My interest in learning and collaborating with indigenous communities in Mexico came from personal experiences as a migrant woman of indigenous heritage.

I am a third-generation Oaxaqueña living in the United States with ties to Mexico City, Mazatlán, Tijuana and most recently, Tepic. My family from both paternal and maternal sides come from a long history of circular migration, moving from one place to another and returning to the original homelands. On my paternal side of the family, my grandfather is from San Juan Sayultepec, a pueblo in Nochixtlán District in the southeast of the Mixteca region of Mexico. On my maternal side, my grandmother, as a young teenage girl, came from the Valle of Oaxaca to work in the field of Mochis, Sinaloa. Due to traumatic and painful disconnection, my mother never met my grandmother and my maternal lineage is still in the process of healing, but through my academic studies and research in anthropology, I have been able to study in Mexico to connect with local communities and indirectly connect with my cultural heritage. 

In 2011, I was invited to participate in a gathering with native communities in Tequepexpán, Nayarit. In this gathering, I met Wixárika women and I was invited to visit their community of Las Piedras in Compostela, which led me to visit the Wixárika community of Taimarita and later Y+rata, on the outskirts of Tepic in Nayarit. Every year, I returned to the community to learn with other mothers and their children. By then, my daughter Ixchel was born, and I brought her with me for every field trip. I was a student of Culture and Performance at the Department of World Arts and Culture/Dance at UCLA, working in their PhD program. Through my research I shared most of my time with other mothers, young Wixárika and caregivers in the family. In many of my interactions with the community, I was taught how to be a “good mother” by very young Wixárika girls, which initially felt uncomfortable, I didn’t believe I could learn from younger, inexperienced girls about motherhood, but I was wrong as the best lessons about Wixárika motherhood came from young girls. It was my very first ethnographic lesson: to learn and not impose my ideas. With time, I made kinship ties with the Y+rata community and began to learn about the Wixárika connection with the so-called natural world. It was then that my research evolved to a multi-species approach as I learned from more-than-humans in a meaningful, reciprocal and sustainable way.

Academically, I am in training to be a so-called expert on Corn, but personally I am a devotee of the teachings of Tatéi Niwetsika, Our Mother Corn. I cultivate native seeds from Northern Mexico in multiple ecosystems (Great Lake Region and El Gran Nayar) to enter kinship relationships with Tatéi Niwetsika. I follow strict principles and protocols of coexistence guided by ancestors and Elders to maintain and sustain a relationship with Corn outside of colonial logic.

Many people ask me about this other logic and to put it in simple terms. In many indigenous communities in the Americas, the environment is an extension of kin, land is our relative. Once we understand this and position ourselves as human beings in the same plane as land, we can understand our place in a complex network of relationships.

In many indigenous communities, plants are also viewed as relatives. The Wixárika’s way of knowing Tatéi Niwetsika as a plant person, offers community members a framework to understand human and more-than-human relationships. In Mexico, settler colonialism and its effects disrupted how indigenous communities relate to plants. For Wixárika families in urban spaces, maintaining ties to their homelands have relied on language to sustain relationships with the land. Language has been a way for communities to maintain ties to their indigenous identity.

For humans, language is a code for exchanging information based on a system. While we have a very clear understanding of human communication, inter-species communication is not easily understood. In our society, inter-species communication is often limited to what humans perceive as communication through the use of phonetics, yet plants communicate in several ways using a language that can be understood if we pay attention. 

A plant sees light through phototropism, which refers to the growth of a plant towards light and how a plant responds to light. A plant can emit odours and sense the odours of other plants. As Daniel Chamovitz discusses, a plant uses a “nose-less process” to perceive odour or scent through stimuli. For instance, the molecule ethylene found in Chinese incense induces ripening in lemons. Plant communication exemplifies the type of information they are capable of transmitting using their intelligence and their actions within an environment, like how mushrooms communicate with the root system of a tree through complex networks; or how flowers and the colours of leaves communicate different maturity stages of a plant; or how a plant may release a scent during an inter-species encounter; or a plants’ movement towards the sun offers a story of how it responded to its local environment.

Our Mother Corn for example, grows vertically to maximise its absorption of light during the day. Their stalks require wind to form strong stalks, to reach greater heights. These behaviours are crucial in ensuring its survival. Our Mother Corn also communicates with humans by transferring energy through consumption. Eating the nutrients of Corn, like all vegetables and foods, is a process of ingesting the properties of a plant, which is another way to communicate with them. 

In the Wixárika community of Y+rata — which means “a place to grow greener” — communicating with plants is both a practice and cultural process. The women continue the labour of husking, selecting the best Corn seeds while also planning the next trip to the Yeturita (the field for cultivation). In Wixárika ways of knowing, Tatéi Niwetsika is central to the life of families. According to the ethnohistory of the Wixárika people, Tatéi Niwetsika gifted daughters to the Watakame (the first farmer) to begin planting. Yuawima (blue corn) became a human person to live with Watakame, beginning Wixárika genealogy. Throughout their life, Wixárika families exchange offerings and devote their labour to maintain right relationship with Tatéi Niwetsika. Teukarita ceremonies (naming ceremonies) — which usually occur in Autumn during the harvesting of Corn — when newborns receive names connecting them to their ancestors. According to Saul Santos García and Tutupika Carrillo de la Cruz, professors at the Universidad Autónoma de Nayarit, Teukari — grandparents with dream interpretation abilities — name the newborn after an interaction with an Elder Ancestor in a dream.

When Wixárika speakers utter personal names related to Corn, they act and impact the lives of people by embodying the properties of the plant. Mamachali, the name giver in Y+rata family, dreams of personal names related to Corn and assigns names to express how she wishes her grandchildren to grow in relation to the plant. In Wixárika language, some children’s names are indices of the life of Corn: Y+ra or Y+rama, to grow greener; colours of Corn Yuawima (blue corn), Tuxame (white corn); and roles of people in the cultivation Watakame (male farmer or first farmer) and Etsima (female farmer). By uttering personal names related to Corn, members of the community reconnect to the plant and remember their responsibilities as part of the family. 

Ceremonial language is a particular form of communication that connects with ancestors. Though not completely understood by many members of the community, the chants performed in ceremonial spaces evoke the presence of the ancestors. Corn names and vocabulary are generally indexical of the associations with Tatéi Niwetsika . When children receive their name,  it becomes an active reminder of the importance of offerings in devotion to Tatéi Niwetsika in exchange for health. Names also act mnemonically, reminding individuals of their responsibilities to their ancestors, as well as ontological connections with Kaka+yarite and Kaka+ma (elder ancestors).

Throughout my research I maintained a “Corn Diary” where I noted my observations of how Our Mother Corn communicates, like the sound of the stalks when the wind moves them and makes a tura, turaaa sound. My process of observing and learning from the Corn connected with how knowledge of the plant developed within Wixárika culture, as Corn interacted with natural forces providing behavioural cues of her being. In dreams, these behaviours are also important. Mamachali confirmed this with me when she elaborated on how the plant communicates in her dreams to indicate a name. The name is recognised through interaction with the elements, like how it interacts with rain when the thunder strikes the land and makes a tura, turaaa sound.

Through my observations, and through conversations with the community, I learned the language of plants by analysing how Corn behaves and interacts in the field. I documented in my Corn Diary how Our Mother Corn communicates through the colour of the leaves, the size of her body, and how the vertical structure of the plants provides support for other crops, such as beans, to grow in co-existence. Wixárika families create in the coamil (a field) a space for multi-species interaction, from edible and medicinal plants to predators. Some families cultivate beans, squash, chillies, tomatoes and herbs. Wild medicinal plants grow around Corn, such as Dandelion, Epazote, Malva and Chiclacayote. Additionally, the coamil serves as an ecosystem for many other species such as worms, fungus (huitlacoche), ants and pollinators.

I also noted in my Diary the acoustics of Our Mother Corn when her leaves (known as ear shoots) moved with the wind. In this moment, Our Mother Corn communicated that she grew tall and green. Our Mother also communicated when the roots of the stalk grew under the ground and expanded, like K+iwima (roots of squash), with the bean roots growing alongside it. Another note was how Our Mother Corn communicates through the different stages of reproduction when the stalk grew a spike, Zit+ama or Xitakame, indicating she was ready for reproduction and Corn cobs would soon arrive. We prepared to protect the Ikú (Corn cobs) while other families prepared for the necessary ceremonies. Later, when the silks began to form, the plant communicated the colour of Maize.

Tatéi Niwetsika teaches the Wixárika principles of coexistence and reciprocal relationships between people and plants. Wixárika people involved in cultivation practices and cultivation ceremonies become cognizant of Our Mother Corn through a plant’s life. From cultivation to harvesting, the levels of interaction between people and plants increase, as well as the levels of intimacy between the two species. In the science of Our Mother Corn, Wixárika families gather the knowledge and the wisdom to continue practices that become vital to Wixárika identity and health. Our Mother Corn becomes a relative to maintain Wixárika humanness. During the cycle of Corn, people maintain close ties and dietary restrictions from the time of cultivation to harvest. In the harvesting ceremony, families devote the entire celebration to Tatéi Newetsika. Through chants, storytelling and dances, members of the family maintain inter-species relations with Corn. Later, families use the offerings presented in the ceremony and take them to key geographical locations across Mexico. In this exchange, families make kinship, learn from inter-species interactions and strengthen relationships with their ancestors. 

The knowledge I am sharing through this article was possible due to the collaboration and the labour of many humans and more-than-human species. This work is possible because of the trust and the continuous community engagement through my years of fieldwork in Tepic.

I teach in the Critical Ethnic Studies department at Kalamazoo College and my commitment to my students is to challenge their way of thinking. I do this work not just in my department but within the wider academic institution. Two years ago, my “Plant Communication and Kinship” course adopted a laboratory model to teach theory in praxis. This was an effort to learn how to approach plants in  an ethical and responsible way. I teach about different indigenous communities and their understanding of the natural world both practically and experientially. We follow principles and protocols that we as a class come to as a consensus, as well as other principles that Elders come and teach us. Part of my work is to continue collaborating with the Wixárika community and we invite individuals from Y+rata to participate in our community garden and to share teachings at Kalamazoo. Personally, this lab has become more than just a place to collaborate with the students and visitors, it is a space to reconnect with land and the teachings of ancestors.

I teach about how plants listen when we speak to them and how they speak in a language that we humans can understand. From our human-centric perspective, plants communicate in simplistic ways to function and serve specific purposes in their local ecosystems. However, plants also communicate in a poetic way to captivate our attention. Humans have been socially constructed to think rationally, in objective and scientific terms making it difficult to show how other species communicate through complex relationships. For many, the divide between society and science has made it almost impossible to comprehend other systems of communication. However, for non-western communities, this cognitive orientation to conceive the more-than-human world is a common practice, even for those families in the diaspora living with the influence of Western political, economic and cultural forces. 

The anti-colonial genealogies of Our Mother Corn within the Wixárika serve as a poetic model to envision the relationship between humans and plants. This relationship is consensual, reciprocal and manifested through the embodied practices of community members who live in constant interaction with the natural world, without the scientific divide or hierarchical approach of academic studies.

Cyndy Margarita García-Weyandt is a mother, a poeta, an immigrant, and an assistant professor in the Department of Critical Ethnic Studies at Kalamazoo College. She is also the coordinator and co-founder of Proyecto Taniuki in Zitakua, Mexico.

You might also like this story: Bread is not a commodity

The post The Poetic Language of Corn appeared first on eco-nnect.

Depending on how you define it, activism has a long history in so called Australia. 

When Arthur Phillip — a former whaler and longtime servant of the British Navy — attempted to establish a colony on Gadigal land, he was resisted by Bennelong, Pemulwuy and the many Eora people who fought beside them. The Colony was established in the settlement of Sydney Cove, and early settlers invaded the nearby land of the Dharawal, Dharug, Awabakal, Darkinjung, Gandangara and Wiradjuri peoples. The fifth Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, effectively declared war on the “hostile natives”. Communities were massacred and native forests were felled, as settlements spread with the support of British agriculture and grazing methods that were imposed on the land. The Original Peoples of the Sovereign Nations that criss-cross the Australian continent and its surrounding islands, resisted an onslaught of violence and terror for over 100 years through a series of conflicts commonly referred to as the Frontier Wars. Musquito, Yagan, Windradyne, Tarenorerer, Tunnerminnerwait, Maulboyheenner, Truganini, Jandamarra and Dhakiyarr are some of the many figures of resistance who fought alongside their respective communities.

Eventually the colonies of New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land, Port Phillip, Swan River, South Australia and Queensland united to form the Commonwealth of Australia. Resistance continued as communities lived in the face of the restrictions imposed on their culture and connection to Country by the newly formed state and federal governments. Foreign settlers also resisted British rule and imposition, reflected in the Rum Rebellion of 1808 and the Eureka Stockade of 1854, as well as the development of labour unions throughout the colonies in the 19th century.

Unionism also influenced the development of the first politically organised Aboriginal activist group, the Australian Aborigines Progressive Association (AAPA), formed in 1924, campaigning for rights to land ownership, citizenship, control of their own affairs and an end to the removal of Aboriginal children from their families. The AAPA was renamed the Aborigines’ Progressive Association and along with the Australian Aborigines League, they organised the first Day of Mourning on January 26 1938. It was the culmination of years of work, encouraging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activism across Australia, which led to the Yirrkala Bark Petitions, the Freedom Ride, the Wave Hill walk-off, the campaign for the constitutional referendum of 1967, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy and the Mabo Case.

The worldview and cultural practices of the Original Sovereign Nations of Australia, particularly their connection to Country, is well documented, and the outcry for civil rights was intrinsically linked to the protection of their territories. As the Australian population increased through waves of migration, the native landscape was destroyed to make way for industries that supported the growing number of settlements, particularly agriculture and grazing, the extraction of natural resources, and the eventual privatisation of land. Despite the ongoing desecration of the environment across the continent, it took time for settlers to develop a connection to the landscape and thus develop an awareness of the need for its protection, as well as the rights of the indigenous peoples who have always called it home.

Although many settlers campaigned for the rights of the Original Sovereign Nations of Australia and advocated for the protection of native plants and wildlife, the history books suggest the Australian conservation movement began with the creation of National Parks in the late 19th century. It was with the near extinction of the thylacine — also known as the Tasmanian Tiger — that environmental awareness spread through the dominant colonial culture, leading to koalas being declared protected species in 1937 and Tasmanian Devils in 1941. 

The thylacine population of Lutruwita (Tasmania) was around 5,000 when the British settled there, but they were known to attack sheep and thus hunted by farmers. As the thylacine population dwindled, sightings became significant news, as standards at the time stated an animal could not be declared extinct until 50 years had passed without a confirmed sighting. In 1968, zoologist Jeremy Griffith and local dairy farmer James Malley conducted what has been described as the the most extensive recorded search for the thylacine in the history of Lutruwita. In 1972, they formed the Thylacine Expeditionary Research Team with Bob Brown, which concluded without discovering evidence of the thylacine’s existence.

