A message from Nina Gualinga

Indigenous women in the Amazon have been at the forefront of the fight against climate change and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and today we are stepping up into new leadership roles, successfully forcing out extractive industries and companies from our sacred territories.

We are defending the Amazon rainforest and our global climate by keeping the oil in the ground, which exposes us to multiple types of violence. Threats emerge from within and, even more so, from outside our territories.

For many Indigenous women there is no guarantee that our rights will be respected. We have knocked on the doors of the judicial system, we have appealed to the hearts of the government officials, but they keep trying to silence our voices. Because they know that our voices are powerful.