Amazon Emotions Hosts Filming of #PeoplesOfTheForest Campaign

13 May 2019
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In February of 2019, Amazon Emotions, owned and managed by long-time ATTA member Vanessa Marino, had the honor of hosting the filming of a new #PeoplesOfTheForest campaign  by ISA (Instituto Socioambiental). The idea was to boost awareness and support for the indigenous, Quilombola, riparian and extractivist communities in Brazil who are resisting attacks on their rights and the destruction of their lands.

The protagonists for the #PeoplesOfTheForest campaign are 25 leaders from nine indigenous tribes, from Quilombola communities in Vale do Ribeira and from riparian communities in Terra do Meio, Pará. This gathering at Amazon Emotions was the first time that all of these communities united.

ISA, which celebrates 25 years of fighting constitutional violations of both socio-environmental policies and of the guarantees of human rights that is ongoing in Brazil, launched the campaign on Tuesday, April 23, online, on TV and in cinemas. The campaign beautifully honors the diversity of the people living in and protecting the forests, reminding us that it is the forests that regulate the climate, produce rain for farming and house the planet's largest biodiversity, a potential source of new medications and cures.

"We, the peoples of the forest, are a global community of people and it's very important for us to join together in an alliance. This makes us stronger," says Davi Kopenawa, a leader and world-renowned shaman of the Yanomami tribe, and one of the leading voices in the campaign. "The non-indigenous society does not know us, and this ISA campaign will bring our words to them.”

Adds André Villas-Bôas, executive secretary at ISA, "If the forest, or nature in general, is our passport as a country to a future, then the people living in it are truly its guardians. We must value the enormous contribution these communities have made to the planet's ecological balance."

Vanessa Marino, through Amazon Emotions, has worked for years to empower and assist indigenous communities in their fight to take control of their own destinies. She believes that ecotourism is a way of ensuring that the cultural and environmental resources of indigenous communities remain intact for themselves and their children, and that as a travel company she has a social responsibility to help them safeguard their resources.

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