“I’d read about the Tasmanian Tiger and its alleged extinction, and then I saw a black and white television program, I think it was Four Corners, on Lake Pedder.”

Nestled amongst the peaks of the Frankland Range in Lutruwita’s southwest, Lake Pedder was a once glacial lake adorned by a pink quartzite beach. It was often referred to as “the mirror of heaven”.

“I wanted to know more about what was going on, so I kept my eye out for a job in Tasmania. I was working on ships in the Pacific as a doctor, and I was reading a medical magazine, and there was an ad for a three month position in Launceston replacing a doctor who was travelling to England. So I came, applied, got the job and within a year, I ran into two guys who were looking for the Tasmanian Tiger.”

The search for the thylacine inspired Bob’s early explorations of Lutruwita’s famed wilderness. He travelled into the Tarkine and the island’s northeast, to places where the thylacine had allegedly been sighted.

“The sightings always led to some other animal which may or may not have looked like a Tasmanian Tiger. But this presumption that if you couldn’t identify something that you saw in the night, it must be a Tiger, needed to be met with a fair degree of clarity of mind, but the Tiger is extinct.”

Bob also became involved in the campaign to protect Lake Pedder. The Lake and its surrounding wilderness was protected by National Park status in 1955 but it was then revoked in 1967, as the Tasmanian government wanted to flood the Gordon, Serpentine and Huon Rivers as part of a hydro-electric generation scheme, which was pushed forward through the avid support of Premier Eric Reece (who was nicknamed “Electric Eric”). The eventual dam obfuscated Lake Pedder’s unique natural beauty, creating a sprawling reservoir that provides extra “storage” to Lake Gordon, where the power station is located.

“I took out a big ad in The Australian, it was over $1,000 at the time, saying Lake Pedder is another disaster for Tasmania… It was sort of a cry in the dark but it also alerted the Lake Pedder campaigners to the fact that this unusual doctor had arrived in Launceston, and I quickly got asked to stand for Parliament. I didn’t want to, but I did.”

The newly formed United Tasmania Group (UTG) is acknowledged as the world’s first environmental political party to contest elections. The party was formed during a meeting of the Lake Pedder Action Committee to field candidates in the April 1972 Tasmanian election. The founder of the UTG, a senior lecturer in botany at the University of Tasmania, Dick Jones, asked Bob to stand, as they needed a candidate in the north of the state. 

“I stood with him on a Senate ticket, I think I got 112 votes statewide. But I quickly learned that environmentalism is off the agenda in politics, even more so back then… This was a period of nascent organic farming, permaculture, a lot of things happening in Tasmania, and it was all viewed with disdain and arrogance by the Hydro-Electric Commission, which had no trouble running ads against the UTG to say our policies would lead to higher power prices and the loss of jobs and so on. So we learned from that for the Franklin campaign, which came a decade later.”

Wild “from source to mouth”, the Franklin River is in Lutruwita’s southwest, and the Hydro-Electric Commission coveted it to create another hydro-electric dam. Bob gathered a group of activists in his home — all of whom were either members of the UTG or had campaigned for Lake Pedder — to discuss the Franklin’s protection, and together they formed the Tasmanian Wilderness Society (TWS). 

“We discussed peaceful direct action. Some of the group had considered it but had decided against it because they didn’t want to lose public support by sitting in front of bulldozers. But we invited some Quaker activists from New Zealand to talk to us about the theory of direct action and communal direct action, and while some individuals amongst us hated it, it nevertheless was enormously important in the blockade that saved the Franklin River.”

The TWS coordinated the massive campaign against the Franklin Dam, which lasted seven years from 1976 through to 1983. The campaign was initiated by a film that screened on Tasmanian television stations, and was followed with blockades on the Gordon and Franklin Rivers, many public rallies, letter writing, widespread door-knocking and significant political actions. In 1980, 10,000 people protested on the streets of Hobart — more than three times the size of any public rally to that moment in Lutruwita — demanding the wild Franklin be saved. Through the strength of the campaign, the Tasmanian government backed down on its initial plans for a new site for the dam, but the Wilderness Society did not back down from its call for “NO DAMS” in the southwest of Lutruwita. Their stance was supported by the uncovering of cultural artefacts at Kutikina Cave, located on the Franklin River, which led to the creation of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area in 1982, strengthening the position of TWS and the protestors. After a deadlock in the Tasmanian Parliament and an eventual referendum, the sitting Labor government was defeated in a state election.

“It was then that the strong man of Liberal politics arrived on the scene, Robin Grey, he won the election over Labor in 1982. In every seat of that election we stood ‘Save the Franklin’ candidates, and in every seat they lost. Although Norm Sanders here in Hobart, in Denison, had been an advocate for the Franklin’s protection, he was, to my knowledge, the first environmentalist elected into a parliament anywhere in Australia, he was a trailblazer. But he resigned his seat in Parliament because of the mistreatment of the Franklin Blockaders that got tougher and nastier as time went on, it was a very clear the government was calling for harsher treatment.”

Bob was one of 1500 people who were arrested during the Franklin campaign and was one of 600 jailed, when he spent 19 days in Hobart’s Risdon Prison.

“The day after I came out of jail, I was elected to Tasmania’s House of Assembly on a countback. So I was suddenly in Parliament on the side of the Franklin ticket, while also being director of the Wilderness Society, helping to run the blockade that was happening on the Gordon and Franklin Rivers. But I said at the time when the Franklin is saved, that’ll be my political career.”

Through the support of the newly elected Prime Minister Bob Hawke — who had promised to save the Franklin in the lead up to the election — and intervention from Australia’s High Court, construction of the dam was stopped and the River was saved, yet Bob Brown remained in politics.

“We had parallel campaigns to stop wood chipping and the marauding of Tasmania’s forests, and it was accelerating at a great rate, and there were social justice issues that I wanted to attend to, because nobody else in the Parliament was giving them voice, so I stayed on.”

He stayed for ten years. During his tenure, Bob proposed legislative initiatives on gay rights, nuclear regulation and euthanasia (amongst others).

“In the 1989 election, we ended up with five Greens seats that allowed us to double the size of the World Heritage area and to get new National Parks. You could say I became a relentless driver for the environment, but to me it was just about relentless common sense, it was a priority that looked to the future. And in retrospect, I would have regretted greatly backing off when that opportunity arose. But after ten years, I’d had enough, so I resigned from the Greens and took three years out.”

Bob went on holiday, travelling the world until he was pulled back to land he loved. He was drawn back to politics, initially to campaign for the newly created Australian Greens, and eventually standing for election in the Federal Senate in 1996 with the provision that he could continue to be an activist. 

“It included, if necessary, breaking the law, even though under the Constitution that loses you a seat in Parliament, and the Greens were happy to accept that condition.”

He was the first Greens’ candidate to be elected to the Australian Senate.

“When I arrived in Tasmania and found this nascent Greens Party, I felt at home with their politics that was based on a humility for nature and a concern for all human beings, and that includes all human cultures. So taking that on and helping to develop it was important. Labor will always grab kudos for social justice, Liberals will always grab kudos for economic innovation, but what they don’t have is any kudos on the environment, except when it’s manufactured here and there, and so the Greens Party grew.”

Bob Brown was a sensible voice in the Senate, often opposing the conservative Liberal government of John Howard. He introduced bills to block radioactive waste dumping and to ban mandatory sentencing of Aboriginal children, he was vocal of Australia’s involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and he famously told John Howard to “relax and accept gay marriages as part of the future’s social fabric“. When four Greens senators were elected in 2004, Bob was formally named the first Federal Parliamentary Leader of the party. In 2007, he stated that coal was the energy industry’s “heroin habit” and suggested the ban of coal exports. He said it was an “appalling and disgusting failure” when Kevin Rudd failed to commit to strong carbon reduction targets in 2008. He also suggested tax revenues from the excess profits of the coal industry should be set aside for future environmental catastrophes in Australia.

In the 2010 election, the Greens achieved a historic result attracting 1.6 million votes, with the election of nine senators and one member of the House of Representatives. It meant that the Green held the balance of power in the Senate and Bob used this position to negotiate.

“We brought in probably the most advanced climate change legislation, of regulation and offsetting. We got it through with Julia Gillard as Prime Minister because we drove a very hard bargain. You might remember she’d said four days before the election, there’ll be no carbon tax under a government that she runs. Well 18 months later, they not only had a carbon trading scheme, but one of the best in the world.”

In April 2012 Bob stepped down as leader of the Australian Greens and then he retired from the Senate in June 2012. This time he stepped away from politics for good. 

“I endlessly quote Abraham Lincoln in 1857 saying that the corporations are coming to steal the throne of democracy from the people, and it happened. I watched our democracy become usurped by the wealthy and the corporate sector. That influence spreads right across the spectrum and there’s no greater example of that than the Murdoch ownership of the media here in Australia, which is corrupt and perverting of democracy. But one thing they all have great difficulty with is peaceful activism, and history shows that to be the case.

“I had seen that through the Pedder and Franklin campaigns, and our forestry campaigns — which I continued to be involved with while I was in politics — but a large component of the environment movement, which I love dearly, was trying to influence politicians by going to see them. I was very well aware they are no match for the corporate lobbyists who infested our parliaments, banging on people’s doors every day, particularly ministers doors, leading to this absurd situation we have now where 80% of Australians want native forest logging stopped and 80% of politicians want to subsidise it with even more public money. So getting out and focusing on activism was important, because politics doesn’t know how to deal with it. It cuts through.”

Along with Steven Chaffer, Bob decided to form an organisation with activism as its focus.

“I was in my late 60s and I recognised that it was a big thing to take on, but I had people like Steven. We started with nothing except a good idea, but we knew we had a lot of public sympathy out there.”

Their first employee was Jenny Weber. Jenny had grown up on Dharawal Country in Wollongong and experienced a lot of her childhood at the beach.

“I had this sense of awe about the ocean being bigger than I am, and the need to be careful in the ocean, it’s not something I took for granted, I had to learn to swim with the waves pummelling in. I was totally immersed in nature as a child.”

Jenny also grew up with the political leanings of her father, who was a member of the Australian Labor Party. He was also a teacher and part of a union.

“He was an organiser. I have memories faintly of my Dad organising or the teachers going on strike or always handing out how to vote cards on voting day. So really early on I was aware there was something going on with politics, to the extent there were politicians that for some reason were on the bad list. There was always a conversation about politics in my life, which was really influential in my childhood.” 

She liked punk music and helped organise concerts of visiting international bands at the local youth centre. 

“I think we were like 14, 15. It was a fabulous life, and it introduced me to a DIY style of working and giving back to your community, and it set the groundwork for the belief that if you want to get stuff done, you just need to get a few people to get together and do it.” 

At 17 she met her current partner, Adam, who was involved with the Wilderness Society and opened Jenny’s eyes to activism and the possibility of dedicating her life to the environment. Adam was living on Bundjalung Country near Byron Bay and took Jenny to a logging area in the Whian Whian State Forest when she was 18.

“I just could not believe it. And then I met the North East Forest Alliance, who were a bunch of activists pulling off blockades. It was a whole new thing, I was like who is this community of people who are getting together to resist the destruction of the environment? So I just immersed myself into that space entirely.”

Jenny was about to complete her university studies when Adam said to her, “I’m going to Tasmania, do you want to come? I was like, ‘not really, there’s no live music, I can’t swim in the sea. I thought that it would be freezing cold all the time. And then he was like, ‘I’m going to go anyway.’ So I had to choose between doing whatever I might have ended up doing in New South Wales and coming here to Tasmania, so I asked, ‘can we do a deal that it’s just for six months?’”

They drew a circle on a map between Hobart and the southern forests and they decided to move to Huonville.

“It’s a logging town in the middle of nowhere, we didn’t know anyone, it was a completely bizarre thing to do.” 

They initially volunteered with the Wilderness Society in Hobart, but Adam was inspired by his time with the Byron Environment Centre and the North East Forest Alliance and was keen on creating something similar in the southern forests of Lutruwita. 

“We set up this little place called the Huon Valley Environment Centre, which became our life for about 15 years. Being a forest activist, taking action, doing lots of blockading and forest protests. We had two beautiful children, we were living off-grid on 60 acres of wildlife reserve in a straw bale place we built, and we were there resisting non-violently in a town that hated us, being right there with the logging community.”

Jenny and Adam were living on the frontlines.

“I was shopping once with my little ones in Woolworths, and this woman just screamed at me and was like, ‘I’m going to lock-on to your trolley, that’s what you do to my husband,’ and it was a bit shocking. The same thing happened at the laundromat, people getting angry at me. I think it’s just being calm and trying to state your place or ignoring the situation completely. In the laundromat, the woman was a bit more aggressive and so I just tried to de-escalate and say, ‘look I’m just here for the forests.’ I also had a death threat against me. They said, ‘I saw her on the street, I should have run her down, I’m going to kill that bitch.’ So I went to the police, and the police handled it okay. But I never truly feared for my life. I’ve spent a bit of time in Sarawak, we have a company here in Tasmania that’s from Sarawak, and it opened up my life to the indigenous people there fighting for their forests, and my time with them made me realise I’m a white, privileged, educated woman who lives in a democracy, and I am so far from being threatened in my life because of what I do. So I’ve had a reality check a number of times.”

In 2012, the Tasmanian government struck a supposed peace deal with environmentalists and the logging industry, the Tasmanian Forest Agreement. 

“We didn’t agree with the deal, it compensated this Sarawak logging company to stay in Tasmania. And this was after we had achieved some great gains in the Japanese markets, and Ta Ann was going to leave Tasmania, and these environmentalists went into those markets and said, ‘no, keep buying from Tasmania, don’t leave,’ which was shocking, and so we lost, a lot of activists were disillusioned, they felt they had been sold out. We had a beautiful community of people who were all volunteers and hanging on by a thread. It wasn’t like they had paid employment, they were all dedicating their lives to the forests. And I witnessed when you have a tipping point like that, where you feel sold out or disillusioned, that’s all that needs to happen and it’s over. Why would I give my life up if I’m not going to be, you know, effective?

“So at that time I was really frustrated because not only did we have success and gains in unsettling a major company, we also had environmentalists who were working against us. Anyway, I saw Bob at an art exhibition in town. We used to run these art exhibitions where the activists would tell their stories through art and they were beautiful and confronting and intense. And so we had an exhibition and Bob came along and he asked about the Centre closing and I was like, ‘I’m so angry, I’m going to leave Tasmania, Adam and I are just done, we’ve had enough.’ And he said, ‘if you’re angry and you haven’t been angry until now, imagine what you could do if you keep campaigning, why don’t you come and work for the Bob Brown Foundation?’ And I was blessed in that very moment of my life, I had a blessing that people would love to have across this planet, to have Bob Brown take me under his wing and say, ‘let’s campaign together.’”

