The 2021 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow (COP26) provided an opportunity to amplify the message that climate justice is critical, and that securing Indigenous land rights and sovereignty is one of the most urgent actions humanity needs to take to ensure a future that’s sustainable and healthy for all.
Flourishing Diversity collaborated with model, actress and climate author Lily Cole, to organize two Indigenous listening sessions at COP26 – one with HRH Prince Charles and one at Goals House. Our aim was to ensure that those communities protecting territories of life and biodiversity (who were excluded from the COP26 negotiation table) would have their voices heard.
November 4th – Listening Session with HRH The Prince of Wales (since titled, HRH King Charles III)
On November 4th at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, as part of the Terra Carta Action Forum, we co-created an intentional and intimate space for HRH The Prince of Wales, alongside cultural and business leaders, to meet with and respectfully listen to Indigenous leaders.
Prince Charles was very engaged in the session, staying longer than originally scheduled. Staff from his Rainforest Foundation met with members of the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative the very next day to learn more about their work and explore how they might link into and support the vision and strategic plans laid out by the Indigenous alliances that formed the initiative.
It was abundantly clear that the real question isn’t ‘How do we solve the climate crisis?’ but rather, ‘Will enough people from western cultures listen and find the collective will to act?’
November 1st – Listening Session at Goals House
Two world changing events ran in parallel in Glasgow on the eve of Monday, November 1st. In one part of the city was the COP26 World Leaders Summit, in another was our Listening Session, also coined ‘The Real World Leaders on Climate’. Indigenous leaders from seven nations around the world spoke to an audience of influential leaders sharing the necessary steps they consider urgent to meaningfully address the escalating social and environmental challenges we face.
Some of the leaders in the audience included; environmental lawyer and activist Farhana Yamin; Ugandan climate justice activist Vanessa Nakate; Kenyan environment and climate activist Elizabeth Wathuti; co-founder of US Youth Climate Strike Alexandria Villaseñor; business entrepreneur and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs; Greenpeace Executive Communications director Danni Taaffe; Conservation International founder Peter Seligmann; conservationist and Mercury nominated musician Sam Lee; Tibetan artist and cultural ambassador Tenzin Choegyal; UK Government Special Representative for Climate Change Nick Bridge; communications pioneer Matthew Freud.
Indigenous Speakers
Our thanks goes to everybody involved, especially the Indigenous speakers who offered clear resolutions to mitigate and reverse ecological breakdown during these profound events.
Below you can find the speakers bios and a selection of quotes from the Listening Sessions.
Chief Ninawa Huni Kui
Chief Ninawa Huni Kuin opened the event singing prayers of the Huni Kuin People who inhabit the Amazon in the state of Acre in Brazil. Ninawa chairs the Federation of the Huni Kuin people (which means “true people”) acting as a spokesperson for nearly 10,400 Indigenous people in 90 villages in two Indigenous territories in five provinces in Acre. He’s a healer and an activist for the rights of indigenous people, a member of the Alliance of Mother Nature’s Guardians and an advocate for the Global Alliance Against REDD.
“It is our reality to fight for our survival and to fight for a rightful place in these UN meetings. We indigenous peoples are organizing together so that our voices are no longer ignored.”
–Tom B.K. Goldtooth
Tom B.K. Goldtooth
Tom is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, an environmental, climate, and economic justice activist, speaker, film producer, and Indigenous rights leader within the climate and environmental justice and indigenous movement. Tom is active in local, national, and international levels as an advocate for building healthy and sustainable Indigenous communities based upon the foundation of Indigenous traditional knowledge. Tom has served as executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) since 1996 after serving as a member of the IEN National Council since 1992.
“We come to COP, and they talk about climate financing, but we don’t have water. Nothing changes, but I still come and talk! But what can I tell the women when I’m back?”
–Agnes Leina
Agnes Leina
Agnes comes from Northern part of Kenya, Samburu County, inhabited mainly by the Samburu community, a subset of the Maasai peoples of Kenya, who are mainly pastoralists clinging strongly to their traditional way of life. She has over 15 years of experience in working for rural Indigenous pastoralist communities, especially women and girls, in defending their human rights concerns in education, climate change, land and natural resource rights, violence against women, early marriages and female genital mutilation, as well as access to alternative livelihood options among others. Agnes is the Founder and Executive Director of Il’laramatak Community Concerns (ICC) whose name denotes ‘care-givers’, or pastoralists. ICC is an Indigenous Peoples Organization working at the Community, National, Regional and International levels with different structures and communication strategies.
