narrative of the future that has already happened, that they are no longer there. So we don't take them, we take things that adapt to what we are living. So we must see where we come from, what we can break, and what we can build as we break. And this is the basis of a very, very sensitive work. And to be able to break with this noise that we constantly have in these days, one of the things that we are very attracted to at this moment is this work that we are doing, the liberation of these terrors. And it is the same work, it is a materialistic liberation of the things that have been oppressed. We have our bodies, we carry everything in our body, our places of origin, our ancestors, where are we going? I have a three-year-old girl and then I want to be constantly thinking or when she tells me, when she is able to look at me and say, Mom, what is this work that you are doing? What am I going to tell her? We need to know about sexuality. We need basic things, health, food, water. All these things have a material value. We talk about them in a very abstract way. If we open a world, we open it where we have social protection. What is to open the world? What is to protect this world? Once we make a manifesto, there are many bodies that suffer indignity, violence, for example, here, where I live, we have three or four women imagined by their genres. Why? Why is there violence with them? And why does society decide that it wants to give them violence? Why do people, for example, with disabilities, in... We have in Fiji many chronic and non-communicable diseases. We have a large number of people who have lost some of their limbs. How are we responding to them? All these symptoms, all these systems that we believe in, states, countries, they are inefficient and we are living as if they have always been there. We have always abandoned them and we all have to see what comes after, what comes in this beautiful world. This recovery for me is not just about this, it is not just about recovering from COVID-19, it is about many more things. In terms of inequality, in terms of immigrants, in terms of many people having to leave their homes and have had to go through many things that no one wants, of course. And in itself, I think this is important because just because recovery is fair is not just about universal, the environment, the social, the inequalities, the causes of gender, the indigenous knowledge, as my partner Panelista has already named it, but it is also universal to many more things. In politics, we need a fair recovery in politics, in the political participation of young people and children, to the citizenship, to the social spaces, to the economy too, right? And in itself, of course, a fair recovery and I would say that it is also very important with the environment because during the pandemic many people said that the environment actually improved, but relatively it improved, among other things, because from our homes we contaminate and contaminate tons and tons of plastic, a single use. So, for this reason, I think that in itself we have to have a fair and universal recovery, because it is important, because fair recovery is not based on a single topic, it is based on many topics that, as they said before, are extremely important, they are key, and they fit. Without one, let's say that the puzzle is disarmed, if there is no point, then the puzzle is disarmed. So, that's why fair recovery is important. I think that's really... I think that's something that we have talked about in some very important points, around a lot of issues. Normally, when we talk about indigenous people and the land, and we're recovering from the indigenous government, all these things are beautiful, that we normally get stuck in this idea that we're going back 500 years ago, and that indigenous people that have simply been statics, that is what they were then, and they simply want to get involved in that. So, we haven't lived for the last 500 years of colonization, but the reality is that colonization has had many implications in many people. There have been... Just like the people of the world, the species of the world, evolution is a natural component of life in this planet. Our cultures are not static. If we evolve, if we change, save some time, it's critical to understand that we're not advocating for the return of something that happened, but we're advocating for the implementation and the respect and the reverence of the system of values that existed for thousands of years before the colonization cycle that brought us to this great balance. Through the work that we've been doing with the organization that we founded, we've been talking to communities about climate change. And of course, the recovery is part of this. And one of the most tangible things that has come from these communities that are from the north, the south, the Danes, the Lakota, is that when we get down, we get to look for the essence of what climate change means for our communities. The common idea is that we're out of balance, that we're out of balance between us, our relationships with the Earth, our spiritual, mental, emotional, and so on. And when we're out of balance, there's a lack of balance. There's a response from the planet's Mother Earth. And climate change, the pandemic, is a result of this lack of balance that we have. And this is the one that we've been focusing on, on this balance, on this beautiful tangible issue that has come out of all this involvement of the communities. It's when you talk about when