 Welcome, quick way, my name is Crystal and I'm here to welcome you all to a virtual book launch for Nina Lacanis who killed Berta Casares, dams, death squads and an indigenous defenders battle for the planet. I'd like to open this book launch, this virtual space by asking you all to take a quick moment with me and ground yourself in your location. For myself, my land acknowledgement will be reflective of my O'Mami Wenini Aki, the Algonquins of Pukwaknagon First Nations territory, which is just a small part of the Algonquin territory, unceded Algonquin territory. And again, thank you all for joining us today. Your presence here speaks to the legacy of Berta Casares and she's an indigenous Lenzo woman from Honduras who was killed for her tenacity and commitment to life on this planet. Berta is one of the countless women who courageously protect Mother Earth in the face of resource extraction. Since 2014, Kairos Canadian Ecumenical Justice initiatives has had a programmatic focus on the gendered impacts of resource extraction in Canada and the global South. Kairos works in partnership with women land and water defenders, primarily indigenous women and organizations, to make visible the impacts of resource extraction on women, to draw attention to women's work in the defense of community rights and the environment, to press for indigenous women's recognition as key policy stakeholders and decision makers through mechanisms just free, prior, and informed consent and is stipulated by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We also advocate at Kairos for corporate accountability of the Canadian extractive sector operating abroad. In November 2019, Kairos launched the first phase of the living digital hub Mother Earth and Resource Extracting Women Defending Land and Water, which brings together original and existing material to support research, advocacy, information sharing and movement building on the gendered impacts of resource extraction. So this first phase focused almost exclusively on Latin America. The next phase, which highlights land defense in Canada, will launch this Sunday on June 21st. So we're very, very honored, again, to have you all here and to have all this interest and reflection of the need for this space. And so now I'm going to just shift and honor and introduce someone, Nina Lakhani, who reports on Central America for the Guardian, BBC, Al Jazeera, Global Post, The Daily Beast and elsewhere. She previously worked for The Independent and her book Who Killed Berta Carceras, Dams, Death Squads and Indigenous Defenders Battle for the Planet was just published this month by Verso Books. And before getting to the discussion portion of the event, Nina will be reading a brief excerpt from her book. Nina Miguic, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much. Thanks everyone for coming. Here's the book, you can see. I was going to speak in Spanish, but I can just see from that survey that almost everybody is from Canada. So I'm going to speak, I'm going to go ahead and speak in English. Yes, I'm going to read a short extract from the book, which is the subtitle to that is Threats Weather Norm. Copin was founded in 1993, and from the very beginning, upset powerful people. Military officers into contraband, logging, landowners, farming, Indigenous ancestral land, always local elites hated us because we made a difference, said Salvador Zuniga, Berta Carceras's husband at the time. In the early days, Copin business was mainly conducted at Berta's family home. And the children remember hush discussions between their parents after yet another menacing note was delivered by an unknown hand. In my earliest memories, I remember threats and insults against my parents, said Olivia Zuniga Carceras, the eldest daughter. At school, there were children and teachers who said our parents were thieves, millionaires with houses in Miami. But Berta remembers, Berta of a second eldest daughter remembers her siblings were playing in the garden once, when she was nine or 10 years old. And she and Olivia saw an unknown man outside the house with a gun. On another occasion, their dog, chocolate, saved the nanny who was being attacked by someone from the nut with a knife. After that, chocolate was our hero, said Berta. The fact is, there was so many incidents that threats seem normal to us. Maybe that's why we believe that she would never really be killed. Threats were nothing new, but everything changed in 2013. Berta placebo dangers connected to Aguazalca, the Aguazalca dam is something more serious. The company's first security chief Douglas Giovanni Bustillo, an ex army lieutenant, didn't bother to contain his disdain for Berta and Copin. He was rude and aggressive to people in Rio Blanco, harassing community leaders like Chico Sanchez, who got so tired of the constant calls and offers a bribe that he changed his telephone number. Bustillo also sexually harassed Berta. My life doesn't make sense without you. He wrote in a text message on 20th of September 2013, just a week after testifying against her in court. The company president was different. David Castillo was a privately educated bilingual, charismatic, retired military intelligence officer who