World Indigenous Peoples Day:the custodians of forests and biodiversity

August 9th is World Indigenous Peoples' Day.A reminder that reminds us of the importance of defending these peoples for their culture, their origins but also for our Planet.

She looks at the river, her black hair drips water onto her bare shoulders.The drops evaporate in the sun, one by one.“The forest, the river, the rain.The dead were buried with all their riches and the river was sacred.Yes, we once had riches,” he turns to me.“Once upon a time we had gold and abundance, then the Europeans arrived and took it away.”He remains silent for a while, then bends down to pick up a stone.“Not just gold. They took absolutely everything”.He runs a hand through his dark, short tufts, cut in the fashion of Western footballers, retrieves a pair of rubber boots and goes up the riverbank along an invisible path, entering the forest, that one, fortunately, it still belongs to him.He is an indigenous boy from Central America, who despite knowing the prevailing society he chose to live the identity and culture of his ancestors.

That everything spoken in a low voice goes far beyond what his people have physically endured over the centuries.That all today implies that the indigenous communities that have survived the colonial massacres, at the destruction of their lands and disease, have to deal with the social models and belief systems of the consumer society, which infiltrate their identities more or less openly, putting lifestyles and cultures into crisis of thousands of years.“I'm more afraid of Tiktok than poachers,” an elderly woman from the community confesses to me Quiche, in Guatemala.

If you know who you are you can fight to defend it, perhaps to the death, but you can fight.If you lose yourself you are already dead.And with you your people.

Unfortunately, in the poorest and most devastated areas of Latin America, it is not uncommon to come across skeletal and dehydrated kids with his eyes fixed on the screen of an old cell phone:they starve in front of Tiktok.Carbonated drinks and sweet or savory snacks, footballers' shirts and costume jewelery to put around your neck or in your hair become the dream of indigenous children and young people, often marginalized by their peers because they have another religion, speak another language and know how to fish, hunt, sing, tell stories, but have never learned to use a computer, drive a car, or simply dance in clubs and build concrete and brick houses. Consumer society sells illusions and Western culture discriminates against knowledge, causing age-old traditions to fester from within - with the substantial contribution, it must be said, of multinationals and drug traffickers.

"What do we have to do?We have given ourselves the rule that you cannot marry a non-indigenous person, because with this excuse they have cheated us and taken away lands and polluted our culture.But some of the young people, those who defend our rights the most, study outside, go to work outside and then fall in love with someone non-indigenous and then either they give up on love or they give up on themselves."

“We exchange bananas, plantains, yuca, fish for salt, oil and sugar, the only things we don't produce.But the laws of the market are yours.If we don't learn them you will destroy us, if we learn them it means that we accept that they are now in charge."

“I am proud to be indigenous, but I would like to travel, discover the world and then return and defend my land and my identity after knowing many others.Why can't I do it?”

I am alone some of the problems that many indigenous communities face, in search of a healthy relationship with globalized society, as well as having to survive in a predatory and violent world which continually threatens their forests, their seas, their lands and their resources.This is a very difficult complexity to unravel, because the predominant cultural models are Western ones and once you come into contact with them it is really difficult not to be overwhelmed by them.

Isolate yourself to survive

It is for this reason that some communities they decided to isolate themselves from the so-called "outside world", or to reduce contact with it to a minimum.The following have been defined, again according to our conceptual schemes, Indigenous Peoples in voluntary isolation and initial contact:“Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation and initial contact”.There are about two hundred peoples, ten thousand people in all, and are mainly found in the area ofAmazon, in India, Indonesia And Papua New Guinea.These are not uncontacted peoples who do not know of the existence of the rest of the world, but rather communities who have had contact, often violent, with the majority society and they decided to isolate themselves to protect themselves from it or to maintain occasional or intermittent relationships.For this reason, the use of the term "voluntary" also causes a lot of discussion, especially among indigenous communities:isolation is a reaction to society's pressure on indigenous territories and rights, it is therefore not a free choice but a question of survival.

These people keep their organizational and cultural models intact, their languages ​​and their habits of mobility, hunting and gathering.They almost always are nomads or semi-nomads, live by subsistence and pass down from generation to generation the ancestral traditions and ancient knowledge of the natural world, from which they obtain everything they need to feed themselves, dress, take care of themselves, move and live.I am inextricably linked to the territory: deforestation, mining, agricultural and industrial activities, pollution or alteration of the health of the land and habitats directly threaten their survival.The peoples of the Amazon rainforest, like the Mashco Piro in Peru, they are disappearing due to deforestation, which is now reaching even the most remote areas.In India, however, the case of the Shompen, which risk being annihilated because the Indian government wants it transform their island, Great Nicobar, in a huge city with a port, military base and various industrial centers.Isolation also leads them to be particularly fragile in the face of Western diseases, which as has already happened in the past can jeopardize the existence of entire civilisations.

The rights and importance of indigenous peoples

In addition to finding themselves in a highly vulnerable situation, isolated indigenous communities they do not share communication and relationship codes of the consumer society and cannot therefore defend their own rights directly.Fundamental in this regard would be the application of the many existing conventions and declarations that recognize the rights of these populations (International labor organization indigenous and tribal people convention, Convention of biological diversity, A declaration on the rights of indigenous people, Esczù Agreement) at the freedom, at the peace, at the safety, at theidentity and not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture.Equally important is to guarantee the integrity of their territories, as highlighted ten years ago Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, because there is a direct relationship between the self-determination of indigenous peoples and the right to land and resources.This concept it's worth even more for isolated peoples, because for them a field or a portion of a river or forest can be the only source of sustenance for numerous families, or a sacred and vital place for the very existence of the community.

Isolated peoples they are a minority of that just five percent of the world's population who belongs to indigenous communities and who protects, alone, more than eighty percent of the world's biodiversity. Yet, destroying the identity and existential models of these communities means destroying a part of our humanity and our world.Therefore World Indigenous Peoples' Day 2024, which is celebrated on August 9th, was dedicated to the communities in "Voluntary isolation and initial contact", to their role as guardians of forests and biodiversity and to theirs valuable contribution to the linguistic and cultural diversity of the planet.It is a strong signal that highlights the importance of listening to the voice, even if indirect, of these people and of stopping considering them as remnants of a nostalgic and exotic past destined to disappear, recognizing them instead for what they are: guardians of our present and examples of possible futures.

You ate, drank, consumed.You have burned, cut, polluted and now you are waging war and destroying each other.For years you have deafened us with your noisy machines and your indisputable truths.Now come and ask for help.All you have to do is listen to our voice for once.Listen to the voice of the peoples of the seas and forests.Because perhaps we have something to teach you too

Miranda, member of Kalinago

It is a reminder, yet another, ofvital importance to defend indigenous peoples and their right to self-determination.Whether they decide to live isolated or risk the complex relationship with the majority society, it is everyone's duty to respect their choices and to fight not in their place, but alongside them.