Tony Abbott had just become Australia’s Prime Minister, and he wanted to remove Lutruwita’s forests from their World Heritage listing. 

“Insane. So my first task here was to resist that and say, ‘no way.’ Incredibly it meant I went to Doha to the World Heritage meeting and was part of a team of people who were lobbying to not have the forests delisted. I thought I was just here at the Foundation for that little stint to make sure Abbott didn’t get his way. And we were successful, there was no appetite in the World Heritage Committee for that to happen. And when I returned, Bob said to me, ‘okay, now there’s a window of opportunity to have the Tarkine protected, so let’s dedicate you to the Tarkine campaign.’ Bob had been trying to get the place protected for 20 years, but it’s just so powerfully dominated by the mining industry and a little bit by the logging industry. So I was like, ‘yeah I’ll stick around with the Foundation.’”

There are now around 20 employees at the Bob Brown Foundation, supported by a dedicated community of volunteers whose activities include sending out merchandise, gathering petition signatures or, if they’re involved in frontline demonstrations, they might be locking-on to a tripod or in a tree sitting. 

Dr Colette Harmsen has been a consistent presence at the Foundation’s many protests and blockades. Colette was born and raised in Lutruwita to a Tasmanian mother and a Dutch father. They lived in the bush, so Colette lived a “sheltered and isolated” life immersed in the surrounding natural environment.

“As long as I can remember I was into insects and plants. I spent hours watching ants, building nests and doing that kind of stuff. I used to smear honey on the walls in my bedroom so the ants would come in and eat it. It’s funny, I haven’t seen that species of ant since I was a little kid, the insects seem to be diminishing.”

Her parents were part of the activist community of the time, attending protests all over Lutruwita, so it seemed normal to want to protect nature, “like it was normal that you didn’t want people to come out and kill the animals or pollute or destroy.” Colette eventually moved to Yuggera Country, to Brisbane to study veterinary science, but returned to her homeland to join the Save the Tasmanian Devil Program, where she worked for eight years. 

“My job was as a field veterinary officer, so I had a pretty good time of it working with the program, which felt worthwhile up to a point when I realised I needed to step up again, like just going to protests didn’t feel like it was enough. So I started locking-on to stuff. I think the first time I was arrested I didn’t even lock-on to anything, I think I stood with a group of other activists and we stood in front of a primary school and refused to leave. They were having a meeting inside about the pulp mill, politicians and local people and councillors, and we all got arrested.“

Since then Colette has been arrested 23 times. 

“Most of those times I have been chained to things like machinery gates, drill rigs, that kind of thing. I was up a tripod at one stage. When I do that I feel that it doesn’t matter what people say, I’m there and I’m not going anywhere, and they’ve got to physically come and cut me off and remove me, and if that doesn’t make people go, ‘why are people doing this, this doesn’t make sense,’ then I don’t know what will. 

“I guess the reality is that people don’t pay much attention, but the more we do it, I can see it’s making a difference, every step of the way it is making people ask ‘why are they arresting these people for? Like they’re trying to protect the planet,’ and at some point, someone’s going to make a decision and just say we need better environmental laws or we need better protection of forests.”

Having lived in Lutruwita for most of her life, Colette has seen firsthand how the forests are constantly threatened with destruction.

“The first time I flew to Melaleuca, which is in the southwest of Tasmania, to do a walking trip, we flew south from Cambridge Airport and we flew over Hartz Mountain and a lot of the southern forests and out towards the southwest wilderness. And when I looked down from the plane in the southern forests area, I could see a patchwork quilt underneath you: it was all the forests that were being logged and then regrowing at different stages. And basically Forestry Tasmania has all the forests available to them that aren’t in the Southwest Conservation Area or the National Parks, and all of that is just a patchwork of logged areas that are regrowing at different ages. And it’s devastating that we go in there to save one little patch, and it’s like the last old growth patch in the whole bloody area, and everything else is a bunch of plantation trees. And it just really hurts me to think that all of that would have been a continuous forest of absolutely pristine mosses and fungi and all the wildlife living in there, but now it has been chopped up into tiny pieces.”

It’s the loss of this natural heritage that pains Bob too.

“People need to recognise that the planet is finite, and that it’s amazingly intricate in the way in which it has evolved and supports life. There is a spiritual dimension to that, which I often shortcut for people by saying if you give a person a bunch of flowers, which is from wild nature, they feel good about it, but if you give them a bunch of plastic flowers, which look exactly the same — because they’re amazingly contrived these days — as they slowly realise they’re not real, it’s often a sign of insult. Why is that? You could write books and books and books on it, but it’s because we are creatures of the forest and the wild planet, and that’s where our soul as well as our body comes from, and we’re still linked to it, but we’re divorcing ourselves artificially, or cutting ourselves from it and destroying it at a great rate. 

“As a boy, there was a book called ‘The Big Snake Hunters’ that came out of England about the Amazon, and while it was the typical beagle stuff of those days, I was nevertheless imbued by this idea, which was then still true, that there were large realms of forest that we from the developing and invading world didn’t know about, and people lived in all of them and were completely encompassed in body and mind by them. That’s almost gone in my lifetime. And when I hear from the World Wildlife Fund that 70% of the mass of wildlife has gone since 1970, or the other statistic that 94% of the mammals left on the planet are human beings and what we eat, and 6% is wildlife, you get a picture of the complete desecration of the planet. 

“The thing about it is, while more and more people are becoming alarmed about it, it’s increasing in rate. And when you talk about a road going through the Amazon or the felling of ancient trees here, it’s all part of this onrush of materialism, capitalism if you like, which is quite absurd. It’s working in a finite system, which is the planet, and yet there’s not a government that I know of that doesn’t adhere to growth as being a central pillar of good management. And growth means increased exploitation of nature in a world in which we’re already using twice the renewable living resources of the planet. So every morning we wake up to fewer forests, fewer fisheries, less arable land, fewer species, more human mouths to feed, and generally more devastation and anxiety.”

These words relate back to pre-colonial days, when Tasmania was always referred to as Lutruwita, and the island was populated by Palawa people and was covered in the world’s tallest flowering plants. But it wasn’t just Lutruwita, it was all over the land called Australia that was covered in its native vegetation and teeming with ancient wildlife coexisting with the diverse and vibrant cultures of the continent’s Original Peoples. Can we ever know how much has been lost now that so much is gone? To paraphrase the Revolutionary Proclamation of the Junta Tuitiva, most of humanity maintains a silence that closely resembles stupidity. But fortunately there are still giants like Colette, Jenny and of course the great Bob Brown, who protect the giants of our ancient past so they will still remain as part of our future.

“We are so fortunate in this country but it is so easy to be complacent. I learned early on that we’re just passing patterns here, all species are a relay of life, and we’re part of a community. Capitalism, of course, makes the individual all important, but as human beings, we’ve always lived as communities, with the spirits of ancestors before us and the hopes of future generations in front of us. And it is incredibly important to honour those past ancestors, but to also be active, to put ourselves on the line for those coming after us, who can’t come back and undo what’s happening now. 

“Although the idea that there is no time, that we can do nothing else but be planet savers, can be self-defeating. It’s important that people find good companionship, have good relationships, have parties, have holidays, complete their studies and assume that there is time. You have to take time. And it’s very, very important for people to look after themselves. The idea that you can have fun in such a desperate and daunting planet seems contra intelligent, but nevertheless we are just human creatures, we do like happiness, and we have to find that in amongst this very fraught life we’re leading, waking the planet up and converting it against all odds into a global community that, above all, respects the planet and life on it and works to ensure that it’s here forever.”

As they say in parliament: hear, hear!

Anton Rivette is a writer and photographer. He leads storytelling at eco-nnect.

You might also like this story: Bread is not a commodity

The post Environmentalism is Resistance appeared first on eco-nnect.

The post The Sacred Apus: an encounter with the Q’ero Nation appeared first on eco-nnect.

When people ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a storyteller. People often respond by asking what that means, if I tell stories to kids, if I write novels, or if I make films. It seems to me that a lot of people associate stories with technology like television, cinema, books or podcasts, forgetting that a story is its own form of technology. Humans have long shared stories to connect with one another and their surrounding environment through oral traditions passed from one generation to the next. According to Thunghutti and Bundjalung man Warren Roberts, stories are a relational tool.

“We say today storyteller, but it’s more or less how we make sense of the world. As we share stories, our collective trust strengthens and our relationships grow.”

Warren grew up surrounded by his Elders.

“They were always sharing stories, they did everything in relationship. I learned from them and how they interacted with people. My Nan’s brother said to me, you are just continuing what Elva and Patricia were doing, what you do is a continuation of what our Elders have always done.”

His Nanna, Elva Taylor, was one of nine sisters and three brothers, a remarkable family of Aboriginal organisers and advocates widely known for their significant achievements.

“They were community organisers, working with our community, bringing people together, having cups of tea and cake. I can show you photos of my Nan, Auntie Pat and all the Aunties having big dinners with their friends and the community. You see what they did and you’re like, that’s deadly, maybe we can do that a little bit different, or do the same thing they’ve always done and scale it up because those look like deadly experiences and we should create more of that. It’s about relationship building.”

Warren’s Elders always affirmed the importance of relationships.

“We got taught growing up to make friends, because you can rely on them, they can be around all the time. If you make friends, you’ll live a good life.“

It was his Elders’ way that inspired Warren to create YARN Australia. YARN was founded in 2007 at the University of New South Wales with the goal of uniting the Original Peoples of Australia and non-indigenous Australians through workshops and events held within safe and respectful spaces. These spaces were initially focused in universities, but have since expanded into community, corporate and government spaces across the continent, as well as online. During its near 20 year history, YARN has gone through different phases, organically evolving alongside Warren’s life.

“At first we would ask each other questions, and if we didn’t know the answer we would do research and share what we found with the group. We started to create a curriculum, but we then shifted our focus onto running events with a community group in Sydney called Sixty Thousand. Our first event was at 107 Projects in Redfern, and it made us think about what we needed to do to hold a safe space for everyone who was attending, especially with some of the stories that might come up. That’s where the safe space idea came from.”

Creating a safe space is a key part of any YARN event. After people enter the space, they have a cup of tea and connect with the other attendees, then they gather as a group. There will be Welcome to or an Acknowledgement of Country, and then Warren will ask attendees what is a safe space and what makes a space safe for them.

“When we started doing events I would ask what are some values and ideals that you grew up with that you’d like to share with us? But now safe space is whatever they feel to share, it could be anything, it could be what you’re feeling now, it’s very flexible. But it’s important because when you hold space for people, you have responsibility for them.”

While this belief is rooted in the customs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island communities, it was through his experience of attending boarding school in regional New South Wales that Warren appreciated the importance of emotional and cultural safety. 

“I was one of the only blackfellas in my school.” 

Blackfella is a colloquial term used amongst Australia’s Original Peoples to refer to other Original Peoples, both individually and collectively. 

“There was one other senior blackfella when I first got there, but he was in high school and I was only a kid, I didn’t know him, and when he graduated, it was only me, the only blackfella around. I think when you experience difference like that and know what it feels like, I don’t want anyone to feel that, because I felt that the whole time I was at school. When we had our ten year reunion, the other students said you’re different to when you were at school, at school you were quiet, but today you’re very talkative, very confident. When I was at school it was just full judgement, everyone judging everybody. 

“When my mate came to YARN and he spoke about witnessing racism at school — he saw the senior boys being racist to local Aboriginal people — he knew it was wrong, but he didn’t quite know what to do. There aren’t really spaces for us to reflect on those experiences, where we can speak openly and be our true vulnerable selves. They don’t exist. There are anti-racism or multiculturalism courses, but these rarely allow for people to talk about their lived experiences, it’s all preaching and pointing fingers and white guilt. But what about my mate, where was he going to learn about handling racism without having a space to speak about this experience he had?”

After safe space, a YARN will shift to focus on the theme of that particular event, which could be related to the time of year, the location of the event, or the significance of the date when the event is held, like Mabo Day. In-person events like this were the focus for YARN until the COVID Pandemic, when people could no longer gather and, like all of us, Warren was forced to adapt.

“Before that we never did anything online, we never recorded anyone’s story, we refused to involve technology in YARN, but then we couldn’t meet in person so we evolved with it. Now the majority of YARN is online, using technology and recording stuff.”

Warren now runs online storytelling workshops with the goal of inspiring one million Australians to become intentional storytellers by 2028. Using the old curriculum as a foundation, the workshops were designed to empower participants with the skills and confidence to intentionally share stories by creating a safe space to reflect on their personal and cultural experiences, and sharing tools to articulate these experiences through storytelling. The workshops also focus on the cultural practices and lived experiences of Australia’s Original Peoples. Each workshop has a specific theme.

“In one of the workshops we talk about tension, and I give participants the option to reflect on and share their experiences of interacting with Australia’s Original Peoples. These are the stories I want to listen to, because there are so few spaces to talk openly about these things, and it’s where the biggest learnings come from. It’s like how it’s challenging to speak to people about money. Shouldn’t we have confidence in talking about that? Why is it that we become awkward and sometimes destroy a relationship because we talk about money? We should have solid relationships where we can talk about anything, so we need to create the spaces to explore the tension that is often present in our social interactions.”

While YARN is a space that explores difficult topics, it is also a space focused on listening.

“We had a couple of YARNs with the Aunties, and they were sharing their truth and everyone was like, oh that’s heavy. But one of my Elders said, you created a safe space where they felt like they could share that, because they felt listened to and that’s rare. I was always told growing up that not everybody has a Christmas, not everybody has someone supporting them at home, or they don’t have a positive person they can yarn with who encourages them. So I always think maybe they don’t have someone who can encourage them or to support them, and I remember this whenever I create spaces for others, because we’ve got to do things together instead of doing our own thing. That’s what is wrong with this world, we’re all doing our own thing, we’re all in silos, we are all avoiding each other. 

“We want to do the opposite of that, we want to know everyone’s passion and actually work with each other in our strength. We don’t need a devil’s advocate, we don’t need the one that sits on the fence, we just need to know what we each bring to the table, that’s it. But where can we develop the confidence to say this is my story or this is how I’m feeling? Can we create spaces for that? Most people don’t know how to create that space, and so most people don’t know how to share how they truly feel and who they truly are. If we can create a space of positive energy and encouragement, and allow people to have the flexibility to say whatever they feel or want to see in the world, that’s what we need. It’s not about interpretation from the outside, it’s about what they feel within.”

As with a lot of Warren’s wisdom, this comes back to his Elders, particularly his Nanna.