never directly threatened Berta. He was much too clever for that. And that's why she was afraid of him. In July 2013, a couple of days before Thomas Garcia was killed in Rio Blanco, Castillo and Sergio Rodriguez, Deso's community and environment manager, went to the Copin Training Center in Laisparanza expecting a private sit down with Berta. But she wasn't alone. Representatives from Rio Blanco and Copin leadership were also there. I don't make the decision said Berta. I do what the community wants. Castillo offered numerous social projects in exchange for ending the roadblock. But the community said no. Rodriguez complained that while the company was trying to find a solution to the conflict, Copin didn't really care about the communities. It just wanted the project gone. Berta and the local leaders viewed the offer of community projects in exchange for supporting the dam as nothing more than a bribe. Not long after Thomas Garcia was killed, Berta asked the upper Martinez, director of the Feminist Center for Women's Studies for permission to meet with Castillo in the office. That maldito is promising stuff we don't agree with. But things are heavy. I have to talk to him, she said. The meeting didn't last long. After he left, Berta confided in Ciapa. That one scares me. He's a military man. A few weeks later, the court issued the arrest warrant against Berta. You see, this is different, she told her daughters. She did warn us, said Berta. She often mentioned Bustillo, Jorge Avila, David Castillo, and an unscrupulous family of Sicarios who operated around Rio Blanco. I documented the threats, I put out press releases, but honestly, I never thought anything would happen to her. Laura, the youngest daughter agreed. We knew that she would be monitored and of course we were worried. But this was normal. Or maybe we just didn't want to believe it. Hindsight can be agonizing. Have I run out of time or should I keep going? Sorry. I'm going to read a bit more. Berta had begun as a junior party in Copin, but over time, her confidence and standing increased as her vision and analysis evolved. She came to understand capitalism as not only an economic model, but a patriarchal one, which dominated women in different ways. That's why she understood that combating patriarchal capitalism had to start with acknowledging and tackling taboo topics like gender violence, sexual harassment, homophobia and inequality within her own organization. Compa, she would say to Soltero Chavadilla, her friend, as they drove to meetings, you know you're a fucking machista. I am your right-hand manna, but I'm trying to change. They were best of friends and even serious talk like that ended in laughter. In every space that every opportunity, Berta tackled gender violence and discrimination head on. It's us women that wash that wash clothes and cook. We need to protect our rivers. We are the heart of our families and the struggle. Cabrones, you need to change. All of this machista shit is old. She tell her listeners at workshops in far from raw communities. It was uncomfortable and sometimes the men stormed out. Others insulted her, but this motivated her to do more. In March 2011, Berta convoked a women only weekend assembly during which she tackled big issues like patriarchy, machismo, feminism, racism, sexual diversity and sexual pleasure, encouraging participants to share personal experiences of violence, discrimination and resistance. We have to respect differences. We women can cannot stay quiet anymore. It doesn't matter if you can't read or write. You are smarter than many who can. Your experiences matter. This is how we change things, she said. That weekend, the women did not cook or clean or even make coffee. Instead, they were served by male copines members, including Salvador. This made both men and women easy and uneasy at first, but it generated debate and helped change norms within copines. It illustrated Berta's political clarity and conviction and a radical vision that no other organisation has, not even today. Thank you. Thank you, Nina, for that powerful reading. Thank you for writing this book. I had the opportunity to read it over the weekend and it's a story that needs to be told and needs to be heard, far and wide, worldwide. Your writing is captivating and you managed to capture Berta. I remember at the World Social Forum in 2016, Honduran journalist and friend of Berta, Felix Molina, said that Berta had three qualities that made her such a powerful advocate and a defender. She's indigenous, she's a woman, and she's a feminist. And all that was very clear from your your your readings just now. And you've also, in your book, you capture and in the reading as well the context, the history, the systems in Honduras, including colonisation, appropriation of land, discrimination, economic policy, neoliberal policies, free trade agreements, U.S. intervention, patriarchy, all these systems that led to Berta's murder. And ultimately, I think, make it so difficult to answer that question, who killed Berta? Who has an individual? Because this is web of systems and policies. Anyway, I'm Rachel Warden. I work at Kairos as manager of partnerships. And it's a real privilege to moderate