L&rsquo;OFFICIEL IBIZA&rsquo;s climate columnist takes an informed stance on indigenous rights from her ancestral continent.

Bom d&iacute;a Ibiza! I am sending love from sunny Brazil!
I am writing last month&rsquo;s column this month, because if you thought Spanish/<a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/ibiza/five-cultural-escapes-on-the-island-in-the-coming-weeks" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ibiza</a> time was slow - try being on Brazilian time!
I am currently on route to Santarem, Par&aacute;, the northern part of the Brazilian Amazon, after a whirlwind week at the Acampamento Terra Livre, or the Land Back protest, which is the largest gathering of indigenous people in all of Brazil.
You were very patient with me for the first few months of the year, as we learned about <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/ibiza/nathalie-kelley-is-making-soil-sexy-again" target="_blank" rel="noopener">soil,</a> compost,<a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/ibiza/nathalie-kelley-s-climate-column" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> biochar </a>and <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/portraits/arizona-muse-interview-lofficiel-ibiza" target="_blank" rel="noopener">carbon sequestration</a>. The next column will be about creating resilient local food systems, as promised.&nbsp;
But first I wanted to dedicate this interlude to the indigenous struggle for land rights and demand for protection against extractive industries. Because YOU, dear reader, whether you are a <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/music/15-minutes-with-bedouin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">raver</a>, a &lsquo;shaman&rsquo; or an investment banker - are intimately connected to the fate of these indigenous populations, who in turn are connected to the fate of the Amazon, on which the fate of planet depends&hellip;. &nbsp; Trust me, it&rsquo;s all interconnected.
Let&rsquo;s start with a little history lesson, and I&rsquo;ll try* to keep this part brief, because learning about colonisation is only fun if you were lucky enough to be on the colonising side.&nbsp; For the rest of us it has been 500+ years of rape, pillage, theft and slaughter. See? Told you it wasn&rsquo;t fun.

Around 500 years ago the European countries decided they needed more wealth and went looking for new lands to plunder.&nbsp; They like to think they &lsquo;discovered&rsquo; the New World, but let&rsquo;s be honest - they didn&rsquo;t discover a thing.
My own ancestors had already been there for 35,000 years. In that time, we had devised brilliant agricultural systems, invented <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/ibiza/nathalie-kelley-is-making-soil-sexy-again" target="_blank" rel="noopener">terra preta</a> (see my February column), bio-engineered the Amazon rainforest, built biodiversity and created new species of food &ndash; such as corn - and thousands of varieties of the foods we know and love today. If you&rsquo;ve enjoyed corn, squash, avocadoes, potatoes, <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/food/how-to-achieve-the-perfect-shakshuka" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tomatoes</a>&hellip; you can thank my ancestors for their thousands of years of earth stewardship, a role that indigenous people consider the most sacred and important job in the world.&nbsp;
Sadly, those European newcomers did not bring with them a comparable value system. They brought biological weapons (it is estimated that 90 per cent of indigenous people were wiped out by diseases brought over from Europe for which the local population did not have immunity), capitalism and an insatiable desire to get rich at the expense of the indigenous population and the natural resources over which they stewarded. Fuelled by the arrogant belief that they were a superior culture, through violence, theft and greed, they set the ball in motion for the climate crisis we are in today..

Thousands of years of agricultural brilliance was wiped out to make way for plantation agriculture, the grandfather of our modern agricultural food system based on monocultures.&nbsp; This new system was fuelled by slavery - which still exists today. Just type child slavery and cacao plantations into Google and it&rsquo;s clear that many household name companies are simply plantation owners with a new name. In the last 500 years, these systems of farming have wiped out 96 per cent of our crop biodiversity.
So how is this connected to the Acampamento Terra Livre and the fight for indigenous land rights? The extractive industries of mining, agribusiness and logging, which have eroded indigenous land rights over the last 500 years, are the legacy of the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of Latin America. It&rsquo;s the reasons why Europe is extremely wealthy today, but it is wealth that is tainted with the blood of my ancestors, plus the blood of the thousands of species we have since loss, the largest number in Earth&rsquo;s history since the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs.&nbsp;
Everywhere that the European countries colonised, rivers were poisoned, ancient forests cut down and species have become extinct. These industries responsible for this damage emit enormous amounts of carbon into the atmosphere while simultaneously destroying nature&rsquo;s carbon sinks.