“I was with my Grandmother, I was a little boy, I don’t know how old, just old enough to understand what she’s talking about, to understand what she’s saying, but not to understand the bigger picture. She looked down at me and she said you’re going to be the best. I didn’t quite understand what she was talking about, I was like, oh really, mad, I’m going to be the best. It’s just that belief, right? You’re going to be the best, she kept saying it, and she said you’re going to grow up and people are going to say a lot of things, people are going to talk, but remember they don’t know your story. No matter what anyone else says about you, only you know your story, because other people don’t know, they are just thinking, oh he’s great, but they still don’t know your story. Or everyone’s ready to cut you down. Everyone’s ready to cut down Gina Rinehart, John Howard and John Laws, but we don’t know their yarn, who are we to say what they are and what they’re not. Same with what my Grandmother was telling me, you’re going to be the best and no one will know your story. But if the relationship is there and it’s solid, if we have a few cups of tea and plenty of cake, and plenty of disagreements, we’ll get to some of those deep stories, we’ll share those deep yarns.”

There is a simplicity to what Warren shares. I have read powerful books, witnessed great plays, and watched incredible films. I’ve had great mentors who have taught me important skills and methods, but it’s the simple wisdom that Warren shares about storytelling that I always come back to. Warren speaks of the essence of all stories.

“The way I put it, and I’ve always put it, is I’m just doing my work, that’s just what I do. It’s not about ticking a box or being noticed or anything like that, it’s about relationships. If we have solid relationships, who cares about an award? Are we good? If we’re good, that’s all that matters. And that’s what I say to the storytellers in the workshops, this is not just this YARN thing you’re doing for three years, we’re friends forever. That’s what this is all about, making this massive world really small, because it is really small, it’s not a big place. You start to build relationships with people, it’s a small place, time and distance doesn’t matter because the relationship is there. That’s the recognition, the continued relationship.

“I always say at the end of every YARN, I look forward to hearing your story and walking with you, and walking together. Once we build the trust and understanding and connection, anything’s possible. And that’s why we set up YARN, to do that, we’re the ones who have to create the spaces for that, this is what’s missing in the world. We all should reflect on our story and have places where our stories are valued and respected. We should have people who walk with us on our stories, who support us and encourage us and all of those things. No marketing ploy, no box to tick, no incentives, just friends. Anything’s possible when you have friends. You have no friends, forget it. We live in a planet where life is not easy, it’s pretty full on, it’s hard, difficult, challenging, but it’s way better if you’ve got friends.”

Considering eco-nnect is a website focused on humanity’s relationship with our environment, I ask Warren how this connects to the natural world.

“We’re a product of our environment, that’s who we are, we’re not separate. What do we eat? We eat the environment every day. It’s part of us, we’re part of it. We can’t continue in this world without eating and it all comes from the Mother. That’s what our people say, we look after the Mother, the Mother looks after us. We’re not separate to nature. The West might make you think that, that we all separate, but we are all one and the same. There’s no us and them. There never was. It’s just us. We’re in it together.”

Anton Rivette is a writer and photographer. He leads storytelling at eco-nnect.

You might also like this story: Connecting with Country

The post The Art of Relationships appeared first on eco-nnect.

The Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa and Kankuamo communities have long safeguarded the sacred lands of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range in northern Colombia. These lands hold profound spiritual significance, deeply rooted in their cosmologies and belief systems. The snow-capped peaks are considered the Heart of the Earth, and its ecological balance is of high importance in maintaining environmental balance across the world.

The Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa and Kankuamo see themselves as humanity’s “elder brothers and sisters”, responsible for preserving this balance. Rivers represent the veins of the Earth, connecting the mountains to the spirit realm, while trees and forests are living beings that sustain all life. These indigenous groups honour nature through ceremonies, payments to the Earth, and sustainable use of resources, maintaining an intimate relationship to the land that is central to their cultural identity. Specific natural sites are sacred spaces for rituals of divination and healing, and keen observation of ecological patterns guide their ceremonial calendar, as Mamos and Zagas — the spiritual leaders and elders of these indigenous groups — draw on ancestral knowledge to read signs from nature to maintain equilibrium with Mother Earth.

Unfortunately, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta has experienced high rates of deforestation for several decades — estimates range from 50 to 65% of forest cover loss — with logging, land clearing for cattle ranching, and cultivation of illicit crops being the primary drivers. Along with climate change, the loss of forests has led to altered rainfall patterns, flooding, soil erosion, declining water resources and the increasing threat of desertification across the region.

Massive agricultural expansion and mountain top mining have also severely impacted biodiversity, polluting rivers while fragmenting critical wildlife habitat. Studies indicate that over 50% of mammal species and over 65% of amphibians in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta are at an elevated risk of extinction. Several endangered animal species, like the spectacled bear, have already disappeared from lower elevations. Rising temperatures have caused accelerated melting of the Sierra’s glaciers and high mountain snowpack, which are critical water sources sustaining ecosystems, agriculture and human settlements across the region during the dry season. Glacier retreat and changes in seasonal precipitation are disrupting the sensitive high mountain environments, threatening endemic species specially adapted to thrive in these conditions.

For the Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa and Kankuamo communities, environmental degradation represents profound spiritual loss that threatens the continuity of their traditions and their relationship to the sacred landscape that has sustained them for millennia. Consequently, revitalising sustainable practices has become an urgent priority. Jaguar Siembra is a community-centred agroecology and reforestation project that supports this need, transforming both the natural and cultural landscapes in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The project focuses on the environmental challenges in the region through grassroots efforts for ecological regeneration. Their model is centred on the notion that individual healing requires connecting with ancestral lands and teachings through the wisdom of medicinal and food-bearing plants. Their immersive workshops and hands-on agroforestry projects empower the communities to write a new story of hope.

Jaguar Siembra was founded in 2016 by Santiago Roa, a filmmaker from Bogota, who travelled to Santa Marta to visit the Lost City, also known as Teyuna. This journey was inspired by his personal interest in reconnecting and discovering Colombia’s ancient cultures and sacred sites. He was particularly interested in meeting the Mamo who is the spiritual guardian of the Lost City, to understand the imbalances in our relationship with Mother Earth, and the subsequent consequences.

“I am a filmmaker, and the idea was to research and document the knowledge and cultural heritage we have, which is getting lost, and we don’t have much access to due to the way we grew up in an education system that is more focused on Western history than indigenous history. My interest was always to try and find out where we really come from and to learn about the stories that they didn’t tell us, the stories that are still alive in the territories with communities that have been thriving for thousands of years. In looking for those stories and researching that cultural heritage, the idea was to work hand-in-hand with nature through cultural projects that support regeneration.” 

Humanity has been slowly losing the ancestral ways of growing food. The crops and techniques that were once common are more difficult to find, as farming has changed in many ways, even in indigenous communities.

“We are working with regenerative agriculture to regenerate that soil, to plant food forests again to recover ecosystems with biodiversity and economies like cacao, and other food crops that are important for food security for indigenous families. Basically I’ve travelled alone in this area, documenting the planting of these food forests, and I’ve been doing that for eight years, working with the local communities and farmers across the Sierra Nevada.

“Essentially we focus on the intersection between nature and culture, indigenous rights and cultural heritage, as well as other scientific ways that the communities here relate with nature, such as spiritual payments and concepts related to ‘el buen vivir’, how they live in harmony with nature without destroying it. Basically it’s about how we can learn from indigenous communities, working more interculturally to live in harmony with nature.”

Over the past year the focus has been on creating a community food forest. 

“We started with a pilot project, uniting a community with four acres of food forests that they use for gatherings and community work. There is a school where kids from different communities travel to and stay and study during the week, and this food forest will also support food security at the school.”

Santiago highlights the collaborative nature of the project. 

“There are different people working together in ways that resemble the traditional minga, or community work. Sometimes we gather every Saturday, and there are several days throughout the year dedicated to maintaining the forest, creating fences, planting, and nurturing our relationship with the food we are growing, but in a communal way.”

Despite being a small organisation — with just three people working mostly as volunteers — over the past few years, Jaguar Siembra has made significant strides with its collaborative regenerative efforts: a total of 62,800 trees and plants have been planted, benefitting 14 native families and their lands; while eight cultural media projects have been created, furthering the mission of documenting and preserving indigenous knowledge and traditions. While Jaguar Siembra is clearly thriving, Santiago also acknowledges the many challenges he experiences. 

“This is a really demanding job in terms of energy, as I need to travel and follow the holistic processes that the Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa and Kankuamo communities have here, going through spiritual payments and spiritual work before, during, and after every process we are doing. I think one of the most difficult things is how to work together with more harmony and how we can communicate better. Every project is going to be difficult because that’s the nature of how it needs to be, and we don’t need to be afraid of that, we just need to have the tools and the resilience to overcome everything in the best way we can. That’s the way we need to work in community projects. It’s not about everything being perfect, harmonious, and flowing all the time, it’s about encountering challenges together and collectively finding solutions, which ensures everyone is part of the project.

Jaguar Siembra is currently restructuring some of their projects. 

“We are evaluating the impact we are generating, and using design thinking to figure out how to do it better: with more energy efficiency, fewer resources and higher quality, more nutrient-rich food. It’s a super interesting time because we don’t have all the answers, but we are actively working to find them and explore different possible ways we can best do this.”

One of these ways is acquiring land for a new farm. 

“We will apply different techniques and design processes for farming there. That way, we can share that knowledge with communities, farmers and anyone interested. Basically the idea is to create a space of interculturality where we can learn directly from nature and from the community elders, applying different forms of science in the territory. It will be a living school — a school for life, thought and creativity — that will gather different branches and expressions of regeneration, so we can work at the intersection of food, health, personal wellbeing, community wellbeing, while creating and working in community.”

This project will also involve establishing a seed bank and tree nursery, and is being led by the territory through spiritual payments and holistic processes conducted by the Mamos. The Mamos determine the most suitable locations on the land for the different elements being planned, and Professor Felipe from Madre Tierra Permacultura — a collaborator on the project — will assist with the design of the farm’s layout based on the Mamos’ guidance.

Jaguar Siembra is yet another inspiring example of how agroforestry can heal degraded lands and empower communities, as the Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa and Kankuamo peoples revitalise sustainable farming practices by blending their ancestral knowledge with complementary technologies. If you feel to support this project, and all of Jaguar Siembra’s work, their website provides information on the different ways people can get involved.

Ivan Sawyer García is a media producer, communicator, collaborative project designer, environmental activist and the founder of Voices of Amerikua.

You might also like this story: Dreams of Territory

The post Regenerating the Heart of the Earth appeared first on eco-nnect.

Until relatively recently, legal systems all over the world have been positioned against the environment’s conservation. The path toward legal reform requires a delicate balance between new and existing principles that ensure the preservation of nature, and thus environmental and human rights, for present and future generations.

Humanity’s relationship with nature is in a new phase, where environmental and human systems are inextricably determinative of one another and their respective fates. With recent reports suggesting we have passed six of nine planetary boundaries, there is a tangible shift in understanding that we cannot sustain the illusion of unchecked interference with our finite natural environment, and that our shared planet, and even outer space, has a hastily depleting capacity to sustain such practices. 

Unlike human rights, the environment doesn’t have a comprehensive and foundational legal provision that reflects the severity of violations committed against it. Accompanied by very weak monitoring and enforcement, environmental protection is misaligned in both theory and procedure. For example, Article 4(2) of the Paris Agreement – widely hailed as the best international commitment on climate change to date – only states parties shall “aim” to achieve objectives, a non-binding obligation that doesn’t emphasise the need for strong environmental action. The framing of environmental offences as regulatory infractions enables environmental damage through the acquisition of an appropriate licence, and environmental regulation is frequently contingent upon decisions of administrative authorities, often overlooking cultural sensitivities. Thus, environmental crimes have been regarded by European prosecutors and judges as difficult to identify, define and enforce effectively.

By their very nature, regulation of environmental issues necessitates a global and inter-disciplinary approach to reflect the complexity of our interrelated climatic system. Repercussions of environmental crimes and harms are transboundary and trans-generational, and the challenge of legal reform is simultaneously inter-spatial and inter-temporal. It is therefore fundamental to propose comprehensive and inclusive legal frameworks that reach a wide variety of actors and contexts and preserve rights for nature and humans. Given the scale of the crises, it is also essential to pose effective offences that can adequately deter and punish the worst forms of environmental harm.

The assumption that capital holds the sole solution to the climate and ecological crises conceals the systemic roots of these crises, embedded in current patterns of global production, consumption, finance and the organisation of social life. In recent years, there have been significant advances in environmental law and the protection of environmental resources, not only for their human-derived value but for their intrinsic value in themselves. 

With the changes onset by capitalism, accelerated by the neoliberal era of the 1980s, the world has bent further and further to the insatiable drives of a social system predicated on infinite growth, changes that depend on the exploitation of both citizens and the environment. Many are acquainted with Marx’s arguments to this effect, but neglect the fact that the environment, predominantly since this era, has also been viewed as a tool for profit. The ideological discourse that grounds this is “concerned about human impacts on the environment but at the same time deeply romantic about the existing capitalist world”, which is accepted a priori as progressive development and anthropocentric in our agency as a species.

The logic of unlimited growth has enabled ecocide: the wilful or reckless destruction of conditions that maintain life such as ecosystems. It is clear all human actions result in an ecological imprint, and it is undoubtedly important that environmental law acknowledges and reflects competing considerations such as the right to development, which is why it is so fundamental to create a framework of safety around these inevitable considerations. Increasingly, experts are convinced a paradigm shift is vital that advocates the interdependence of human and non-humans based on a community of interests. 

Criminal law can play a pivotal role in affirming our inherent interdependencies with the natural world and our collective duties to it. As the ultimate sanction, it is important that criminal law has a restricted field of application: we must extend our vision beyond theories of punishment to understand criminal law’s fundamental role in facilitating coordination around essential collective social values. Due to the different nature of their legal frameworks, reconciling environmental law with criminal law raises complex new issues, although there are strong reasons to supplement existing environmental legal frameworks with a criminal law backstop. A new crime of ecocide, a preventative and all-encompassing framework, can rectify an existing taboo in international environmental regulation: the most serious destructions of nature are morally reprehensible and thus criminally liable acts. Ecocide law therefore holds significant potential to usher in a new era of environmental governance that can ensure exacting protection for nature, on Earth and in outer space.

Ecocide Law  

Ecocide is not a new concept in domestic or International law. For example, a provision with similarities to ecocide is found in Article 8 (2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute, which provides for the crime of “intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause…widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.” Ecocide was almost a crime in peace time too, and was included in early drafts of the Rome Statute. The crime has been promoted at various high-level conferences such as the UN Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, been subject to various juridical formulations — such as Professor Richard Anderson Falk’s draft Convention, published by the competent UN Sub-Commission on the prevention and punishment of genocide — and has been debated amongst the International Law Commission regarding the “Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind”. The crime gains traction at legal, academic and grassroots levels for its possibility to provide an enforceable legal measure that can deter the severest forms of environmental damage. 