this book launch and this discussion. And I'm joined here with Nina Lacani and two other amazing land defenders from Latin America, who I have the pleasure of introducing. Primero, quiero presentar a first of all, I would like to present Abidalina Morales, Abidalina Morales. She is a key figure in El Salvador. During the past 12 years after the law was approved in 2018, she is a community leader and activist. And now she is president of the Economic, Social Development Association in Santa Marta. Abidalina has also visited Canada on various occasions. And she has spoken about the injustice of mining activities in El Salvador. And she was also a friend of Berta's. I would also like to present another land defender, Ibon Ramos. Ibon Ramos is from Ecuador. And she works for Acción Ecológica. And she has been working with them for 27 years now. Acción Ecológica or ecological action is a partner of guide us for more than 20 years. And she is the coordinator of a women's organization, Saramanta, Promecuna, Daughters of Maíz. And it is a coalition of defenders, women, defenders of human rights and defenders of nature in Ecuador. Welcome. Welcome, Bidalina. And welcome, Ibon. I'm going to ask a question to each of the panelists. I'm going to start with a question for you, Nina. And you have about seven minutes to answer the question. And for all of you, you will be given sort of a five minute warning. And then at six and a half minutes I'll appear. But I wanted to ask you, Nina, around the book, as I said, you do this amazing job of tracing and outlining all the actors and policies and institutions and systems that led to the focus and the aggressive resource extraction in Honduras, the increased need for land defense and the increase of tax and criminalization of land defenders. I was wondering, based on all these interviews that you did and the research you did for this book and your work as a journalist in Central America more generally, what concerns you and what inspires you about the defensive territory, especially when it comes to women, land defenders. Hi. Yeah, I mean, I guess just to start to say that, you know, you know, what I try to do in the book and is, is, you know, I tell the story of the life and death of both the casales because you can't understand, you can't begin to understand why she was murdered without understanding who she was and where she came from. You know, and I can't, and you, you know, it's a cliche, but you can't understand the present without understanding the past. That's absolutely right. And I think as well, you can't understand the life and death of both the casales without understanding the context in which she lived and died. And by context, I mean political, historical, geopolitical, military, social and economic, you know, and all of those different whole push factors, they, they work together. Right. And so I think that's just the basis of understanding the defense of land generally, you know, the defense of natural resources generally and, and, you know, and specifically in the case of BALTA. I mean, the, the, the, the battle for land and natural resources or the, I put it this way, the exploitation of natural resources in land is not a new story in Central America or Latin America. You know, I say this in the book and it's a sweep in generalisation, but I think it pretty much is true. Every battle has always been about land and it still continues to be so. And, and, you know, when you, even if you go back just a few decades and you go back to the dirty wars and the civil wars of El Salvador, Honduras of all of it, you know, across, across the, across the continent, while politics certainly in Central America, while it turned, you know, Central America was turned into, you know, a proxy for this, for the Cold War between the United States and Russia. A lot of that, a lot of the, a lot of the warring, a lot of the bloodshed that came before Anduin was about a battle for the land and a battle for the riches and natural resources in each of these territories. And, and I mean, I guess what we've seen since the peace accords, and I would argue that a motivation for the peace accords, for all of the peace accords in Central America and, and even recently in, in Colombia has been partly at least motivated by the desire of national and international investors to exploit land, you know, for, for, for minerals, for energy, for cash quarks, for, yeah, for dams, for, you know, for rivers, for, you know, for what, for all of those different elements that we, you know, together make up the extractive industry. And we've really seen this roll out in a, you know, without cessation, really since the, since the, you know, since the peace accords were signed across the region, you know, so really since the early 90s. And, and, and, and that's, you know, and during that same period, we've seen, you know, repression, the use of force, the use of state, of, you know, of state resources to repress and to, you know, violently repress, to crack down on those engaged in the defense of land and territory and water and natural resources also isn't new. There are new things that have evolved, you know, these, these, these struggles and the, and the