“We don’t see our ancestors, but we are here because of them. We don’t see future generations but what we do now is deciding for them”
–Mindahi Bastida
Mindahi Bastida
Mindahi is a member of the Otomi-Toltec Nation of Mexico. He’s the director of the Original Nations Program at The Fountain. He serves as the General Coordinator of the Otomi-Hñahñu Regional Council in Mexico, a caretaker of the philosophy and traditions of the Otomi people, and has been an Otomi Ritual Ceremony Officer since 1988. Born in Tultepec, Mexico, he holds a doctorate of rural development from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana and is the President of the Mexico Council of Sustainable Development. Bastida is a member of the steering committee of the Indigenous Peoples’ Biocultural Climate Change Assessment Initiative, and has served as a delegate to several commissions and summits on indigenous rights and the environment. He has written extensively on the relationship between the State and Indigenous Peoples, intercultural education, collective intellectual property rights and associated traditional knowledge, among other topics.
“I pose this question to you all: What are you willing to do to address climate change, to connect ourselves to Mother Earth, to know what you need to do?”
–Cristiane Julião
Cristiane Julião
Cristiane is part of the Indigenous Pankararu people from the Pankararu Indigenous Land located in the Pernambuco state in northeast Brazil. She graduated in Geography from the Centro de Ensino Superior do Vale do São Francisco, in Pernambuco. She has a Master’s degree and is a doctoral candidate in Social Anthropology at the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, where she researches national and international Indigenous legal Anthropology. Cristiane is part of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples and Organisations of the Northeast, Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo (APOINME), and the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB). She is co-founder of the National Articulation of Indigenous Women Warriors of Ancestrality (ANMIGA). She represents the National Council on Indigenous Policy (CNPI) in the Council for the Management of Genetic Heritage (CGen) and the Sectorial Chamber of Indigenous Peoples, Traditional Peoples and Communities and Family Farmers (Chamber of Guardians).
“We know what it means to know the stories of the land, of the sky, the birds and the other beings that we share our land with. We are in relationship with the land and with all our relatives.”
–Eriel Tchekwie Deranger
Eriel Tchekwie Deranger
Eriel is a Dënesųłiné woman (ts’ékui), member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and mother of two, coming from a family of Indigenous rights advocates fighting for the recognition, sovereignty and autonomy of their Indigenous lands and territory in what is now known as Treaty 8, Canada. She’s a co-founder of the organisation, Indigenous Climate Action, formally stepped into the role of Executive Director in 2017. Prior to ICA, Deranger worked with her First Nation on the Indigenous Tar Sands campaign – challenging the expansion of Alberta’s Tar Sands and bringing international recognition to issues in her territory.
“We are here to defend our rights, because our rights are not only concerned with the loss of our individual rights, but with the future of all of humanity.”
–Sônia Guajajara
Sonia Guajajara
Sonia is an environmental and indigenous activist, and a politician born in Araribóia Indigenous Land in Maranhão, Brazil. She serves as one of the Executive coordinators of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB). She is also a co- founder of the National Articulation of Indigenous Women Warriors of Ancestrality (ANMIGA). Sonia regularly participates and brings to a broader audience the stories of her people in international fora, such as the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Climate Negotiations. Her invaluable contributions to the indigenous movement of Brazil earned her various recognitions. In fact, she was recently named one of the 100 Most Influential Latinos Committed to Climate Action.
“We’ve modified life on this Earth. We’ve changed the way we communicate. We’ve changed the way we live, but we’ve done it without respecting our home, our Earth.”
–Gregorio Diaz Mirabal
Gregorio Diaz Mirabal
Gregorio is Wakuenai Kurripako indigenous leader from Venezuelan Amazon. He is currently the general coordinator of the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon Basin (COICA). For 37 years COICA has focused on efforts for promotion, protection and securing of indigenous peoples and their territories through the defense of their ways of life, principles and social, spiritual and cultural values in all 9 countries of the Amazon Basin. Gregorio was previously the general coordinator of the Regional Organization of the Indigenous Peoples of Amazonas in Venezuela ORPIA and has been a longtime leader in the indigenous movement in Venezuela.
“When we talk about lands and territories, we just don’t talk about the physical land, we talk about the knowledge, the cultures and the identities that are very much linked with these territories.”
–Victoria Tauli-Corpuz
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz
Victoria was appointed as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples by the Human Rights Council in 2014, and served until April 2020. She is an indigenous leader from the Kankana-ey Igorot people of the Cordillera Region in the Philippines. As an indigenous activist, she has worked for over three decades on building movement among indigenous peoples and as an advocate for women’s rights. Ms. Tauli-Corpuz is the former Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (2005-2010) and has served as the chairperson-rapporteur of the Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations. As an indigenous leader, she was actively engaged in drafting and adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007.
Two world changing events ran in parallel in Glasgow on the eve of Monday, November 1st. In one part of the city was the #COP26 World Leaders Summit, in another was what we coined the Real World Leaders on Climate.