~ The Earth does not expect you to save her, she expects you to respect her. And we, as Indigenous peoples, expect the same.~
 
 
Wendy about this painting: "Every day the Amazon rainforest, the largest rainforest of our planet, is getting smaller and smaller, due to commercial exploitation.
This reduction of the Amazon territory is a huge problem for the whole world. Biodiversity increases as nature and animal species are getting extinct. The indigenous people,  that are living there, are losing there homes and surrounding, and ultimately the whole planets ecosystem and climate gets more and more in danger when this continues.
 
Nemonte Nenquimo, the woman on my painting, is a leader of an indigenous people group from the Amazon. She, together with other indigenous folks, are standing up, and fighting for their home. They are asking more awareness for this big world-wide problem, and with this painting I’m doing the same. Getting this problem more visible.
Nemonte wrote a message to the western world, which I thought, is very touching to read. I incorporated parts of this message in my painting.'
 
Down here you can read her message.
 
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This is my message to the western world – 
your civilisation is killing life on Earth
Nemonte Nenquimo
 
Dear presidents of the nine Amazonian countries and to all world leaders that share responsibility for the plundering of our rainforest,
 
My name is Nemonte Nenquimo. I am a Waorani woman, a mother, and a leader of my people. The Amazon rainforest is my home. I am writing you this letter because the fires are raging still. Because the corporations are spilling oil in our rivers. Because the miners are stealing gold (as they have been for 500 years), and leaving behind open pits and toxins. Because the land grabbers are cutting down primary forest so that the cattle can graze, plantations can be grown and the white man can eat. Because our elders are dying from coronavirus, while you are planning your next moves to cut up our lands to stimulate an economy that has never benefited us. Because, as Indigenous peoples, we are fighting to protect what we love – our way of life, our rivers, the animals, our forests, life on Earth – and it’s time that you listened to us.
 
In each of our many hundreds of different languages across the Amazon, we have a word for you – the outsider, the stranger. In my language, WaoTededo, that word is “cowori”. And it doesn’t need to be a bad word. But you have made it so. For us, the word has come to mean (and in a terrible way, your society has come to represent): the white man that knows too little for the power that he wields, and the damage that he causes.
 
You are probably not used to an Indigenous woman calling you ignorant and, less so, on a platform such as this. But for Indigenous peoples it is clear: the less you know about something, the less value it has to you, and the easier it is to destroy. And by easy, I mean: guiltlessly, remorselessly, foolishly, even righteously. And this is exactly what you are doing to us as Indigenous peoples, to our rainforest territories, and ultimately to our planet’s climate.
 
It took us thousands of years to get to know the Amazon rainforest. To understand her ways, her secrets, to learn how to survive and thrive with her. And for my people, the Waorani, we have only known you for 70 years (we were “contacted” in the 1950s by American evangelical missionaries), but we are fast learners, and you are not as complex as the rainforest.
 
When you say that the oil companies have marvellous new technologies that can sip the oil from beneath our lands like hummingbirds sip nectar from a flower, we know that you are lying because we live downriver from the spills. When you say that the Amazon is not burning, we do not need satellite images to prove you wrong; we are choking on the smoke of the fruit orchards that our ancestors planted centuries ago. When you say that you are urgently looking for climate solutions, yet continue to build a world economy based on extraction and pollution, we know you are lying because we are the closest to the land, and the first to hear her cries....
 
Read the rest of her whole message here!
 
 
 
 
Some other articles about this subject:
Nemonte Nenquimo: The indigenous leader named 'environmental hero' - BBC News
Indigenous warrior women take fight to save ancestral lands to Brazilian capital | Brazil | The Guardian
This is my message to the western world – your civilisation is killing life on Earth | Nemonte Nenquimo | The Guardian