crackdowns have evolved and we saw that in the case of Bertha, which I'll come on to talk about now. But, you know, and, and in this whole period with, you know, women have been at the forefront of defending land and defending water, you know, that short passage that I just read, Bertha explaining or talking to women at meeting, saying, you know, it's ours, it's us women that are at home. We're the ones that are using water. We need the land, you know, to feed our children. That has always been true, you know, and I think women have always been involved in the defense of their territories because land rights are human rights, you know, water rights are human rights, land rights are indigenous rights. You, you can't separate these different things. They're all part and part sort of the fundamental, you know, facets of basic human rights that, that, that, that enable or, or, or, or prevent individuals and communities from living dignified lives in which they and their children are allowed to fulfill their potential, you know, and free lives. I mean, what I've, you know, I think what, you know, what I've seen, and Bertha in a way slightly an exception with this in some ways, you know, but generally speaking, when all the women that I've met across the region involved, people like Vidalina, you know, and many others involved in the, in the, in the, in the struggle and the, you know, to defend land and that resources is that they do that on top of all of the other responsibilities they have, which are given to them for being a woman, you know. So on top of all of their responsibilities in the home with their children, with their grandchildren, you know, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, all of those things are on top of, you know, those, those responsibilities very rarely go away. In the, in the case of Bertha, it was slightly different that she became the international face of Copin and from the beginning was doing lots of sort of traveling, making connections, making alliances and learning from Indigenous struggles and other rural communities, not just across Mesoamerica or across the world, you know, and that in itself, you know, opened her and it happens to many women who were involved in social struggles and land, you know, the defensive land, is that they just by being daring to be present in that public sphere, they are subjected to, you know, intense criticism, you know, I write about this in the book that it hurt Bertha terribly to be considered and called a bad mother, but included by those in her own family, that people that, somebody that killed, who cared more about the Indigenous people than that she cared about her own children, you know, that criticism of, you know, labelling somebody a bad mother and a bad woman because you're, you know, you're not fulfilling those roles that patriarchal, you know, society demands of you, I think is something that all women involved in any type of struggle and any type of sort of political or public life face continue to face today, and then, you know, they also face the same and different attacks, you know, I think the sexual harassment, you know, is obviously an obvious and key way of trying to threaten and intimidate women involved in different struggles, you know, and I think, you know, we've seen there's been, you know, I remember in Honduras jazz did a study saying actually when you looked at defend, you know, defensores and defensores, you know, that actually a number of threats wasn't different in terms of men and women, but what was different is that those threats were more likely to turn into physical attacks against women and against men, and, you know, and I think that, yes, I think that these same sort of tools are used, whether they be threats, bribes, attacks, sexual harassment, they're all used in different, in slightly different ways, you know, and this sort of, I think this real attempt to discredit women and to try and intimidate them out of these very macho stuff spaces, you know, like in the case of she was dealing with a damn company where, you know, several, they were all, you know, almost all men, you know, including the security to chief, the managers, many of them had military backgrounds, you know, and she was often in these spaces fighting herself, and so I think it, you know, it's, it's incredible, and it's meant to be that way, you know, and I think part of the reason that they was killed was because she was a woman and was because she was an indigenous woman, I think in this machista, sort of patriarchal, economic and political model in which she existed and we exist, that the idea that an indigenous woman could interrupt, could stop them, was just intolerable, you know, and it was unacceptable and she was a bad example to others and that, that's, you know, and that they couldn't have it and, and they tried to neutralise her, tried to silence her in using many different tactics and these tactics will be familiar to people like Vidalina who was, you know, there in active during the El Salvador, you know, civil war, these counter-insurgency tactics, you know, the whole gamut of drives and threats and intimidation and, you know, defamation campaigns, criminalisation, all