Adapted from existing international law, the most authoritative definition of ecocide defines the crime as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment caused by those acts.”

The existing nature of international environmental harm is largely considered technical, scattered and difficult to enforce, and does not account for the reality of nature, and the damage committed against it, as interconnected and occurring on a multitude of scales.

An Independent Expert Panel considered these limitations when creating the definition of ecocide. To ensure all aspects of the environment, including its interlinkages and interconnections, were included, the environment is defined on the basis of earth-system science and the five main spheres of the Earth — biosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere — as well as outer space. 

The qualitative nature of the definition ensures it applies to any actions, whether committed intentionally or through gross negligence, that directly or indirectly expose the environment in its various components to an immediate risk of substantial degeneration, endangering the safety of the planet and the survival of humankind. This is important to change behaviour: faced with an ambiguous list of legally prohibited actions against the environment, a potential perpetrator may spend a significant amount of time or resources to evade legal liability. A general standard of significant harm shifts mindsets from how do I avoid fitting into this list, toward how do I avoid creating that level of severe environmental harm.

The “unlawful” element of the definition promotes a strengthening of existing environmental laws, as they would be invoked in ecocide law’s application. The “wanton” standard — referring to an action’s potential harm in relation to the social and material benefits anticipated — can reflect the reality of new and emerging issues in environmental law, providing an appropriate analytical tool to ensure that ecocide law is reflective of other human rights. It is essential that environmental provisions can operate both independently and interdependently, ensuring that impunity does not result because of legal technicalities. Ecocide law, according to a continuum of enforcement through domestic criminal courts to the ICC, would further prevent severe and widespread or long-term environmental offences that occur under the existing protections of a licence, those committed in countries with poor environmental laws, and areas beyond national jurisdiction, like the high seas and outer space.

Ecocide Law and International Environmental Governance

Society’s relationship with nature under extractivist capitalism largely reflects “individualism and individualisation, leading to the appropriation, monopolisation, commodification and financialisation of nature against a backdrop of scarce natural and living resources and the deterioration or dysfunctioning of ecosystems”. The success of this system is largely contingent upon insufficient wages, the exploitation of natural resources and societal indifference to environmental and social issues. It is well accepted that the unhindered commodification of nature has accelerated climate change. Globalisation in particular is understood as a key driver of environmental and biodiversity damage due to increased consumption, production and movement of goods, along with their associated GHG emissions. Consequently, legal measures proposed for governing the climate and ecological crises must be aware of these considerations, in conjunction with the more specific, and just as significant, local and national elements to environmental governance. 

The definition of ecocide law largely reflects a “natural commons approach”, where the environment and its regulation is conceived as a relational and dynamic system, composed of a web of interdependent relationships between humans, non-humans and the planet. The things or resources classified as natural commons thus form part of a whole called “common heritage”. By including them in this heritage they can be collectively managed with the purpose of preservation. This perspective conceives law’s role in environmental protection distinct from the dichotomy between a subject and object or an exploiter and exploited, towards relationships of solidarity and greater balance. Conceptualising environmental resources as “common heritages of humankind” implies that such resources belong to all of humanity in collectivity, available for everyone’s use and benefit, taking into account future generations and the needs of developing countries. 

From the perspectives of Indigenous peoples and local communities across the world, the emphasis on resources and relations to things that are held as common ownership is critical, where community and kinship relations, and relations with nature and life are highly intertwined with the idea of commons. The legal construction of natural commons proposes an alliance of companionship between species and nature. On this basis, the common heritage principle embodies new connotations, highlighting our “special responsibility to safeguard and wisely manage the heritage of wildlife and its habitat, which are now gravely imperilled by a combination of adverse factors”.  The collective responsibility to preserve nature is referred to as “Earth stewardship”. 

There has been a resurgence of interest in community-based conservation and resource management systems that use customary practice and local knowledge, as it is no coincidence Indigenous communities are guardians of roughly 80% of the world’s biodiversity. On a local scale, commons management, when implemented correctly, has consistently led to improved rates of regeneration, protection and biodiversity. Increasingly, it has been evidenced that the assumption that common-property regimes will lead to the famous “tragedy of the commons” — in that allowing open access and unrestricted demand for common resources will inevitably lead to over-exploitation, requiring privatisation —  is simply a misunderstanding of how commons operate successfully. When Hardin referenced a “a pasture open to all” in his depiction of the commons tragedy, he was referencing an ungoverned, law-less, open-access scheme from which nobody could be excluded. This is not a reference to common property regimes as properly managed, but a resulting collective action problem. Climate change itself is a clear collective action problem, for example. The distinction between common property and open-access is well understood in the relevant literature. Moreover, a growing body of empirical evidence exists that demonstrates users of commons are able to work their way out of the trap envisaged by Hardin and, in fact, environmental management according to theories of the commons reveal significant success. Therefore, the necessary question in reviewing the suitability of common property schemes in global management of the climate and ecological crises is not whether common property is feasible at all, but rather under what (legal) conditions.

Rather than promoting rigid protection and management of landscapes under centralised state agencies and institutions, community management seeks to incorporate the perspective of Indigenous and local peoples, setting up a negotiable framework that supports local innovation and experimentation and is thus tailored to the specific requirements of the environmental resource. Elinor Ostrom and colleagues have identified that the distillation of certain features in common property regimes across the world, which have proved effective in ensuring the sustainable management of common-property resources: a clearly defined community of resource users; a clearly defined resource; the presence of clearly defined rules clarifying rights, responsibilities and sanctions for non-compliance; effective monitoring systems; graduated sanctions matched to the level of the offence; cheap and easily accessible conflict resolution mechanisms; minimal recognition of rights to organise; and systems for adaptive management. Community models adapt technical and regulatory norms to specific local conditions. The challenge is understanding how to translate local principles to global environmental governance issues, such as transboundary environmental crime. 

Existing international law, in conjunction with ecocide law, supports this possibility. In current international law, the “common heritage of mankind” (CHM) generally refers to the high seas, outer space and celestial bodies, all of which may not be subject to the sovereignty of any state, and states are bound, at least in theory, to refrain from actions that adversely affect their use by other states. The term mankind here reflects a collective concept referring to an entity comprising all people in the world. In Article 137(2) of UNCLOS for example, the rights are vested in “mankind as a whole”. In terms of scope, mankind is “inter-spatial” and “inter-temporal”. Since mankind is a separate legal entity representing all people in the world, the CHM, as mankind’s property, should meet the demands of mankind. As the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies note, “the principle of the Common Heritage of Mankind demands intra- and intergenerational equity, and entails a particular respect for transparency, accountability and environmental sustainability”. On this basis, the “common heritage of mankind” principle highlights our “special responsibility to safeguard and wisely manage the heritage of wildlife and its habitat, which are now gravely imperilled by a combination of adverse factors”. 

As the State of South Africa has highlighted: “[T]he common heritage of mankind principle is not solely about benefit sharing. [It] is just as much about conservation and preservation. The principle is about solidarity; solidarity in the preservation and conservation of a good we all share and therefore should protect. But also solidarity in ensuring that this good, which we all share, is for all our benefit.” 

In spite of our traditional top-down international models of environmental regulation, the “common heritage” of humankind principle has sustained conceptions around particular global resources for decades, and the relations of Indigenous communities with the environment for millennia. This different perspective and practice reveals a different picture for environmental protection possibilities, and the unquestionable success of common-property management schemes globally in ensuring more exacting environmental protection than traditional state-based models. Reiteration of such principles at the international level is one important step, however the critical issue is integrating global and local perspectives in a legal framework of environmental protection which is neither excessively punitive — and therefore hindering other crucial rights such as the right to development — or neglectful of vital ecocentric mainstreaming to international and national societies.

Ecocide law is relevant to theoretical and procedural elements to protection of the global commons. At the root of the growing movement for the international criminalisation of ecocide is the protection of the Earth and the biosphere as the common good of humanity, which requires necessary interventions to be taken in order to stop and avert the dangers for present and future generations. Along with a greater assurance of enforceability of environmental and therefore human rights, ecocide law offers an avenue for shifting general values underlying the legal framework, from anthropocentric to ecocentric, a move from a relationship of dominance to mutual reciprocity and respect for the environment in law. Ecocide law’s theoretical basis is that of a universal value: respect for our natural environment. Moreover, with a rooting in criminal law — a legal framework constituted by morality and accountability, which is enforceable in national and international courts — ecocide law can also represent a less political and more localised avenue for environmental protection than the existing state-based liability international framework, reflecting the “common heritage of mankind” principle in theory, with accompanying procedural protection strategies. 

The Role of Enforcement

Research details that in order for regulation of the commons — at local and global levels — to be effective, it must be rooted in adequate enforcement. For example, in a discussion of the Marine Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, it was argued that “ideally, a central international governing authority would apply the same policies and rules to all countries activities’ in the ABNJ”, which would “likely produce more coherent and consistent results than a Paris-style system of each country formulating its own policies and submitting them to a central authority for review”. It was further highlighted however that hybrid governance models, or smaller, regional, authorities are also effective when they include strong reporting and enforcement requirements. Similar results were obtained in research by Helen Ross and James Innes on cooperative management of the Great Barrier Reef, where they found that “for a range of factors that we have identified as necessary to successful co-management in the context of the Great Barrier Reef, we advocate treating the non-negotiable ‘givens’ as parameters, outlining a flexible shared space where common interests can be developed”. Research of another commons, outer space, showed that top-down regulations, combined with monitoring and sanction mechanisms, could ensure greater sustainability in orbit.

Where clear and non-discriminatory rules facilitate convergence towards cooperative behaviour, enforcement mechanisms can dissuade “free-riding”. Ecocide law is reflective of this framework, as the crime would not neglect the role of adaptive, community-oriented environmental governance, while providing clear and enforceable rules for key decision-makers. 

Substantively, ecocide law under the Rome Statute could provide clear parameters and homogenised rules of environmental protection to the international community. Procedurally, national, regional and international levels of an ecocide crime could provide the multi-spectred and networked enforceability, and prevention of impunity, that effective environmental protection, and consequently protection of all our human rights, requires. 

The place of criminal law in tackling the climate and ecological crises is a key question. More and more stakeholders see the merit of a legal parameter, and criminal law is the guarantor of social values deemed essential to the collective. An intentionally evolving legal discipline that follows changes in society, encompassing the social needs of the time and reflecting new challenges. This now includes the inescapable emergence of the issue of the environment and the narrative we sustain globally around it. To this effect, terminology and its associated narrative is central to the ecocide debate, most prominently in the 2021 definition. As Daryl Robinson has argued, “the argument in favour of ‘ecocide’ [etymologically] is that it is striking: it is the proposed crime of ‘ecocide’ that has stirred public and political interest and passion, whereas anodyne labels have not. The expressive function of a label is a legitimate consideration; an important function of criminal law is ‘message’.”

Legal history denotes a traditional reliance on criminal law by a sovereign state as a primary and effective way to solve numerous social, political and economic problems. As Andrew Ashworth has highlighted, criminal law’s boundaries are “historically contingent” – depending not on the product of principled inquiry or consistent application of a given set of criteria, but the fortune of successive governments, campaigns in the media and the activities of various pressure groups. 

With increasing engagement and support at governmental, academic and grassroots levels, ecocide law stands to promote a new era of environmental governance: one that can provide a useful cross-sector outer-boundary through which to examine business, prevent the most destructive projects, and invoke investment and action in more sustainable practices. It also reflects a deeper respect of nature and our duties as its steward for future generations.

Criminal law has been historically used to guide societies, protecting our most fundamental rights and ensuring social order. The International Criminal Court was devised with the understanding that some offences are so grave their criminalisation warrants further international protection and a greater emphasis on transboundary cooperation on the world’s most serious crimes. In the face of catastrophic climate and ecological breakdown, and recent estimates of a near guaranteed warming close to two degrees, ongoing hesitations and protracted deliberations are no longer possible. We need exacting legal sanctions that punish individuals who threaten disruption of our most vital life systems: if not from an ecological appreciation of our environment and its species, but from an anthropocentric lens regarding the delivery of our most basic human rights. 

As the Rome Statute professes in its preamble, its ambit is to protect the peace and security of international society from the gravest crimes that “shock the conscience of humanity”, for present and future generations. It is intuitively clear that significant environmental harms threaten not only environmental rights but also all other human rights, for present and future generations. There is a compelling argument that this consideration should be transposed into legal rules and enforcement. 

We would be wise to reflect on the potential consequences of further exploitation of nature and put limits in place to ensure any developments no longer reflect a one-sided relationship. Protecting our planetary boundaries protects our peace and security, and the route to action in this regard is enforceable law, for people and nature, on Earth and in space.

Ecocide may be conceived as the missing crime against peace.

Anna Maddrick is a Climate Adviser at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Vanuatu to the United Nations, New York, and PhD student at the University of Bologna, focusing on ecocide law.

The post Our Common Heritage: the Role of Ecocide Law appeared first on eco-nnect.

Petrine McCrohan is a wild soul. 

For her, a wild soul allows the mystery of their inner world to truly meet their external world, our environment. Through her work, Petrine facilitates individuals to meet their environment, supporting this interaction through nature-based activities with intention. Petrine runs Wild Soul Experiences across Australia, together with her facilitation partner Terry Hewett. The focus for both Petrine and Terry is to reconnect people with their inner wisdom through a powerful shared and supported experience in the Australian landscape, which is steeped in natural history and Ancient Aboriginal wisdom. This connection with landscape has been with Petrine throughout her life.

“I felt this connection as a child on my grandfather’s farm, but I wasn’t cognisant of it. But I think that’s where my unconscious goes back to, and as I’ve become more cognisant of it, it has become so important, because that’s what helped me since my childhood. Nature and animals.”

So when did she become cognisant of her connection with landscapes?

“I think when I was working with Aboriginal people on Country, because for them the dream state and having things come to you in dream, and for that to be reflected in landscape and songs and ritual, to them that’s life, there’s nothing unusual about that. I’ll give you an example. I was driving on the Great Northern Highway, past a sign that said Mimbi Caves, and I was fascinated by that, I thought what is that? And I kept driving past that sign and within a few months I had a dream that I was in a cave system, and I was with a very tall Aboriginal woman, and she was in a uniform of some sort, and I went and told this dream to the community I was working with.”

At the time, Petrine was lecturing and working in cultural tourism. 

“The custodians of that particular part of the country, they went okay, we know who that is, we know the caves, that’s Mimbi Caves, and they told me the name of the woman I saw and explained she used to work there as a guide. It was all very matter of fact to them but I thought, woah, that’s wild.”

Wild experiences like this weren’t always a part of Petrine’s life. In 2000, she was living in Melbourne, experiencing the monotony that often defines people’s day to day life in a city.