the climate change began. For you, you're the old people sitting down thinking, well, climate change began for us when the white men arrived. It began with the colonization. The climate of our culture changed. That imbalance that began, just when the colonization began, the colonization, is what caused climate change with the lands, the minds, our values, our governments, our economy, our system of gender. All those things, the reduction, the spirituality. And when we're talking about recovery, recovery from COVID, recovery from the climate crisis, we need to look for balance. We need to balance the male and the female, the young. A balance of our relationship with the natural world. That's a critical part. But in Western ideologies and Western structures, we're stuck with data. That doesn't accept the diversity of our humans or the species. They're inside walls of Western data collection, of Western data collection that are inside those walls. If they're only inside those walls, they're restricted to that. We're looking for solutions within the structure that created those problems. And cosmology, the value system, the government, the government, all these ideologies are trying to be out of that view. They're being demonized and they're being expulsed from their systems. And we're advocating for them to be included and used as foundation systems to see how they can harmonize before colonization. And how those cultures have evolved and changed over time. I don't want to go back to those patriarchal values systems, but I want to have those essences of those values with the relationship. What does that mean, to be in a relationship with the Earth and with all its relationships? And that's the system of values that when we talk about what we're recovering from and where we're recovering from in the future, it's not restricted to those ideologies, I mean, centric European ideologies. Imagine a future in which they're all there. What are the words that you would offer to your future to give you a basic understanding of the world you're in? One of the things I'd like for us is that what I'm trying to talk about and think about in many of these spaces is that we're trying to think less about acceptability. Because I think that when we're talking about the way we talk, or the way we provide information that often is related to what Ariel is talking about, we're seeing it in the present. And that's full of dangers, including co-optation, ideas of pluralism, assimilation. And we're trying to live in multiple realities. We're here, but we're also there. And I like that idea, because it's a way of emancipation, of getting rid of it. I'm here, yes, I'm working on this system that you're telling me. That it's filling me with fear. But it's also a moment when I think of a great revolution in the spirit that is pushing us forward. But that's because we've done so much damage. I just sent out a tweet yesterday that was looking for the women's status commission. And I can put it as an example. We're here for 26 years, a small space of time that we're looking for for the revolution. We're working on a justice for all bodies, including women and girls, and ending up with violence. And I look at it and I think... You know, there's a philosopher who's been talking about how feminists are doing this. How they're doing this revolution. This started just 120 years ago. And we're here, we have the photo, and we're struggling with many issues. And we're not far away from where we're supposed to be. But it's incredible how this work has progressed and how this work has been done. This ability to work with other people that are different from us and think about the issue of the electorate and talk about the tactics and strategies and then put all of that into a basket of care, a loving community. There are many people from all over the world who want to create something both old and new, in the process of becoming something. And I think I'm going to be the one that I'm going to be. I'm going to ask for less, and I've already started to do so this year. Because time is... There's a lot of people and there's a lot of poets from La Cota who say that they want to be the most loving dragon because it's so scary sometimes that we're talking in such a high voice that we forget that we're magical, that we're wonderful and loving. And we have to do that work of care. I'm going to rest more, but I'm also going to work more. That's one of the things I'm trying to do. And the last thing I'm going to do is not do anything patriarchy. I've decided that that means I'm not interested in protecting familiar friends or old leaders who are so involved with these systems. It's very difficult for them to change it into another movement. In our community, there are many of us who are very educated. It's not a political disability. And I think it's not a matter of... We're talking with our fingers to everyone, but to say to everyone, you're responsible for all the creatures of this planet. And that means you're responsible for all of us. So if you get mad, get mad because you're not doing what you have to do. What we all have to do and we have to do everything we can. It's not for one of us to simply seek excuses for others, but for all of us to have a job to do. And this living planet requires us to be part of it. We need to be things that build life and help the flowering life and that don't close itself in so many ways. That's what I'm trying to do. To be part of it for myself, for my community and for myself. We, as