of that saying, sort of, range of tactics we're used against, but, and they used against women and male defendants today and in the end we're but there because they couldn't stop her, they killed her. I mean, I think it is a, I think it's being a defending land, you know, Latin America is the most dangerous place, region in the world, to defend land and natural resources and part of it is, part of that reason is also because people, people like, people defend their land and natural resources, you know, they know their rights and they organise and they group together and they, and many of the, in fact, many of these community struggles are led or co-led by women. I think to see women, the way women manage those spaces and communicate and have them have their voices and who they represent and how they represent, different perspectives is so important and it's really inspiring, I think, you know, I think in any workspace, in any arena, whether it's political, social, labour, having a diversity of voices, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age is vitally important, you know, and oh yeah, I think just to finish that women are in these spaces, they've always been leaders in the region, in terms of, in struggles and movements, Indigenous and rural, for the defence of land and territories and for the defence of natural resources and they do that under particularly harsh conditions and in Conservative, Manchester, patriarchal sort of context and they do that on top of all the other responsibilities that are, that I've expected of them just for being a woman, you know, for being women and so there is very much a lot to be inspired by and to admire and you know, I think that the response in terms of the support and encouragement and yeah, that international community needs to be given to women, to female defenders is huge but also quite particular in the support and resources that they may need to stay safe and to keep their families safe and to be able to continue in the struggles that they're involved in. Thank you Nina, thank you for your clarity on I think the critical role of women, particularly Indigenous women, in defending the environment and the spending land and territory but as well the struggles and the particular struggles of women, the particular struggles of Indigenous women and that this struggle is a feminist struggle, I thank you, thank you so much for your clarity. I want to turn now to Vidalina Morales. I'm going to ask this question in Spanish. Vidalina, welcome. Vidalina is a friend and was a friend of Bertha's and I would like to ask you Vidalina. Bertha has almost become a mythical figure. What would you like the world to know about her? Vidalina says hello, hello sister, friends, everyone who's connected. I would like to say hello to each and every one of you. Every time I'm invited to speak about Bertha I always feel nervous because I knew her during very difficult times of the armed conflict here in El Salvador and even at that time I firmly believed in the courage, the strength of Bertha and throughout the years she continued to work on behalf of Coppín which she loved so much and she fought on behalf of her communities and I met her in in those large events organized by Coppín. For example, there was a big event in 2013. It was an event of militarization and when we talked about the issues and the situations that Honduras was going through because it had just come out of a coup d'etat. Bertha, for me and for the world as Rachel was saying it in the beginning Bertha has become an emblematic figure. I remember three four years ago I traveled to Denver, Colorado and I remember in the botanical garden I saw Bertha's face. It was beautifully decorated with botanical plants. I never would imagine that I was going to see her face in a place in a botanical garden with such beautiful plants. It was such a surprise to me to see that and Bertha was also an international person and I had the opportunity to get to know her in this struggle but in the past decade has become an incredibly necessary and urgent struggle to defend the environment, to defend life, to defend our natural resources. That's where I met Bertha and as I said in the book Bertha would criticize the behavior of male members who were of the opium who were very machista and she had a strong character and she was very courageous and she peeked out about the way they behaved. A friend of mine would say that Bertha didn't fit in any of the the boxes or the models that society had for us. She was greater than that. The society would like to see women as being submissive. Society would like women to always say that everything is good, everything is all right but Bertha wouldn't do that. She would fight against machismo. She would fight against patriarchy. She would fight against this system and this neoliberal model. She stood up against this capitalist patriarchal model and her criticisms were so relevant and of course certain people didn't like what she had to say. They didn't want to listen to these kinds of truths and her truth was seen as a threat to the transnational and economic power and it eventually led to Bertha's murder. We know that Bertha fought hand in hand with