As we sail through Amazon waterways, Indigenous leaders tell me how climate crisis is affecting their way of life
December 16, 2024
Source: Open Democracy
Wrays Pérez Ramírez, of the Wampís Nation from Peru, is vice president of the Sacred Highwaters Alliance | Pablo Albarenga
YURIMAGUAS, Alto Amazonas, Peru — Our boat sets sail early in the morning. The plan is to travel down the Huallaga River, reach the Marañón, then sail north along the Santiago River towards the border with Ecuador. But after a precarious start in shallow waters, one of the boat’s engines is broken by a powerful blow, possibly by a log or a rock underwater. The rivers in this region of northwestern Peru are running dry as the Amazon Basin experiences its most severe drought in decades.
On board are two Indigenous leaders, Uyunkar Domingo Peas Nampichkai of the Achuar people from Ecuador and Wrays Pérez Ramírez of the Wampís Nation from Peru. They are the current president and vice president of the Sacred Headwaters Alliance, respectively, and are on their way to visit communities of the Kandozi and Kichwa Indigenous peoples after participating in the alliance’s General Assembly in the north Peruvian city of Tarapoto, in the department of San Martin.
The Sacred Headwaters Alliance, a collaboration of Indigenous peoples and civil society organisations from Ecuador and Peru, seeks to permanently protect more than 86.5 million acres across the two countries. It’s an area in the Amazon home to 600,000 people of more than 30 nationalities and Indigenous peoples historically united by the rivers that interconnect their territories and their lives.
“Our concept is Amazonia – a living being, which has a spiritual connection with the Indigenous world,” Nampichkai says. “Either we unite in the face of the climate crisis’ formidable challenge that is ruining our world and the entire planet, or we expire.”
Both Nampichkai and Pérez Ramírez have lived in the intact forest, inhabiting the same bioregion and sharing the same Jíbaro ethnolinguistic family (that includes the Achuar-Shiwiar, Awajún and Wampís languages). They know they face devastating threats in the vast transboundary territory that defines the Sacred Headwaters’ action area, especially from oil, mining and logging activities, infrastructure megaprojects and drug trafficking causing deforestation.
The Amazon Basin has also been widely affected by record wildfires – more than 55.3 million acres burned between January and September 2024 in Brazil alone – as well as extreme heat and drought, all of which has affected evaporation. This has pushed almost all major rivers in the Amazon, which are vital for Indigenous communities’ livelihoods, to their lowest-ever levels
Wrays Pérez Ramírez, of the Wampís Nation from Peru, is vice president of the Sacred Highwaters Alliance | Pablo Albarenga
YURIMAGUAS, Alto Amazonas, Peru — Our boat sets sail early in the morning. The plan is to travel down the Huallaga River, reach the Marañón, then sail north along the Santiago River towards the border with Ecuador. But after a precarious start in shallow waters, one of the boat’s engines is broken by a powerful blow, possibly by a log or a rock underwater. The rivers in this region of northwestern Peru are running dry as the Amazon Basin experiences its most severe drought in decades.
On board are two Indigenous leaders, Uyunkar Domingo Peas Nampichkai of the Achuar people from Ecuador and Wrays Pérez Ramírez of the Wampís Nation from Peru. They are the current president and vice president of the Sacred Headwaters Alliance, respectively, and are on their way to visit communities of the Kandozi and Kichwa Indigenous peoples after participating in the alliance’s General Assembly in the north Peruvian city of Tarapoto, in the department of San Martin.
The Sacred Headwaters Alliance, a collaboration of Indigenous peoples and civil society organisations from Ecuador and Peru, seeks to permanently protect more than 86.5 million acres across the two countries. It’s an area in the Amazon home to 600,000 people of more than 30 nationalities and Indigenous peoples historically united by the rivers that interconnect their territories and their lives.
“Our concept is Amazonia – a living being, which has a spiritual connection with the Indigenous world,” Nampichkai says. “Either we unite in the face of the climate crisis’ formidable challenge that is ruining our world and the entire planet, or we expire.”
