“The forest does not belong to us, it belongs to us all”

At a special event in London, Global Canopy and the Ostara Collective hosted a conversation bringing together three of the most respected Indigenous leaders and guardians of ancestral wisdom from Brazil and the Amazon with leading UK thinkers and scientists. 

With global forest loss at record levels, Ancestral Futures: Water, wealth and wisdom in a world on fire offered an opportunity to hear reflections on how humanity might restore balance and reimagine its path, helping build societies and economies that work in service of life.

Here is a collection of insights and provocations taken from the event.

“We need to be taught to see the world in another way.”

Kate Raworth, renegade economist, author of Doughnut Economics and co-founder of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab

“I wanted to study economics so that I could help change the world. But the economics that I was taught is deeply damaging. Rational economic man is the character who is placed at the heart of western economic models. He stands alone, he has money in his hand, he has ego in his heart, he has a calculator in his head. He hates work, he loves luxury and he has nature at his feet. He knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

“This is the model of humanity that we are taught. We value self-interest over altruism, we value competition over collaboration. This is capital, seeking its return from the Amazon, from the water, from the people.”

“This is not who we are, this is who we are taught to be. And we need to be taught to see the world in another way.”

“Today the land has been destroyed, the wetlands have been polluted and I feel angry.”

Davi Kopenawa Yanomami – shaman and defender of the Yanomami people, member of the Academy of Sciences of Brazil

“Everybody covets the Amazon. They want to dig, they want to cut the trees to sell to Europe to make money. The loggers tie chains to tractors and they just tear everything down. They have done it here [in Europe] before, but now they are doing it in our lands.”

“We are warriors. We are fighters. We want to defend Mother Earth. We are suffering together. The Yanomami people, the Brazilian Indigenous people, are suffering with the earth, the forest, with the waters, with the rivers, with the waterfalls and with the whole world.”

“But Omama is going to damage where the white man lives. Some places are extremely hot, in other places there is heavy rainfall, other places are dry, there is no water, there is hunger. And whose fault is it? You need to pay attention. The planet is suffering.”

“We are only a few, but we can resist. We are fighting alongside you. And you should help us to talk to those rich men and tell them how they are affecting our country and negatively affecting our people. You are our partners in that struggle.”

“I would invite you all to think outside the box. Don’t think the world is just a small cube.”

Adana Omagua Kambeba, healer, medical doctor, now training to be a shaman, singer and actor

“We are taught to look at things in a limited way, in boxes, in a reductionist way. When I went to university I was taught to be like that. But I would invite you to think outside the box.”

“They call us, Indigenous Peoples, to solve a problem they have created. You create the problem and we have to give you the solutions? Is the land just our responsibility? Many of our people have been killed and other activists, non-Indigenous, have been murdered to protect the forests. But the forest does not belong to us, it belongs to all. Because what happens in the Amazon is felt here.”

“We as an Indigenous Community are here to make a contribution, but we all have to develop a solution collectively. Blacks, whites, Indigenous, non-Indigenous – all of us have to contribute.”

“Indigenous wisdom is a science. It’s not scientific science, but it is a science. Our wisdom, our knowledge is not less than the academics. The world is huge. Your histories and our histories show the wealth in our planet and the wealth of wisdom that we have available.”

“I learned that the non-human world constituted my environment – a backdrop to the dramas of human life.”

Merlin Sheldrake, biologist, mycelial thinker, author of Entangled Life

“As a scientist I learned that the world is made up of individuals, locked in robotic routines that maximise their chance of survival and self replication. I absorbed an ambient species narcissism which told me that because of our very large brains we are among the only beings on the planet to have feelingful, meaningful experiences.”

“These are all problematic for many very obvious reasons. They do not map onto the wild wet world in which we live. They do not make sense of our living feeling experiences. They help the modern economic man, because when you think of the environment as a backdrop, perhaps it’s easier to extract things from that environment.”

“But the study of the wild wet world in which we live teaches us that we live in a world of reciprocal intimate dependence. I study fungi. These fungi form networks… they live in trading relationships with plants where they help each other to live by exchanging things with each other. Together they make possibilities which would not be possible if they lived by themselves. This is the way that all of life is.” 

“We are living at a time of extraordinary potential and beautiful opportunity as well as horror because the world has been full of catastrophes and calamities for a long time. Big cataclysmic events have shaped life on earth, and every time in these crisis moments organisms have come together in new ways to rise to the challenges. So in this time of crisis I think about the ways organisms have come together over time to create new possibilities. And I think about the new ways we can come together, at this time, to create new possibilities.”

“These worlds are not only on fire, but they are also clashing with each other.”

Ailton Krenak, activist, writer and philosopher of the Krenak people, member of the Academy of Letters of Brazil

“The economist is focused on a money making machine. He only thinks about himself and at the same time he wants everything that other people have. That person can be almost seductive – and we see that there is now a factory of men like that one. And that factory has different branches and those branches include schools and universities because they are manufacturing the same man.”

“We have now started thinking about how to deviate from these wrong patterns. We need to understand if the idea of humanity that brought us here is still comfortable. We need to understand if we want the same or if we want to create a better world and different relationships that exist beyond human relationships.”

A recording of Ancestral Futures: Water, wealth and wisdom in a world on fire is now available to watch in English and in Brazilian Portuguese.