Copin, with her communities so that a dam would not be constructed in that river and she fought in every way possible that project in Rio Blanco and that led to her death. Her strength and her courage inspired us and we continue to be inspired by her legacy, by her struggle, by the strength of Bertha for her courageousness, for her commitment. She's an example to follow. Bertha has always been an inspiration. When I began my remarks I was saying that she and I met when we were very young. I was only 21 years old at the time. I think she was 19 or 20 because we were almost the same age and when I met her she inspired me so much. She was also a humble woman. She was able to tolerate and put up with a lot of difficulty and conflict and I remember when we lived in the same house. Bertha was so humble. Rachel says, Vidalina, we're having difficulty listening to you. Your audio is breaking up. Rachel asks, Vidalina, Vidalina, can you hear me? Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much Vidalina for sharing your words and your comments about your friend. I know it's very difficult to only speak for five minutes about a friend and a woman that is so important and a woman like Bertha and I think you and Vidalina, you Vidalina are also breaking barriers and breaking norms. It's something that I can also see in you. Now I'm going to ask a question to Yvonne Ramos from Ecological Action, Ección Ecológica. Yvonne, maybe you could speak to us about Bertha's legacy, specifically her legacy for women land defenders and for women in Latin America. What is Bertha's legacy? Yvonne, thank you so much, Kratos, for the invitation to participate in this event. I would like to start by sharing a reflection based on a phrase that's from an Indigenous woman and Ecuador, the leader of the Indigenous movement. Her name is Dolores Capaudi and she would say, we are like a plant that these are these plants that protect and generate, help water to regenerate itself. It's a sacred place for the Indigenous movement and that's what happened to Bertha and that's what happens with a lot of women like land defenders. They are like these plants that are pulled out of their roots but continue to grow and Bertha is in the spirit of all women land defenders. Bertha Cáceres has been an inspiration and she has been an inspiration for organization and collaboration in women land defender movements. She has been an inspiration for women human rights defenders, all of Latin America. I am part of the Latin American network of women rights and as a member of Acción Ecológica and as well as a member of women defenders and which is a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous women in Ecuador. The Latin American network is an organization of women that has presence in 11 countries and it participates in projects and initiatives that protect women rights and rights of the environment and social and cultural rights which are threatened by extractive projects such as mining companies and that affect women in El Salvador, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Guatemala and it's important to understand why women are considered enemy number one of extractive industries and I think it has to do with the fact that women it has to do with their identity and our cultural diversity and the fact that we are women and it allows us to prioritize the sacredness of life and nature and it's our responsibility, the responsibility that we've inherited to take care of the land and Mother Earth and it's something that we have to pass on to future generations. We know that the balance of Mother Earth and of human between human beings is absolutely necessary especially now when the pandemic has shown us that if the balance of nature is disordered that humans are very vulnerable and the possibility of the extinction of human beings is something that comes to the service. We're witnessing natural disasters and that that is a result of global warming and that global warming is a result of extractive industries. There's a link between land and women it's a link that cannot be broken and it's a space where life is reproduced and this is a much stronger bond than the economy. It's a symbolic bond and it's historical belonging and this perspective of women and of indigenous cultures that way of looking at life does not fit with the capitalist model which accumulates power and money which sees nature, human beings, women and indigenous communities as something that should be exploited. The colonialist power still reproduces these traditional practices and uses violence in all its dimensions and also the supposed economic stimuli to absorb those logics and those purposes of the and it's the men who have carried this out and who have imposed this model. Then is why women as leaders and land defenders as of the 1990s is a position that threatens that power patriarchal power and extractive power and it's antagonistic to that model and it's founded in the exploitation of natural resources and that is the very reason why this patriarchal model which is violent generates more violence and this violence characteristic of this model and its violence against women in order to control and to discriminate and to