Both Nampichkai and Pérez Ramírez have lived in the intact forest, inhabiting the same bioregion and sharing the same Jíbaro ethnolinguistic family (that includes the Achuar-Shiwiar, Awajún and Wampís languages). They know they face devastating threats in the vast transboundary territory that defines the Sacred Headwaters’ action area, especially from oil, mining and logging activities, infrastructure megaprojects and drug trafficking causing deforestation.
The Amazon Basin has also been widely affected by record wildfires – more than 55.3 million acres burned between January and September 2024 in Brazil alone – as well as extreme heat and drought, all of which has affected evaporation. This has pushed almost all major rivers in the Amazon, which are vital for Indigenous communities’ livelihoods, to their lowest-ever levels
.
The Sacred Highwaters Alliance’s boat at the Musa Karusha lake in the Kandozi Indigenous territory, Peru|Pablo Albarenga
Nampichkai and Pérez Ramírez came together a few years ago and formed a deep brotherhood. “The connection was magical,” Nampichkai says. “We bonded immediately, since for us the forest is a green sheet, a science laboratory of our ancestors. And that concept aligns us, gives us the energy to fight together.”
Pérez Ramírez adds: “Domingo is supportive. He learned a lot from his grandparents, and he talks about looking to the past to build the future. He is a dreamer who believes that we have to recover our Amazon through a great alliance before it degrades for good.”
In the Wampís-Awajún culture, the election of leaders, traditionally necessary only in case of conflict, is done in recognition that the leader has received a vision through the ritual use of sacred plants. Experiencing that vision provides authority to assume a spiritual and political mandate amid the community, a role called Pamuk by the Wampís.
In the Achuar culture, the process of acquiring leadership is similar. Nampichkai recounts his own visionary experience: “When I took these sacred plants, a very big light came from the sky and passed through the center of my body, and it showed me a huge tree and said to me, ‘Look at this tree, how hurt it is! It has spots, hollows. If you want to stop this, you have to create consciousness. You have to start now!’
“I am fulfilling my mission,” he adds.
The Kandozi community is running out of water
With the boat’s engine damaged, the expedition barely makes it to Lagunas, a village 300 kilometres away in the department of Loreto. The next day, we rent a new barge and make the arduous journey up the river to reach San Lorenzo, continuing on the Pastaza River and arriving at Lake Rimachi, one of the largest lakes in the Amazon, where the Kandozi Indigenous people live.
Rimachi, which has an area of about 740 acres, is drying up. A huge sediment bank, a result of recurrent droughts since 2015, blocks the head of the lake, threatening fish supplies and a biodiversity-rich ecosystem.
After talking to the community about the local environmental crisis, Nampikchai and Pérez Ramírez go on the lake. They know this ecosystem is vital not only to the Kandozi, but to the entire Amazon Basin. In addition to harboring great biodiversity, these wetlands are essential for flood control, groundwater recharge and, as they are large CO2 sinks, for climate change mitigation. “This lake is like a womb of the Pachamama,” Pérez Ramírez says.
Nampichkai and Pérez Ramírez came together a few years ago and formed a deep brotherhood. “The connection was magical,” Nampichkai says. “We bonded immediately, since for us the forest is a green sheet, a science laboratory of our ancestors. And that concept aligns us, gives us the energy to fight together.”
Pérez Ramírez adds: “Domingo is supportive. He learned a lot from his grandparents, and he talks about looking to the past to build the future. He is a dreamer who believes that we have to recover our Amazon through a great alliance before it degrades for good.”
In the Wampís-Awajún culture, the election of leaders, traditionally necessary only in case of conflict, is done in recognition that the leader has received a vision through the ritual use of sacred plants. Experiencing that vision provides authority to assume a spiritual and political mandate amid the community, a role called Pamuk by the Wampís.
In the Achuar culture, the process of acquiring leadership is similar. Nampichkai recounts his own visionary experience: “When I took these sacred plants, a very big light came from the sky and passed through the center of my body, and it showed me a huge tree and said to me, ‘Look at this tree, how hurt it is! It has spots, hollows. If you want to stop this, you have to create consciousness. You have to start now!’
“I am fulfilling my mission,” he adds.