“Over 20 years ago, I was out to dinner with a friend and I asked him, ‘is this it?’ I was standing in a shop, day after day, earning money to live, which meant more days standing in the same shop earning more money. I guess I wanted more from my life. But it actually goes back a bit further. Have you ever heard of the Mungo Man?”

The Mungo Man is the name given to the remains of an Aboriginal man found near Mungo in New South Wales. Petrine was friends with the daughter of Jim Bowler, an Australian geomorphologist — an ancient lakes expert — who discovered human remains at Lake Mungo in 1969, while doing fieldwork for his PhD at the Australian National University.

“During his research Jim came across the bones of what turned out to be an indigenous woman they called Lady Mungo, and then five years later, while still exploring the area, Jim came across an entire skeleton. They later worked out that the man that once used this skeleton had been covered in ochre, and the way he was buried signified some kind of ritual, the oldest record of such a practice. When they dated the bones, it pushed back the amount of time that science believed Aboriginals had been living on this land. 

“Anyway, Jim and his daughter took me to Mungo, and we were walking through the sand dunes with an Aboriginal woman, and when we were walking near the spot Jim discovered that skeleton, the woman fell to the ground and started wailing. And I froze, I didn’t know what to do, I hadn’t experienced anything in my life that could inform a response. So I just sat down beside her, not touching her, just sitting there, being there. After a while she told me her story: she was one of the traditional owners of that land, a Mutthi Mutthi elder, a direct descendant of the Mungo Man, and the excavation of his body brought a lot of pain to her community.

“I felt so ignorant in that moment. It felt like I had been living in this cultural bubble, and that feeling stayed with me. I guess it broke the bubble in a way, it changed me, and slowly Melbourne stopped satisfying me, and finally one day I was eating dinner with my friend and I asked, ‘is this it?’ And the reality was that it was, that was what my life amounted to in that moment, but I didn’t want it to, so I needed to change it, and I felt that I could, I could learn, and not just through books, but through experiencing an entirely different way of life.”

Petrine decided to leave Melbourne. Following a non-rational, intuitive process, she ended up in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. She initially found work, two hours each week, as a Personal Growth facilitator in the Bachelor of Counselling degree at the local university, eventually coordinating the entire program. After a year, she left this role and started training as a tour guide. It was through this period that the seed of Wild Soul Experiences began to root.

“I first had the idea of bridging the internal and external landscapes in Melbourne, back in the late 90s, through my understanding of astrology and mythology and symbolism and Jung and all of what I’d studied. It was then that I first thought how nature is reflecting our internal reality, which is why I wanted to become a tour guide, so I could explore the landscape. And when I was training to be a tour guide, I went down through a cave system, and the non-indigenous guide was talking about this ancient painting and I had a full on bodily reaction, I couldn’t stand there, I had to move away, I knew something was going on. That’s how I got into being a cultural tourism lecturer, because one thing led to another and I was in someone’s office and asking why non-indigenous people are interpreting and going to these sites, why aren’t Aboriginal people doing that, and there was an Aboriginal man in the room who asked if I would be interested in being a cultural tourism lecturer. I said ‘sure’.

“Eventually I found the traditional owner, a Bunuba Elder named Dillon, and we eventually worked together, and he eventually interpreted that site with his young people. We developed a tour there. He said to me the ancestors told me to do that, they gave me that bodily sensation, and then everything that happened as a result of that was the ancestors telling me that I had to connect with Dillon, so that I could then help him and his family build a tour that took people through that cave. And it’s actually helped to stop non-indigenous people, or anybody for that matter, apart from the people who were supposed to be doing it, from interpreting any of the sacred sites. But that was another key experience of connecting with the powers of mystery. I met mystery and the mystery of what can happen if you follow these feelings.”

Through her work as a lecturer, and then after, when she left this position and worked more directly with communities as a consultant and facilitator, Petrine deepened her relationship with Aboriginal people and their wisdom of relating to landscape.

“There is such a depth of culture, which is focused on the interconnectedness between the nature of dreams, of stories, of the dreamtime, of the shape of a river. They’d take me to a place where there were these egg-shaped rocks on top of each other, and to anyone else, like to a tourist passing by, they’d think this was just a bunch of rocks. The Elders would take me there — and this is just an example — they’d say these are the eggs of the serpent that comes down this river, and you just go of course they are, they are eggs, it was like a nest, and that kind of thing happened frequently. And then they’d take me to the meeting places for different tribes, and it would be at that place they wouldn’t war and where they’d all come together and they’d do things, they’d exchange ideas, maybe they’d talk about intermarriage, they’d trade, they’d do all of that. And you could feel it in the landscape, you could feel these energies because people were doing the same things in the same spot for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, and there’s an energy that gets embedded there, and that’s what they were constantly trying to teach us, these places are sacred because something was done here over and over again.”

After working as a lecturer, Petrine started freelancing as a consultant and facilitator, often with Stepwise, who developed the Stepping Stones facilitation method to support Aboriginal communities to create their own businesses in their way. This work connected Petrine with the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre (KALACC), who she has been working closely with for over 10 years. KALACC exists “to assist and promote the ceremonies, songs and dance of Kimberley Aboriginal people, to encourage and strengthen their social, cultural and legal values and ensure their traditions a place in Australian society.” All of the projects Petrine worked on with KALACC and Stepwise were centred in the cultural framework and worldview of the communities she worked with, from the Indian Ocean on the Kimberley coast, across to the Tanami Desert in central Australia. Petrine was based in Broome until the end of 2019, when she felt to share more time with her Mother in Corryong, Victoria. Again led by her intuition, Petrine was guided to enjoy her Mother’s presence through the unforeseen last months of her life. 

This time of grief coincided with the pandemic, which gave Petrine time to reflect on the many experiences of her life, and the beliefs that fuelled her journey. She was drawn back to the feeling to bridge the internal and external landscapes, focusing on the relationship individuals share with their environment. She began reading books by Bill Plotkin, a depth psychologist focused on the relationship between the human psyche and its natural environment.

“His ideas have informed a lot of what I do, as well as working with Elders on Country. Because a lot of the ideas around the nature-based map of the psyche are not new, indigenous people and spiritual traditions have been doing it for a very long time. Indigenous ways of thinking is that there is a spirit in everything, there’s spirit in the landscape, the landscape holds spirits, it holds knowledge, it holds us, it holds everything. And Bill Plotkin’s ideas were in resonance with the human psyche being involved with nature, that nature is part of our nature, and one reflects the other. And so he goes into an enormous amount of detail in a lot of his books.”

Petrine was inspired. Lockdown was over and, just like she felt 20 years earlier, she was drawn to connect with the Kimberley landscape. This is how she connected with the co-facilitator of the Wild Soul Experiences, Terry Hewett.

“Terry runs Adventure Out in the East Kimberley. I’d met him a couple of times. Originally I went to talk to him about working on an indigenous business in the local community, Doon Doon, just south of Kununurra. And he knew I had worked with this community, he knew I had a connection, I’d done the Stepping Stones with him years before. And so that was it, that was the beginning, I went to Terry and said, ‘I’m here, I’d love to go out on a walk’, and he said ‘yes by all means come out’. And as we walked, we talked, we shared, and it was almost like by being out there in that wilderness area, it started to evoke this impulse to do something with him, because I started to describe what I’d been through and he too saw the wilderness as a temple, as something really special and sacred. Anyway, it really came out of that meeting and from then I started to do some research into the nature-based map of psyche, I started reading and writing and mapping out my own booklet, and it just went from there.”

In 2022, Petrine and Terry guided their first Wild Soul Experience.

“I hold space for people to invite themselves into their own process, and I create a symbolic representation of that: I gather some items from the natural world or draw a little circle or create a little altar. And we sit on the Earth and set an intention, what’s the intention of today, why are we all here? And people speak to that if they feel too, and then we invite them to walk. People go off and do their thing. The whole idea is to move out of your head and to allow your senses to operate as strongly as they can in the environment. And then we return to the group and we usually sit in a circle and we share, ‘this is what happened to me’. 

“I have certain activities that I run to give a bit of structure in between the walks, I have little rituals that I do at different moments. Like every morning I do dreams, who’s had a dream, let’s have a look at any dreams that have come through. There’s also journalling, there’s artwork, there’s active imagination activities. And during their walk, participants can sit, they can write, they can journal, whatever feels right in the moment. And after, when we reflect on the experience as a group, when people are speaking, there’s no need to say anything to them, we don’t interpret. That’s one thing I find really interesting in the world that we live in, how everyone feels compelled to jump in and fix things or say ‘oh I’m sad to hear that’. And in my view the whole power of the interaction is being present for it, to be in the circle with that person and what they are saying. In the Wild Soul Experiences, it’s important to allow Country to speak, and to reflect on that interaction with the participants.

“Basically the whole intention of Wild Soul Experiences is to uncover access points to the unconscious mind, so that people can take away tools to interact with the external and the internal world in their daily lives. Because if we’re not doing this, if we’re not interacting with the external and the internal at any given moment, we’re dissociating.

“I’ve got this thing with feathers, feathers often arrive in my path, and it’s just something I notice, the feathers are there for me, it’s always the same colour, and it’s not all the time, it’s in particular moments. So when I see the feather I think what was happening in my body and what was I thinking about at the time that I saw that feather? It’s synchronistic, it’s the internal psyche and the external world coming together, there’s less of a gap with the unconscious. Because when we develop a relationship with the unconscious, we develop a sense of wholeness, and disperse with the idea of perfection and growth. I’m so over growth, I’m done growth. I’m into depth. 

“I see the unconscious as something we need to drill down into. We’ve got to get to the bottom of things. This whole growth thing, I’m going to do this so that I can do some more personal growth, it’s like going to exercise classes. If that’s all you can do, exercise classes are great, they’re wonderful, they’ve been really helpful for me, but I do a lot of nature work as well. I’m trying to get people away from this kind of personal growth culture of keeping fit. There’s a depth there, an unconscious mind. You cannot have a full life without a relationship with your unconscious mind, and that’s the way I see the natural world, it is a reflection of our unconscious. If I choose to listen to it, to nature, it always provides me with information about what’s going on unconsciously.”

It’s a courageous and powerful way to live, not seeing a separation with nature and listening to our environment and all it has to teach us. It has certainly guided Petrine to experience the beauty, meaning and mystery embedded in life.

Anton Rivette is a writer and photographer. He leads storytelling at eco-nnect.

You might also like this story: The Humble Way

The post The Wild Soul appeared first on eco-nnect.

It is with a heavy heart that I again sit down to write about Marco Temporal and the laws surrounding the demarcation of Indigenous Territories in Brazil, particularly PL 2903.

We first published a story in July, chronicling Marco Temporal’s long history in Brazil’s political and legislative systems. In October, we returned to the topic after the Supreme Court’s decision on Marco Temporal in September, which was swiftly followed by the Senate’s approval of PL 2903. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva then exercised presidential veto powers on 47 provisions of PL 2903 that removed protections of Indigenous Territories, allowed the revocation of Territories already demarcated, and made the demarcation of new Territories near impossible.

Two weeks ago, on December 14, the Federal Congress of Brazil, led by the ruralist caucus representing agribusiness and mining interests, voted to reject the President’s veto, bringing into law 41 of the previously disapproved provisions of PL 2903, including those focused on Marco Temporal. An absolute majority is required to reject a presidential veto, and this was achieved with Congress voting 321 in favour and 137 against, which was followed by a vote in the Senate with 53 in favour and 19 against.

The new law — known as 14.701/2023 — contains several measures that have been labelled “anti-Indigenous” and that NGO Survival International stated are “the most serious and vicious attack on Indigenous rights in decades”. These include permitting non-Indigenous occupants of Indigenous Territories — including illegal loggers and miners — to remain there until the territory is demarcated; enabling a loophole that allows mining, the installation of military equipment, and construction of roads on Indigenous Territories without prior consultation of the Indigenous population or the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI); and the immediate nullification of Indigenous Territories that currently do not comply with the new laws.

In an article published on December 15, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) stated the new law is “legislated genocide” and that they will file a Direct Action of Unconstitutionality (ADI) with the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil to request the annulment of law 14.701/2023. Dinamam Tuxá, the Executive Coordinator of APIB, explained that until the ADI is ruled upon by Supreme Court Justices, the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil will remain in a vulnerable position. Congresswoman Célia Xakriabá stated in Congress that “the overturning of these vetoes, which are so crucial, is not only a defeat for Brazil but for all of humanity.”

We agree, which is why we continue to follow this story. It is crucial to the future of our world that we continue to put pressure on the people who hold power within the political and legislative systems of Brazil to protect the Amazon rain forest, as well as all of the nation’s precious ecosystems.

Anton Rivette is a writer and photographer. He leads storytelling at eco-nnect.

The post The Ongoing Struggle Against Marco Temporal appeared first on eco-nnect.

In July, we published a story on the Marco Temporal thesis, a political argument that was first articulated among the 19 conditions of the Raposa-Serra do Sol judgement in 2009 in the Supreme Court of Brazil. These conditions, called “institutional safeguards“, gave Brazilian states the right to be involved in the demarcation process of Indigenous territories.

The discussion of Marco Temporal relates to Indigenous Rights to land, as referenced within the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil, and specifically the land they “traditionally occupy”. The Raposa-Serra do Sol judgement arose from the tensions between the different perceptions of the territory of Raposa-Serra do Sol — between Indigenous Peoples, rice producers, farmers and miners, as well as the State and Federal Governments — and this necessitated a specific articulation of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the laws that uphold them. The thesis can be found in the judgement, and is articulated in full in our aforementioned story.

The Marco Temporal thesis is a shift from the belief that the Rights of Indigenous Peoples predate the conception of the Brazilian State, fixing the date of occupation to the Constitution. Unfortunately the attempt to create clarity generated doubt and confusion around the demarcation of Indigenous territories in Brazil, exemplified by a dispute over the Ibirama-Laklãnõ Indigenous Territory between the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI) and the Foundation for Technological Support to the Environment (FATMA) in Santa Catarina, which led to another case in the Supreme Court in 2016. This case had a “general repercussion” unanimously recognised by the Supreme Court on April 11 2019, meaning its judgement — referred to as Extraordinary Appeal 1,017,365 — would act as a precedent for all cases involving the demarcation of Indigenous territories at all levels of the Brazilian judicial system.

The development of this case occurred alongside the progression of Bill (PL) 490/2007. The Bill, filed by the Federal Deputy of Mato Grasso Homero Pereira in 2007, was archived and unarchived three times until June 23 2021, when PL 490 was approved by the Constitution and Justice Committee and moved into the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Federal Congress. The political process of PL 490 is connected to the legislative process of Marco Temporal, as both seek to change the legal interpretation of the Constitution, specifically the rules for demarcating Indigenous territories. The Bill’s reintroduction meant there were simultaneous processes focused on Indigenous territories in both the legislative and political systems of Brazil.