break the social fabric and the strength of the communities indigenous and rural communities in Latin America and this is the benefit of economic groups national governments that work with transnational corporations so that use of violence that violence includes stigmatization, harassment and the use of criminal activity to threaten women the use of state violence, gender violence and sexual violence and these patterns are used all over Latin America what Bertha experienced has happened to many other women throughout Latin America and this is related to gender because resource extraction affects women even more because food security the survival of the communities depends on the well-being and the health of Mother Earth and extractive industries also rely on violence Rachel says thank you Ivan I'm so sorry to cut you off we just don't have much more time and we need some time to see the video thank you so much for your clarity and thank you so much for the connections you made between extractive industries and violence and specifically violence against women thank you so much for sharing your insights with us before finishing and before giving thanks we're going to show a video and this is a video and it includes some words from Bertha when she received the goldman prize or the goldman award in our community we are people that have come from the earth the water and the maize from the rivers are the ones that we must protect and the lenta community they're also protected by the spirit of the we defend the rivers and give life to protect humans and we must wake up wake up humans there's no more time the Guacarque river is calling us and just like other rivers that are threatened we have to respond we have to wake up wake up there's no more time Mother Earth militarized poisons where rights are systematically violated Mother Earth needs us humanity there's no more time we need to build societies that are able to coexist injustice in a dignified way but protect life let's work together in hope defending and taking care of Mother Earth let's wake up let's be more aware based on racism on capitalism we need to wake up we need to wake up humanity there's no more time we must wake up let's wake up humanity there's no more time thank you that that was that was beautiful well many times it said about Berta that she no moreio it's a multi-peak hole she didn't die she was multiplied and and you see that in the voices of of of of women and women defenders throughout Latin America and throughout the the world I I want to thank uh I want to thank everyone I want to thank you for being part of this discussion I want to encourage everyone to to read the book we've had we've been given a taste of it we know who Berta is how how she how she lived who her friends were how she defended her territory how she was an Indigenous woman how she was an activist and we've heard from her friends and and and people in her networks we want these discussions to continue so we're encouraging you to to buy buy the book and if possible by supporting your your favorite independent independent bookstore we would be interested as Kyros to continue these discussions and and to facilitate kind of a book club or a book discussion on on this book so please let us know if you're interested in in doing that and being part of that those that those book clubs um and Gabriele Jimenez who is our Latin America partnerships coordinator will send you information about that as well we'll have information on on our our website um as well um I wanted to uh I wanted to let you know that they're um as part of Indigenous Women's Month which is is is June for for Kyros this Indigenous Women's Month we have a number of other events including on Thursday we have another webinar called Stories of Change Women Defending Land and Water in Canada and Brazil so that will be Thursday afternoon and there's information on our our website about that as well on on Sunday um June 21st we will be launching the the Canadian content of the the the mayor hub so this is the digital hub on Mother Earth and Resource Extraction that that Crystal mentioned so stay tuned for more information about that on on on on Sunday um but I really wanted to take some time to thank everybody who was involved in this and so uh I think everybody's going to come up on the screen now so we can see everybody including including the translators so I want to I want to thank uh Nina Lacani thank you for for being here thank you for writing the book uh I want to thank Videlina Morales uh I want to thank Yvonne Ramos I want to thank the red the Latin Americana the mujeres defensores um I want to thank Crystal uh Desalé for opening I want to thank Gabriela Jimenez who is uh been behind the scene she is responsible for bringing us all together and making this happen and yes she is there so thank you Gabriela um thank you Paulina Baez and Kate Stubbs for interpretation um please uh please remember to to uh to follow the the mayor hub on Facebook and Instagram uh look look to our website for upcoming webinars uh please buy the book and please participate in our our discussions about this book and uh keep uh keep Bertha Caceres multiplying um Bertha Caceres uh present