“Gratitude is so much more than a polite thank you. It is the thread that connects us in a deep relationship. Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency for a giving economy or regenerative economy.”
– Angela Martínez, Amazon Defenders Fund Director

At Amazon Watch, our work is rooted in the principles and cosmology of Indigenous peoples. Over the last 26 years through our solidarity with Indigenous, forest, and traditional peoples of the Amazon, we have built long-term, trusted relationships with our partners. Each relationship is guided by Indigenous principles of interconnectedness, relationality, and reciprocity.

These principles are uplifted by the tens of thousands of donors and advocates who support our work. Each time someone donates to Amazon Watch, they are taking a direct action to strengthen a network of gratitude and reciprocity that connects people throughout the Amazon and across the world. Donors empower Amazon Watch’s campaigns and solidarity grantmaking funds, ensuring that we can continue to amplify our Indigenous partners’ visions for their territories and to drive transformative change in how the rest of the world relates to the Amazon and our planet.

We know that the governments, financiers, and corporations most complicit in rainforest destruction are powerful and well-resourced. The success of our Indigenous partners’ resistance and solutions is a testament to the strength of their visions and organizing, and to a global community dedicated to seeing Indigenous rights and the rights of nature honored and upheld.

This movement of people power is reciprocity in action: Amazon Watch donors contribute to a system of solidarity that we have built to settle historical debts from colonization, free from colonial ideas of transactional exchanges, and instead rooted in gratitude as an active practice.