On September 9 2021, the Federal Supreme Court began its judgement of Extraordinary Appeal 1,017,365. Minister Edson Fachin, Rapporteur of the process, voted against Marco Temporal and the definition of the Raposa-Serra do Sol judgement, and its conditions, as precedent for future demarcations of Indigenous territories. The case adjourned for a week, recommencing on September 15 2021, when Minister Nunes Marques voted in favour of Marco Temporal. Minister Alexandre de Moraes was next to vote and asked to see the case records, once again delaying the process until June 7 2023, when he voted against the Marco Temporal thesis before proceedings were again halted, this time by Justice André Mendonça. This occurred a week after the Chamber of Deputies approved PL 490 on May 24, which led to a vote in the Federal Congress on May 30, with the Bill passing 283 votes to 155. The Bill thus entered into the Senate, where it was given a new number, PL 2903.

On August 30, the voting on Extraordinary Appeal 1,017,365 resumed in Brazil’s Supreme Court and André Mendonça voted in favour of Marco Temporal. The following day, Cristiano Zanin and Luís Roberto Barroso voted against, before the session was adjourned. Proceedings recommenced on September 20 and by the following morning, the remaining five judges had voted and the Marco Temporal thesis was finally declared unconstitutional, with nine judges against and two in favour.

Unfortunately this victory for Indigenous Peoples was short-lived, as the Federal Senate approved PL 2903 on September 27, with 43 votes in favour and 21 against. PL 2903 will uphold the vision of Marco Temporal for the demarcation of Indigenous territories by transferring the authority for land demarcation from Executive Power (or the President) to the legislative system. It will also allow any person to question demarcation procedures in any phase of the process, including those already approved; the construction of state infrastructure inside Indigenous territories without free, prior and informed consultation with the affected community; and will recognise the legitimacy of titles, possessions and domains taking place over traditional territories, thus increasing the possibility of land grabbing.

Since its approval, PL 2903 is in the hands of President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva who has 15 business days from the publication of the bill to decide on its approval or veto. Independent Senator Randolfe Rodrigues, emphasised the unconstitutionality of the bill, speaking of a possible pathway towards the rejection of PL 2903: “the text should be vetoed by President Lula. Even if the Nacional Congress overrides the presidential veto, the Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) will be convened again. That is why the Supreme Court exists, to be called upon when the Constitution is not respected.”

The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) has also called on President Lula to veto PL 2903, and Célia Xakriabá, Member of Brazil’s Federal Congress, initiated a petition to put pressure on the President. We stand with them with the hope that President Lula makes the necessary decision to veto PL 2903, to protect the environment and the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil.

Anton Rivette is a writer and photographer. He leads storytelling at eco-nnect.

The post The Fight for Territory in Brazil appeared first on eco-nnect.

Raposa-Serra do Sol, in the State of Roraima, in the north of Brazil, is a network of biomes locally known as lavrado. In this region, the lavrado encompass grasslands, steppe savannas, shrubs and patches of small forest, which are part of a delicate interconnected network of ecosystems that nourish and support what is often referred to as the Amazon. These ecosystems are sustained by a mostly humid climate, with two clear seasons: the wet from April to November; and the dry from December to March. During the wet months, seasonal lakes appear that connect to larger rivers, watercourses that act as barriers against fire. In dry years, during El Niño events, these once watery channels become corridors of fire.

Lavrados are largely protected in Brazil due to the demarcation of Indigenous territories — which encompass more than 46 percent of Roraima State — including Raposa-Serra do Sol, the Land of the Fox and Mountain of the Sun, which covers more than 1.7 million hectares. Raposa-Serra do Sol was signed into Brazilian law by President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva on April 15 2005. The land is along the border with Venezuela and Guyana, and is the home to approximately 58,000 inhabitants from nine different Indigenous communities: Macuxi, Wapichana, Taurepang, Ingarikó, Wai-Wai, Yanomami, Ye’kuana, Patamona, and Sapará. The way of life of these communities is focused on their environment, where they hunt, farm and fish.

The demarcation process emerged through community discussions in 1983, which developed into the Assemblies of Tuxauas and led to the formation of the Conselho Indígena de Roraima (Indigenous Council of Roraima, the CIR) in 1990. The CIR brought together people from Ingarikó, Macuxi, Patamona, Sapará, Taurepang, Wai-Wai, Wapichana, Yanomami and Ye’kuana communities, who advocated for their collective and respective sovereignty. For the first two decades of operations, the CIR focused on the struggle for demarcation of the lands of the Ingaricó, Macuxi, Patamona, Tuarepang and Wapichana peoples, which spans nearly half of Roraima, and is one the highest areas of conservation of any State in the Brazilian Amazon.

While this is a story of the symbiotic relationship between the Indigenous Peoples and their land, it is also a story of the way this land, and how land more generally, is perceived through an economic and political lens by both the Brazilian and international community.

Raposa-Serra do Sol is rich in biodiversity — and cultural significance to the people who have long called it home — and abundant in so called natural resources: deposits of gold, diamond, titanium, amethyst, kaolin, zinc, copper, niobium, cassiterite, crystal, diatomite, barite, molybdenum, niobium, limestone, mineral water and possibly, although not confirmed, oil.

The long resistance of the Indigenous Peoples of Raposa-Serra do Sol is exemplified by the well-documented interest in the neighbouring Yanomami territory by opportunistic miners.

The invasion of miners through Yanomami territory began after the fall of Brazil’s lengthy military dictatorship. The Federal Government of the dictatorship had encouraged the belief that the Amazon will bring economic development to Brazil. Advertising in 1972 claimed that the Amazon is where “land is cheap and your farm can have all the pasture your cattle need.” This claim was aided by tax incentives and financing to support those seeking this proposed opportunity.

Propelled by the discovery of gold at the base of Serra Pelada, in the State of Pará, a mining rush swept through the north of Brazil into Yanomami territory. Fuelled by personal ambition, miners were emboldened by the belief that Brazilian society would be strengthened by the extraction of the natural resources supposedly offered by the Amazon rain forest. 40,000 miners sought gold and cassiterite in Yanomami territory, viewing the Yanomami people as obstacles to overcome along the path toward fortune.

In the town of Saúde, in the State of Bahia, a young Lieutenant in the Brazilian Army, Jair Bolsonaro, prospected for gold while on holiday during his active service. His superiors received word of this holiday — which he enjoyed with three lieutenants and two paratrooper sergeants — leading to an internal evaluation that labelled the young Bolsonaro as having “excessive ambition”. This may have been true — Bolsonaro’s ambition was evident when he left the army to begin his long political career — but it also reflected the view that mining equated to wealth, both personal and collective, which was encouraged by the Brazilian government and was gaining more popularity in Brazilian society. A 1987 survey by Brazilian anthropologists found that 30 percent of Indigenous territories had experienced entry by independent miners and 70 percent by mining companies.

As miners established themselves on Yanomami territory, more and more violence was directed toward Yanomami people, leading to the death of around twenty percent of their population over seven years. Yanomami spiritual and political leader Davi Kopenawa, along with Survival International and the Comissão Pró-Yanomami (CCPY), led an international campaign for the demarcation and protection of Yanomami territory through the Interministerial Decree nº 160 on September 13 1988, which declared 8,216,925 hectares of land as the permanent possession of the Yanomami People.

The Decree was issued in the lead-up to the ratification of the new Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil, which guaranteed the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by articulating the legitimacy of the Brazilian State to legislate over them. This was achieved through Chapter VIII, and specifically Article 231, which defines Indigenous territory as land “traditionally occupied…which they live on a permanent basis…used for their productive activities, those indispensable to the preservation of the environmental resources necessary for their well-being and for their physical and cultural reproduction, according to their uses, customs and traditions”. Article 231 articulated the Brazilian State will demarcate, protect and ensure respect for Indigenous territories; that Indigenous Peoples will have exclusive use of the resources emanating from the soil, rivers and lakes existing within their territories; that the minerals below their territories can only be prospected and mined with the authorisation of the National Congress; that the removal of Indigenous Peoples from their land is forbidden except by the National Congress (in case of a catastrophe, an epidemic or in the interest of the sovereignty of Brazil); and any act with a view to occupation, domain or possession of their lands is “null and void”, unless it was accomplished with “relevant public interest” of the Brazilian State and through a supplementary law. Article 232 gave the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil the right to sue to defend their rights and interests.

The Yanomami’s submission of Decree nº 160, with support of the Rights contained within the new Constitution, inspired a long process that involved significant opposition, which included Members of Congress from Roraima filing a lawsuit against the process, and the Governor of the State of Amazonas threatening to send state police to shoot any Fondazione Nazionale dell’Indio (FUNAI) agent trying to demarcate the territory. Jair Bolsonaro, now the Federal Deputy for Rio de Janeiro, asked the Federal Congress, “that area is the richest in the country, why set up an indigenous reserve there?” He also claimed the Yanomami were a threat to national security and could start a separatist movement. This echoed the words of Sertanista Orlando Villas-Bôas, who, in the 1970s, articulated the belief that the creation of Indigenous reserves in border areas were a risk to the integrity of the Brazilian territory and that missionaries had the covert goal of establishing independent or semi-independent bodies that would fragment the Brazilian Government’s control of the Amazon. Despite these objections, the Decree nº 160 was finally passed into Brazilian law in 1992 and the many miners operating in Yanomami Territory were temporarily expelled.

Throughout this period, the Indigenous Peoples of Raposa-Serra do Sol were also struggling with the incursions of miners, as well as those of cattle breeders, rice producers and the Brazilian Army — who built barracks in the area and carried out training procedures near the border with Guyana. Indigenous land was stolen or destroyed, and many Indigenous Peoples suffered through physical attacks. These tensions were partly inspired by the advancement of the demarcation process of Raposa-Serra do Sol, through mapping conducted by FUNAI and the ratification of the territory by President Lula da Silva through Decree 534/2005, which led to the Federal Government trying to remove the remaining non-Indigenous occupants, who resisted, burning bridges and attacking community centres, leading to violent confrontations that culminated in the shooting of ten Indigenous people on May 5 2008.

As this process was conducted by Federal bodies, the State Government of Roraima, encouraged by local landowners reluctant to relinquish control of these lands, attempted to stop the demarcation of Raposa-Serra do Sol. The State Government filed an injunction alleging “FUNAI has promoted the compensation and removal of the non-indigenous settlers since 2002.” The injunction articulates the process of removal, and the subsequent compensation for the “non-Indigenous settlers”, and how “a group of 40 to 50 families, under the leadership of 8 large-scale rice growing business owners, do not accept the government’s offers and refuse to leave the location.” The injunction meant that the settlers could not be removed until legal actions dealing with the demarcation of Raposa-Serra do Sol were resolved, which required the intervention of the Brazilian Supreme Court, who initially set August 27 2008 as the date of its ruling.

The first and only judge to vote on August 27, Carlos Ayres Britto, voted in favour of the demarcation, stating the Indigenous Peoples of Raposa-Serra do Sol are the original and continuous occupants of the territory, and the area of land outlined by FUNAI needed to be maintained to ensure these communities could maintain their way of life. The ruling was then postponed after one of the justices, Carlos Alberto Menezes Direito, asked for more time to further examine the case. The second session of the judgement occurred on December 10, with another seven justices voting in favour of Raposa-Serra do Sol, until Minster Marco Aurélio de Mello requested to review the case further. Finally, on March 19 2009, the Supreme Court confirmed the validity of Raposa-Serra do Sol, with 10 justices voting in favour and only Minister de Mello voting against.

The judgement was given with 19 conditions, called “institutional safeguards“, which gave Brazilian states the right to be involved in demarcation processes, and could affect the way Indigenous territories would be approved in the future. Among the 19 conditions of the Raposa-Serra do Sol judgement was the first legal articulation of the Temporal Framework, often referred to as the “time frame”, or Marco Temporal.

The discussion of Marco Temporal relates to Indigenous Rights to land, as referenced within the Constitution, and specifically the land they “traditionally occupy”. Throughout the case there was significant discussion around the timeless connection between Indigenous Peoples and the land that defines their being, and how the land and Indigenous Peoples are interconnected. Yet as the case arose from the tensions between the different perceptions of the disputed territory — of the Indigenous Peoples, rice producers, farmers and miners, as well as the State and Federal Governments — a specific articulation of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the laws that uphold them, was necessary. For the sake of specificity, I quote from the judgement (albeit a translation of the judgement) and the words of Minister Carlos Alberto Menezes Direito:

“In the first place, indigenous lands are lands occupied by Indians. They are not lands that they occupied in times gone by and no longer occupy; they are not lands that they occupied up to a certain date and no longer occupy. They are lands occupied by the Indians when the 1988 Constitution was promulgated.

“The landmark for determining indigenous occupation (5/10/1988) derives from the very constitutional system of protecting the rights of Indians, which could not fail to cover all the indigenous lands existing when the Constitution was promulgated, under penalty of giving rise to the unlawful dispossession of Indians by non-Indians after it came into force. This even occurred after the 1946 Constitution, even though it guaranteed their right over their lands… The correct extension of the protection initiated by the 1988 Constitution requires, therefore, that the presence of Indians be verified on the date of its promulgation… Occupation is, therefore, a fact to be verified.

“Secondly, indigenous lands are lands traditionally occupied by Indians. For José Afonso da Silva, so often cited in this process, contrary to what prevailed in previous Constitutions, the adverb ‘traditionally’ should not be understood as referring to an occupation since more than prehistoric times, an immemorial occupation:

“‘Traditionally occupied lands’ does not reveal a temporal relationship. If we refer to the Charter of 1 April 1680, which recognised that the Indians had the land where they are just like the land they occupied in the hinterland, we will see that the expression traditionally occupied does not mean immemorial occupation. It does not mean, therefore, lands immemorially occupied, i.e. lands that they would have been occupying since remote times that have already been lost to memory and, thus, only these would be their lands’. 

“The concept indicates mode of occupation, the way in which the Indians relate to the land. It is a new angle on the previous Constitutions which, if on the one hand justifies the geographical extension of the rights to be recognised, on the other hand may mean the requirement that occupation by the Indians must be in accordance with the culture and ‘modus vivendi’ which it is wished to preserve…

“‘Lands which Indians traditionally occupy’ are, of course, lands which the Indians have occupied for some time at the time of the promulgation of the Constitution. It is a question of both a constant presence and persistence on these lands. Lands that are eventually abandoned do not lend themselves to classification as indigenous lands, as already stated in Precedent no. 650 of this Federal Supreme Court. A well-defined presence in space over a certain period of time and a persistence of that presence, which makes permanent habitation another fact to be verified…

“I propose, therefore, that we adopt as the constitutional criterion not the theory of indigenato, but that of the indigenous fact. The assessment of the indigenous fact on 5th October 1988 involves a choice that gives prestige to legal security and avoids the practical difficulties of an immemorial investigation of indigenous occupation. But permanent dwelling is not the only parameter to be used in the identification of indigenous lands. In truth, it is the parameter for identifying the base or nucleus of occupation of indigenous lands, from which the other expressions of that occupation must manifest themselves.”