The Kandozi community is running out of water
With the boat’s engine damaged, the expedition barely makes it to Lagunas, a village 300 kilometres away in the department of Loreto. The next day, we rent a new barge and make the arduous journey up the river to reach San Lorenzo, continuing on the Pastaza River and arriving at Lake Rimachi, one of the largest lakes in the Amazon, where the Kandozi Indigenous people live.
Rimachi, which has an area of about 740 acres, is drying up. A huge sediment bank, a result of recurrent droughts since 2015, blocks the head of the lake, threatening fish supplies and a biodiversity-rich ecosystem.
After talking to the community about the local environmental crisis, Nampikchai and Pérez Ramírez go on the lake. They know this ecosystem is vital not only to the Kandozi, but to the entire Amazon Basin. In addition to harboring great biodiversity, these wetlands are essential for flood control, groundwater recharge and, as they are large CO2 sinks, for climate change mitigation. “This lake is like a womb of the Pachamama,” Pérez Ramírez says.
Members of the Kandozi Indigenous community|Pablo Albarenga
On their way back to San Lorenzo, Nampikchai and Pérez Ramírez decide to take a break and take a dip in a backwater of the lower Pastaza. This is the same river on which the community of Sharamentsa sits many kilometers further north, in Ecuador, where Nampikchai is from. “The river gives you wisdom, it has its spirit. It is a connection. In this hour, it makes me connect [with] upstream, with my grandchildren,” Nampikchai says.
“It’s important to keep going until there are young people who can take over. We must train them, bring them into the fight,” Pérez Ramírez says. “All our work is focused on the next generation,” Nampikchai adds.
Toward the Santiago River
As Nampikchai sets off back to Ecuador, Pérez Ramírez leaves in his canoe up the Marañón River. The long journey will take him to his Wampís territory via the Pongo de Manseriche, a tough-to-navigate river canyon that forms a natural barrier and has historically protected this rainforest from colonisers and Jesuit missionaries.
Past the Pongo, large pyramids of boulders on the Marañón riverbanks indicate the presence of semi-artisanal alluvial gold mining. For many kilometers, dredges emerge here and there, working and churning the river bottom in search of gold, whose price has reached all-time highs this year. According to Peru’s Mining Cadastre, this stretch of the Marañón River is plagued by mining concessions competing with a swarm of illegal dredgers working with apparent impunity.
As the boat makes its way up the Santiago River, entering the Amazonas department in northern Peru, Pérez Ramírez, who was Pamuk of the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Wampís Nation between 2015 and 2021, warns: “This is an area abandoned by the state. We have barely five soldiers on the border, who don’t even have a canoe for patrolling. This makes it a no man’s land.”
On their way back to San Lorenzo, Nampikchai and Pérez Ramírez decide to take a break and take a dip in a backwater of the lower Pastaza. This is the same river on which the community of Sharamentsa sits many kilometers further north, in Ecuador, where Nampikchai is from. “The river gives you wisdom, it has its spirit. It is a connection. In this hour, it makes me connect [with] upstream, with my grandchildren,” Nampikchai says.
“It’s important to keep going until there are young people who can take over. We must train them, bring them into the fight,” Pérez Ramírez says. “All our work is focused on the next generation,” Nampikchai adds.
Toward the Santiago River
As Nampikchai sets off back to Ecuador, Pérez Ramírez leaves in his canoe up the Marañón River. The long journey will take him to his Wampís territory via the Pongo de Manseriche, a tough-to-navigate river canyon that forms a natural barrier and has historically protected this rainforest from colonisers and Jesuit missionaries.
Past the Pongo, large pyramids of boulders on the Marañón riverbanks indicate the presence of semi-artisanal alluvial gold mining. For many kilometers, dredges emerge here and there, working and churning the river bottom in search of gold, whose price has reached all-time highs this year. According to Peru’s Mining Cadastre, this stretch of the Marañón River is plagued by mining concessions competing with a swarm of illegal dredgers working with apparent impunity.