Now I have to pause and take a deep breath because I promised I would keep it brief and try not to get too depressing, but it&rsquo;s hard not to be filled with indignation after spending the week with people who have done nothing to contribute to the global climate crisis, but are the ones having to eat fish from rivers contaminated with mercury from gold mining. I have to balance that indignation with personal guilt, as write this on an iPad that surely contains some of that very gold&nbsp; If you have a smart phone or any other technological device, you are also complicit in this devastation. Same goes for that burger you ate for lunch; how do you know it&rsquo;s not from a cattle ranch on deforested Amazon land, considering Brazil is one of the world&rsquo;s largest exporters of beef? Or maybe, this being a column written with Ibiza in mind, you have partaken in ayahuasca <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/soul-spirituality/cacao-in-ibiza-an-ancient-ritual-for-the-modern-day" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ceremony.</a> Maybe you are an aspiring shaman, while the indigenous people in the Amazon, the home of the very (endangered) plant medicine you are appropriating and extracting, are dying of mercury poisoning, and being shot by ranchers.
Oh dear. I haven&rsquo;t succeeded in finding the joy or humour in this month&rsquo;s column, have I?
But here&rsquo;s the hopeful part. President Lula just demarcated (enshrined in law) six new indigenous territories last week, with the total combined size of both New York and Los Angeles. There are still over 700 to go but it&rsquo;s a start. This is important because wherever indigenous territories are granted protection, vegetation and rates of reforestation and biodiversity are much lower. Have a look on Google Earth at the vast monoculture and cattle ranches in Brazil - if you&rsquo;re lucky you&rsquo;ll spot small islands of green forest - these are all indigenous territories. (I&rsquo;ve been told that when the water runs out on the ranches during summer, they send their water trucks to the reservations because they know their wells will be flowing due to their intact forests)

Brazil has six biomes, and its indigenous population is spread among them. But it&rsquo;s the Amazon rainforest that receives the most attention. Its ability to sequester carbon means it is one of the hardest working and most important ecosystems in the world. Currently the Amazon rainforest is been deforested at a rate of&nbsp; 17 per cent. The tipping point is 24 per cent -&nbsp; then turns into a savannah and it&rsquo;s game over for Planet Earth.
This is why the fight for indigenous land rights in Brazil is an important global issue. Amazon Watch is a wonderful organization to support if you want to donate to this cause, but also feel free to stop buying beef and <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/fashion/is-vegan-leather-environmentally-friendly" target="_blank" rel="noopener">leather </a>products from Brazil. Bonus karma points if you want to stop buying those products all together, unless you are supporting a local farm that grazes its cows according to regenerative practices.
And Europe really does need to have a &lsquo;come to Jesus&rsquo; moment about the bad karma accumulated in His name, since an enterprising young capitalist named Christopher Columbus was welcomed by the indigenous people of these lands -&nbsp; fed, given shelter and medical attention. Rather than thank his hosts for their hospitality,&nbsp; he went home to tell his friends that the New World**&nbsp; was open for business. It&rsquo;s time to ask for forgiveness to those cultures we tried to erase in our enormous ignorance and arrogance, and ask them for their guidance in stewarding the gifts of the natural world.&nbsp; We have so much to learn from them. And maybe in that way too we can reconnect with our own indigeneity.
As the author and philosopher Robin Wall Kimmerer said &lsquo;we can all become indigenous to a place&rsquo;.

*Apologies dear reader for not keeping my promise of brevity. Five hundred years of history is a lot to cover in a monthly column!&nbsp;
** Abya Yala is the pan-indigenous name for this continent. As previously mentioned, this New World was not new.&nbsp;

Indigenous rights: actor and activist Nathalie Kelley reports from Brazil.

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