These words are what people refer to as the Marco Temporal thesis. It is a shift from the indigenato theory — the belief that the Rights of Indigenous Peoples predate the conception of the Brazilian State — to “indigenous fact” — fixing the date of occupation to the Constitution — an attempt to create clarity between the different perceptions of the demarcation of Indigenous territories in Brazil. Minister Gilmar Mendes described the judgement and its conditions:

“We fixed a true statute that should be applied not only to the case of Raposa-Serra do Sol, but also to the other demarcation processes, including ongoing processes. The court established, for example, that areas already demarcated will no longer be subject to revision, whether after or before the Constitution. With this, we put an end to a large number of controversies and some expansionist impulses”.

The judgement led to the demarcation of Raposa-Serra do Sol and the eviction of the non-Indigenous occupants. While a decision by the Supreme Court does not define future decisions, they are commonly used to frame similar cases, and after the initial relief of Raposa-Serra do Sol finally being demarcated, fears emerged with how the 19 conditions would influence the Rights of Indigenous Peoples across Brazil. In a letter addressed to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the peoples of Raposa-Serra do Sol, along with the Indigenous Council of Roraima, expressed their “concern” with the Supreme Court’s judgement:

“The Supreme Court did not confine itself to endorsing the Raposa demarcation, but it went further to interpret and define – if not ‘redefine’ – the rights of indigenous peoples as currently affirmed in Article 231 of the Brazilian federal Constitution. Among other things, the Supreme Court placed numerous limitations on the rights of indigenous peoples to their property. In many ways those rights are now unrecognizable when compared to their growing meaning and application under Brazilian law”.

In the “Special Report on the Situation of Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil“, James Anaya, the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, provided the UN’s perspective on the situation:

“Article 27 of the United Nations Declaration affirms the right of indigenous peoples to ‘own, use, develop and control the lands, territories and resources’ they traditionally occupy; for its part, ILO Convention 169 declares in its article 14, ‘The rights of ownership and possession of the peoples concerned over the lands which they traditionally occupy shall be recognized.’ In light of these international standards, to which Brazil has committed, indigenous peoples must effectively enjoy rights over their lands that are the equivalent of ownership, and the State’s property interest in indigenous lands must operate only as a means of protection and not as a means of interference with indigenous control. Additionally, both under the Declaration (arts. 19, 30, 32) and ILO Convention 169 (arts. 6, 15.2), indigenous peoples have the right to be consulted on any decision affecting them with the objective of achieving their agreement or consent, including with regard to the exploitation of subsurface resources owned by the State or the establishment of military installations. Whatever the validity or ultimate disposition of the 19 conditions articulated by the Supreme Federal Tribunal, administrative, legislative and military authorities should exercise their powers in relation to indigenous lands in a manner consistent with these international norms. Further, the enactment of domestic legislation or administrative regulations to implement these standards is desirable.”

Through this period, discussion around the Belo Monte Hydroelectric Power Plant had reignited. Initially proposed in 1970s, the Plant was to be built in the state of Pará on the Xingu River, and after more than 40 years of the mappings, and considerable backlash from Indigenous Peoples and NGOs, an 18-member consortium called Norte Energia — comprising government-owned Eletrobrás and a handful of state pension and private investment funds — won an auction in 2010 to begin construction. The Federal Court suspended the licence citing concerns of “irreparable damage” to the environment and the belief the project was unconstitutional — specifically relating to Article 176 of the Federal Constitution and that the proposed dam was to be built on Indigenous territories. Discussions moved between the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), FUNAI, the representative bodies of the many affected Indigenous communities and the Brazilian Government, until President Lula da Silva signed a contract with Norte Energia on 26 August 2010. The Brazilian Government believed the project would maintain economic growth and would lift a proportion of the population from poverty, which relates to Article 231 of the Constitution and the Brazilian Government’s ability to possess Indigenous territory if done with “relevant public interest”. 

A federal court in Pará, suspended the commencement of construction as environmental requirements for the project had not been met. This was then overturned by Olindo Menezes, the President of the Federal Regional Court in Brasilia, a higher court than the one in Pará. Construction finally began but was quickly suspended, through a ruling by yet another judge, which was then overturned by the Supreme Court. Belo Monte was then constructed and directly impacted the Arara, Arawaté, Assurini, Curuaya, Juruna, Kayapó, Parakanã, Xicrin and Xipaya people. For the Arara and Juruna peoples of the Volta Grande do Xingu, the impacts were great, with almost 80% of the Xingu River in their lands diverted, completely transforming their territory while simultaneously affecting their economy, politics and culture.

In the background of this process, the Marco Temporal debate continued. Six requests for clarification of the Raposa-Serra do Sol decisions were made, which led the Attorney General of Brazil, through Ordinance 303, to state the conditions were mandatory for all processes of demarcation of Indigenous territories. Protests ensued throughout Brazil and the National Commission for Indigenous Policy (CNPI) asked the Brazilian Government to revoke the Attorney General’s Ordinance. This led to another trial in the Supreme Court, with the justices ruling that the Raposa-Serra do Sol decisions are “not binding on judges and courts when examining other cases relating to different indigenous lands” and the Raposa-Serra do Sol judgement “applies only to the land in question”. Despite this decision, the Attorney General reissued Ordinance 303. The Raposa-Serra do Sol case was then referenced in judgements on the Guyraroká, Limão Verde and Porquinhos territories, which were suspended or annulled.

These rulings, and the tension of the contrasting positions of the Attorney General and the Supreme Court, created greater ambiguity in the demarcation of Indigenous territories, which inspired the Government of President Michel Temer, in July 2017, to publish an official opinion on the matter, emphasising the Marco Temporal thesis, which Temer considered as “binding“. The Attorney General at the time, Grace Mendonça, offered her perspective:

“This opinion, now binding on the federal public administration, pays tribute to the guidelines established by the STF in the Raposa-Serra do Sol demarcation process, provides greater legal security and is aligned with an effort by the AGU to promote a reduction in litigation”.

FUNAI immediately reevaluated demarcation processes of Indigenous territories throughout Brazil, including those already submitted to the Ministry of Justice for approval. This was followed by the election of Jair Bolsonaro as President, who followed through with his campaign promise to not demarcate any new Indigenous territories. Bolsonaro, a champion of agribusiness and mining, actively pursued policies that threatened the Rights and lives of Indigenous Peoples, which led to current President Lula da Silva accusing his predecessor of “genocide” against Brazil’s Indigenous communities, particularly the Yanomami.

Despite all of these judgements and decisions, the debate surrounding Marco Temporal remains unresolved. This is due to an appeal by FUNAI to the Supreme Court in 2016 against the Foundation for Technological Support to the Environment (FATMA) in Santa Catarina, who previously filed an action for the repossession of the Ibirama-Laklãnõ Indigenous Territory in the State of Santa Catarina in 2009. This appeal had a “general repercussion” unanimously recognised by the Supreme Court on April 11 2019, meaning the judgement of this case — referred to as Extraordinary Appeal 1,017,365 — will act as a precedent for all cases involving the demarcation of Indigenous territories at all levels of the Brazilian judicial system.

The development of this case, and its ongoing delays, occurred alongside the progression of Bill (PL) 490/2007. The Bill, filed by the Federal Deputy of Mato Grasso Homero Pereira in 2007, has since received 13 additional points and has been archived and unarchived three times. PL 490 was approved on June 23 2021 by the Constitution and Justice Committee and moved into the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Federal Congress. The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) wrote a technical note summarising the intentions of PL 490:

“i) transfer the competence for the demarcation of Indigenous Lands from the Executive Power to the Legislative Power; ii) transform into Law the thesis of the temporal landmark, with the objective of making the demarcation of Indigenous Lands unviable; iii) allow the construction of highways, hydroelectric plants and other construction sites inside Indigenous Lands, without free, prior and informed consultation with the affected communities; iv) mitigate the difference between traditional indigenous land possession as stated in the Federal Constitution and private land possession under civil law, foreseeing that farmers may sign contracts with indigenous people to plant soybeans, raise cattle and even illegal gold-digging and mining sites, which violates the rights of Indigenous Peoples’  to the exclusive usufruct of demarcated lands and weakens the protection and demarcation of Indigenous Lands; v) authorize any person to question demarcation procedures in all phases of the process, including those already approved, causing legal insecurity; vi) recognize the legitimacy of titles, possessions, and domains taking place over areas of traditional occupation, as a means of favouring land grabbing; vii) revive dictatorial paradigms in the Brazilian legal system that were overcome by the Federal Constitution of 1988, such as the tutelary regime and assimilationism, which seek to acculturate Indigenous Peoples (within national standards), denying them the Right to Identity; viii) disregard and disrespect indigenous policy of non-contact with Indigenous Peoples in a situation of voluntary isolation by making it more flexible; ix) reformulate fundamental constitutional concepts of indigenous policy, such as the traditional nature of occupation, the original right and exclusive usufruct.”

The political process of PL 490 is connected to the legislative process of Marco Temporal, as both seek to change the legal interpretation of the Constitution, specifically the rules for demarcating Indigenous territories. The Bill’s reintroduction meant there were simultaneous processes focused on Indigenous territories in the legislative and political systems of Brazil.

On September 9 2021, the Federal Supreme Court began its judgement of Extraordinary Appeal 1,017,365. Minister Edson Fachin, Rapporteur of the process, voted against Marco Temporal and the definition of the Raposa-Serra do Sol judgement, and its conditions, as precedent for future demarcations of Indigenous territories. He offered his perspective when lodging his vote:

“It is necessary to recognise that the decision taken in Petition nº 3,388 (the Raposa-Serra do Sol case), far from achieving the desired pacification, brought about a real paralysis in the demarcation of indigenous lands in the country…with an intensification of conflicts and a significant worsening in the quality of life of Indians in Brazil… To say that Raposa-Serra do Sol is a precedent for the entire indigenous question is to make other indigenous ethnic groups unviable. It is to say that the solution given to the Macuxi is the same as that given to the Guarani. For the Xokleng, it would be the same for the Pataxó. Only those who, with all due respect, call everyone ‘Indian’ forget the more than 270 languages that make up Brazilian culture. And only he who pacifies the different and distinct ethnic groups can say that the solution must always be the same. Whoever does not see the difference does not promote equality.”

The case adjourned for a week, recommencing on September 15 2021. That morning, President Jair Bolsonaro offered his thoughts, “if this new time limit comes into existence, should the Supreme Court decide so, it will be a hard blow to our agribusiness, with almost catastrophic internal repercussions, but also abroad.” Hours later, Minister Nunes Marques voted in favour of Marco Temporal:

“It is necessary to bear in mind that the wording of the constitutional text clearly points in the direction that indigenous possession should exist in the year 1988, in traditional character. Possessions after 1988 cannot be considered traditional because this would imply not only recognition of indigenous rights to their lands, but also the right to unlimited expansion to new areas already definitively incorporated into the national real estate market.”

He felt that the Raposa-Serra do Sol judgement and conditions provided necessary clarity that should help settle future demarcations. Minister Alexandre de Moraes was next to vote and asked to see the case records, once again delaying the process.

In April this year, Supreme Court Justice Rosa Weber announced that the vote would resume on June 7. The Chamber of Deputies decision on PL 490 was also delayed, finally being approved on May 24, which led to a vote in the Federal Congress on May 30, with the Bill passing 283 votes to 155. The Bill thus enters into the Senate, where it has been given a new number, now known as PL 2903. On June 7 in the Supreme Court, Justice Alexandre de Moraes voted against the Marco Temporal thesis before proceedings were again halted, this time by Justice André Mendonça, who requested more time to analyse the case.

When casting his vote, Justice Alexandre de Moraes proposed alternative approaches to conflict caused by future demarcations. The first suggestion relates to what he called “prior indemnification“, where the Brazilian Government would compensate landowners of land traditionally occupied by Indigenous Peoples — only if there’s no evidence of illegal land seizure, physical conflict or legal disputes — on the date the Constitution was enacted. The second relates to the compensation of territories seized “in the public interest”, where the Brazilian Government would offer Indigenous Peoples an alternative territory to the one they intended to demarcate. Mauricio Terena, a legal coordinator for APIB believes this proposal does not support Indigenous Peoples, disconnecting them from their territory while potentially exacerbating current conflicts.

In response to the crisis created by the simultaneous votes in the Senate and the Supreme Court, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, José Francisco Calí Tzay, issued a statement condemning the Marco Temporal thesis and urging both the Supreme Court and the Federal Senate, as well as the Brazilian Government, “to guarantee historic reparations for Indigenous Peoples and prevent the perpetuation of further injustices.“

It is here that the situation surrounding Marco Temporal currently stands. This has been a long process where lives have been lost and even more threatened. It has led to devastation on a personal, cultural and environmental level.

While this article has largely focused on dates, bills and judgements, this reflects the reality of the situation, where the lives of individuals and communities, and the natural environment they nurture and protect — which sustains the entirety of life on our planet — has been reduced to a particular date and the political and legal arguments that support it. 

This is a story of sovereignty, a concept dating back to 1648 and the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War in Europe, and two treaties collectively known as the Peace of Westphalia. These treaties birthed the defining principle of the international nation state system that each state has exclusive rule over its determined territory. The specific parameters of the sovereignty of modern Brazil dates back to the Treaty of Tordesillas, an agreement between Portugal and Spain, Empires that stem from the Holy Roman Empire, which believes sovereignty comes from above, through divine right and the belief in a Catholic God. This belief was imposed on the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, despite their own traditions of sovereignty and spirituality, traditions that Article 231 of the Brazilian Constitution acknowledge and supposedly protect. While we are now speaking in terms of politics, bureaucracy and law, when we trace the roots of this system of thought and action, we are still discussing the different worldviews and the different conceptions of sovereignty for the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil and the settlers who call that territory home.

eco-nnect has been a proud part of an informal alliance of individuals and groups who have come together to support the situation in Brazil. The focus of this alliance has been a petition and a social media campaign to put pressure on the President of Brazil’s Federal Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco — who has the ability to block PL 2903 — while also reminding the Representatives of the Federal Senate and the Justices of the Supreme Court of the responsibility they currently hold. The situation is ongoing, so please support the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil; their important and inherent relationship with their territories; and the legal recognition of their sovereignty.

Anton Rivette is a writer and photographer. He leads storytelling at eco-nnect.

The post Indigenous Sovereignty: the contention of Marco Temporal appeared first on eco-nnect.