As the boat makes its way up the Santiago River, entering the Amazonas department in northern Peru, Pérez Ramírez, who was Pamuk of the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Wampís Nation between 2015 and 2021, warns: “This is an area abandoned by the state. We have barely five soldiers on the border, who don’t even have a canoe for patrolling. This makes it a no man’s land.”
Wrays Pérez and Uyunkar Domingo Peas at a ritual banquet offered by the Kandozi Indigenous community |Francesc Badia
He is concerned about the proliferation of mining activity that clears forests and contaminates the river with mercury and other chemicals, which reaches the fish, a vital source of protein for the Wampís. In February 2023, the Wampís government denounced the presence of more than 30 gold dredgers to authorities in Lima and earlier this year, it signed an agreement with the Peruvian state to curb illegal mining. Yet the Wampís people remain highly vulnerable against criminal structures that control all extractive activities.
In order to stop miners from entering the Santiago River, the Wampís government has in recent years built its own control and security system. “We want to prevent this from becoming a new Madre de Dios,” Pérez Ramírez says, referring to an Amazonian region devastated by illegal mining on the border with Bolivia. That is why he has long insisted on the need to promote alternative productive activities. “There is a need” for jobs for young people, he concludes, “but this cannot force us to destroy our own home.”
Climate change impacts on Wampís land
When Nampikchai finally arrives in his community of Chosica, he’s welcomed with a ceremony with singing and dancing. But he’s also returned home to broken trees, uprooted bamboo and farms affected by an unexpected episode of strong winds that swept through the community.
“This has never been seen before,” a local teacher says.
For Nampikchai, the link between mitigating the climate crisis and preserving tropical forests, which are key CO2 sinks and sources of climate-regulating moisture, is obvious. Both he and Pérez Ramírez attended the COP26 climate crisis summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021, as part of a delegation from Sacred Headwaters. There, they warned that the Amazon Basin is on the verge of ecological collapse. Although the conference resulted in a Declaration on Forests and Land Use, with world leaders committing to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030, little progress has been made since.
Using a Starlink satellite connection, Pérez Ramírez connects by video call with Nampikchai, who is already in Ecuador. “We have to coordinate,” he says. Nampikchai was planning to attend COP16 on biological diversity in Cali, Colombia, this October, and Pérez Ramírez was attending COP29 on the climate crisis in Baku. “We have to keep working. Not on paper,” Pérez Ramírez says, “but in actions.”
They know funds will be increasingly available for climate change mitigation, but they also know corruption and the limitations of communities to manage it properly could disrupt efforts. “What do we do with the funds that are coming, and are we, Indigenous people, prepared to receive that money? I would say no,” Pérez Ramírez says. “We have to prepare young people to learn how to manage that money.”
He is concerned about the proliferation of mining activity that clears forests and contaminates the river with mercury and other chemicals, which reaches the fish, a vital source of protein for the Wampís. In February 2023, the Wampís government denounced the presence of more than 30 gold dredgers to authorities in Lima and earlier this year, it signed an agreement with the Peruvian state to curb illegal mining. Yet the Wampís people remain highly vulnerable against criminal structures that control all extractive activities.
In order to stop miners from entering the Santiago River, the Wampís government has in recent years built its own control and security system. “We want to prevent this from becoming a new Madre de Dios,” Pérez Ramírez says, referring to an Amazonian region devastated by illegal mining on the border with Bolivia. That is why he has long insisted on the need to promote alternative productive activities. “There is a need” for jobs for young people, he concludes, “but this cannot force us to destroy our own home.”
Climate change impacts on Wampís land
When Nampikchai finally arrives in his community of Chosica, he’s welcomed with a ceremony with singing and dancing. But he’s also returned home to broken trees, uprooted bamboo and farms affected by an unexpected episode of strong winds that swept through the community.
“This has never been seen before,” a local teacher says.
For Nampikchai, the link between mitigating the climate crisis and preserving tropical forests, which are key CO2 sinks and sources of climate-regulating moisture, is obvious. Both he and Pérez Ramírez attended the COP26 climate crisis summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021, as part of a delegation from Sacred Headwaters. There, they warned that the Amazon Basin is on the verge of ecological collapse. Although the conference resulted in a Declaration on Forests and Land Use, with world leaders committing to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030, little progress has been made since.