humans, have to go through countries and nations to prevent the Great War, as we saw in the past. But beyond that, we also have to have peace with the environment and with the other beings that suffer for our mistreatment. It's a clear message. I think every action, as I said, is fundamental. From the smallest to the biggest. Everything has a consequence in itself. The consequence can be negative or positive. I hope that the consequences of our actions are positive. They are to adapt the climate change and global warming in order to reduce that amount of migration, in order to base ourselves on ancestral knowledge, in order to have a decent life, to give a decent life to the citizens. For all of this, that's fundamental. That's part of what we used to talk about as a fair recovery. So, decent life, I don't know if you forget that. Good, decent life for everyone. So, yes, the message I want to give you today is that, of course, you can move forward with your dreams, your projects, with what you do, but don't forget that from what we do, we can contribute to the environment. If you want to move forward, always with perseverance, with strength and consistency. But, obviously, we contribute to the environment from what we do. Thank you. I think thinking of generations... I think thinking of the generation of culture and taking these risks now, it's something that we had to be doing for a long time. And I think we have a history of people who have done that. And it's important to recognize that there have been many of us before we got to the base to see where we are. I come from a family of land protectors. And the history of my life, I joke more when people ask me how you started this job. And I always say, I was born in this job. And it's a joke, but it's real. Because the year I was born, the family was expelled from the strength of my territory with the weapons. A security company that wanted illegally or illegally, they wanted to use the means of coercion, they wanted access to our land and they wanted to exploit it for the Uranium. And from that moment on, even before that, my parents were living there to take over the land to avoid this exploration of Uranium. And my whole life has been about using the systems. We come from a patriarchal family where women take decisions. We have many men who have taken these leadership roles in the front. But if you talk to any man, he'll say, no, I don't know what the decisions are. That's my wife and the women in the community who take them. But the colonization, I think it's obligatory to assume that role. And that's what it means for the generations of the future. I have children too. I have a 22-year-old daughter. My son is 10 years old. And thinking about this world in which we live, my daughter is studying education and with a speciality in indigenous studies. My son is 10 years old, so he's always 10 years old. So, Estanjas are aware of these inequalities. These inequalities are not just about greenhouse gases or the pandemic, but about the patriarchal systems, the colonial ones, the white supremacy. They understand it from their point of view, they understand it as they advance through the world. This is part of the struggle we have. And to address and recover these inequalities that come from generations before them. And they also recognize the work that my parents and grandfathers did. Because even my grandfathers fought against a company in the Hudson Bay to protect our territory. We have a great history of abusing the land. My mother would never have been called a feminist. But she is a feminist. I don't think any woman in my family would be called a feminist, but they are from an indigenous value system. And I've been studying it as a series of feminist women's cuts. And I think in the future, we're thinking, we're anchored and raised where we've learned these values. And these values come from the land, they come from the strength, the beauty of the colonial systems, the animals and the visions of the sky, the stars and the sun and the sun and the air. And our ability to be in a relationship with them is an important element. It's something very important and critical, like the cognitive ability to be able to recognize, to point out and to fight those systems in a structural way. How can we do it in a way that we can use our relationship with the land while we're abusing the dismantling of these structures that leads to these disconnections? And I think it's something very important. Now that I've brought my son to someone I don't like, we're going to hunt frogs, to see salamanders, or go fishing or fishing, to collect medicine. It's also very important, but I teach him so much, how to finish with the arched paper and the decolonization. These are critical components for the future in which we're leaving for the future generations. And it's not just about having power over the man or over the colonial system, it's about looking for that balance. This is the most critical lesson I teach my children all the time. If we have balance, we have two ears and one mouth. That means we have to listen twice more to what we're talking about, and that means listening to the land and our relations. This conversation is, in itself, an absolute magnificent medicine, and I'm very grateful for each of you. I'm grateful for the stories and the connection with the natural world and all the wisdom and the care that brings us here, and that you share with us. I want to thank you all for having this conversation with us. It's been wonderful.