The forest is our teacher. It's time to respect it | Nemonte Nenquimo

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2021

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For thousands of years, the Amazon rainforest has provided food, water and spiritual connection for its Indigenous inhabitants and the world. But the endless extraction of its natural resources by oil companies and others is destroying the lives of those who live there, says Waorani leader Nemonte Nenquimo, and threatening the overall stability of Earth's biosphere. In this powerful talk, she reminds us of the destruction that continues to happen to the world's largest tropical rainforest -- and demands respect for Mother Nature. "The forest is our teacher," she says. (Filmed in Ecuador by director Tom Laffay and associate producer Emily Wright, in collaboration with Amazon Frontlines. In Spanish with subtitles.)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh.
0:06.0	Today, a powerful talk and reminder of the human and environmental toll of the ongoing degradation
0:11.6	of the rainforests. In her talk recorded for Countdown Summit in 2021, indigenous leader
0:17.7	Niemonte Nenkemho reminds us that colonization is continuing to happen at the hands of commerce and industry,
0:25.2	and it's causing direct harm to her community and the creatures who have always called it home.
0:30.6	Nimante recorded this talk in Spanish, and Juliet Monire Bogan provided the English voiceover.
0:36.9	And if you want to hear this talk without the English dubbed over it,
0:39.9	head over to TED in Español, wherever you're listening to this.
0:47.4	My name is Nemonte Nankimo.
0:50.3	I am a Waorani woman, a mother, and a leader of my people.
0:55.0	When I was young, I first went to the city to a missionary school so that I could learn Spanish.
1:03.0	I never had the opportunity to go to university, but I have the Pigenannani's, the wise elders who have taught me how to respect, how to love the forest.
1:16.9	And from all of that, I have grown into a leader.
1:22.1	The forest is our teacher, the Pekananis, the wise, both women and men are our scientists, our teachers,
1:30.6	who have taught us to value what we have. And that knowledge, that love we have, we say as
1:37.4	indigenous peoples, that value has been lost on outsiders. The forest is our home.
1:46.0	The forest gives us life, food, nourishment, water, spiritual connection.
1:52.8	But the arrival of roads, the arrival of colonization, the arrival of evangelical
1:58.4	missionaries, the arrival of oil companies, has destroyed our forest.
2:03.6	I have met other indigenous peoples who live in the north, and who were first contacted by colonization, invasions and roads.
2:11.6	It is very sad.
2:14.6	To the people who are listening, I would like to say that the forests in our Amazon continue to burn.
	...

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