Using a Starlink satellite connection, Pérez Ramírez connects by video call with Nampikchai, who is already in Ecuador. “We have to coordinate,” he says. Nampikchai was planning to attend COP16 on biological diversity in Cali, Colombia, this October, and Pérez Ramírez was attending COP29 on the climate crisis in Baku. “We have to keep working. Not on paper,” Pérez Ramírez says, “but in actions.”
They know funds will be increasingly available for climate change mitigation, but they also know corruption and the limitations of communities to manage it properly could disrupt efforts. “What do we do with the funds that are coming, and are we, Indigenous people, prepared to receive that money? I would say no,” Pérez Ramírez says. “We have to prepare young people to learn how to manage that money.”
The rainforest by night in the Wampis Indigenous territory, Peru|Pablo Albarenga
The success of the Sacred Headwaters initiative depends on being able to ensure a generational handover. They have the vision, but the young people are yet to catch up. “Having everything here, they go there [to cities]. That’s the problem,” Pérez Ramírez says, as he boards his canoe to go and supervise his fish farm, a pilot model of the productive projects he considers essential as alternatives to depredation.
On the way back to Chosica, navigating shallow waters through sweltering heat and a landscape of broken trees and roots uprooted by the recent gale, the canoe barely makes headway, and the sun cannot pierce the smoke-tinged haze. Then, like a spectre, lying dead on a trunk emerging from the river, glows the yellowish back of a large boa.
“The water is worth a lot,” Pérez Ramírez says. “I’m going to tell a story, because history repeats itself. The tale says that four brave Wampís warriors wanted to kill the yumi (rain) because it rained so much and did not let them do anything.
“The warriors failed, and as the rain found out that they wanted to kill it, it stopped raining for a long time, leaving nothing but a single water well, which was occupied by a panki (boa), the owner of the water.”
Many died trying to kill the snake, he explains, until the smallest men in the community teamed up with animal species that specialised in digging, such as the armadillo, and succeeded.
“And so, the water recovered: with alliance, with strategy, but with blood. With struggle. We don’t live without water. That’s why we have to make a great alliance to recover the rivers, the jungle,” Pérez Ramírez says. “Not to extract gold, as the non-Indigenous man wants. Gold is not eaten. … Time is now, and we must act fast, because time is not gold. Time is water.”
This story was produced in partnership with Mongabay and was supported by the Pulitzer Center Rainforest Reporting Grant
The success of the Sacred Headwaters initiative depends on being able to ensure a generational handover. They have the vision, but the young people are yet to catch up. “Having everything here, they go there [to cities]. That’s the problem,” Pérez Ramírez says, as he boards his canoe to go and supervise his fish farm, a pilot model of the productive projects he considers essential as alternatives to depredation.
On the way back to Chosica, navigating shallow waters through sweltering heat and a landscape of broken trees and roots uprooted by the recent gale, the canoe barely makes headway, and the sun cannot pierce the smoke-tinged haze. Then, like a spectre, lying dead on a trunk emerging from the river, glows the yellowish back of a large boa.
“The water is worth a lot,” Pérez Ramírez says. “I’m going to tell a story, because history repeats itself. The tale says that four brave Wampís warriors wanted to kill the yumi (rain) because it rained so much and did not let them do anything.
“The warriors failed, and as the rain found out that they wanted to kill it, it stopped raining for a long time, leaving nothing but a single water well, which was occupied by a panki (boa), the owner of the water.”
Many died trying to kill the snake, he explains, until the smallest men in the community teamed up with animal species that specialised in digging, such as the armadillo, and succeeded.
“And so, the water recovered: with alliance, with strategy, but with blood. With struggle. We don’t live without water. That’s why we have to make a great alliance to recover the rivers, the jungle,” Pérez Ramírez says. “Not to extract gold, as the non-Indigenous man wants. Gold is not eaten. … Time is now, and we must act fast, because time is not gold. Time is water.”
This story was produced in partnership with Mongabay and was supported by the Pulitzer Center Rainforest Reporting Grant
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