Conversations with

Andean-Amazonian

medicine

practitioners

MALVIKA GUPTA

INTERVIEW with Mama Avelina Rogel, in January 2022.

Mama Avelina is a spiritual leader and healer in the Kichwa Serrano tradition. She grew up and lives in a suburb of Quito, after having lived for 17 years in the Bolivian Amazon. She conducts ceremonies for different organizations at all levels of Ecuador’s national indigenous movement, from the territory-based organizations to those at the regional and national level such as Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE),1 and accompanies them in all their political processes, including assemblies and marches. Through her ancestral knowledge and practice of ceremonial and ritual work, she acts as a bridge between the city and the countryside, between indigenous and non-indigenous people, the indigenous movement, and other social movements such as that of workers and women. She strives to bring about a transformation in social and intercultural consciousness and create a new sense of the ‘community’.

Malvika: How do you understand the process of extractivism in Latin America? What are the differences and similarities in the popular mobilizations against extractive projects?

Avelina: Extractivism does not only concern Latin America but is a worldwide phenomenon that violates human rights and the rights of nature – the rights of life itself. All our original Indigenous nationalities and territories have been confronted with this type of exploitation. Always, those who uphold the indigenous territories have to take on all the abuses of nature and of human integrity, since the impacts of extractive practices are devastated lands, contaminated aquifers and rivers, contamination of the Amazon forest – similar in Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile; and what has been imposed on our Peruvian brothers and sisters. The extractive processes are practically the same.

There are many differences and similarities though between people’s mobilisation against extractivism in different places. In Bolivia those who have supported the struggle have been more the indigenous movements. The cocalero movement there involves the MAS (Moviemiento al Socialismo/Movement for Socialism) and had a great boost with the election of Evo Morales as President. This modified extractivist processes and practices, but I would not say improved them, though some guidelines have been changed. Before, most of the companies were North American and then European; and lately the companies taking control on our continent have been more from China or Asia.

Ecuador has promoted more extractivist projects than Bolivia in recent years; even more so now with this neoliberal government of Lasso.2

Malvika: What are the different ways in which extraction affects Indigenous Peoples? What impacts does it have on people at a cultural, social, spiritual and environmental level?

Avelina: It is good to talk about the different forms of extractivism that affect us, especially environmentally. It is undeniable that extractive projects leave a huge ecological footprint. The territories are degraded. The biosphere everywhere is also degraded. So the impacts are not only for the peoples who are living there in their territories, but also for those of us who are distant. We live a synchronicity of the cosmos. It is terrible for our brothers and sisters who are in the territories. They have seen such degradation in nature, including rivers and aquifers, and alarming levels of contamination all around.

As for the cultural, social, spiritual level, the outsiders come to our territories with purely economic interests. There has been great interference in terms of culture, ways of relating, and in the spiritual sphere. Many companies years ago created a formula for invading the territories, pitting leaders against each other, and pitting territory against territory, with a paternalistic attitude that has created dependency on outside NGOs, foundations, and the extractive companies themselves to give people sugar and teach them to eat canned food, removing them from their daily environment of hunting and fishing, making them passive. The alcoholism that grips communities has originated from alcohol given by the extractive companies.

On spiritual matters, what can I say? It’s even harder. The corporations’ extractive practices try to nullify our entire spiritual system, whether we speak of the Andean or Amazonian territories. The Andean case involves an animist attitude that understands how spirit lives in everything – in each mountain, river, tree. In the Amazon, we speak of sacred plants, where the Sacha is the forest, is the mother, father, child, it is everything. If we see how this is being destroyed and degraded, we see how this leaves us without that referent of life, that is the totality of the universe, the sacred.

Malvika: What is the relationship of people with the land, the forest? How does that change or how do extractive projects affect people’s awareness of their relationship with the land and other beings?

Avelina: What is affected is each person’s relationships that link them with the land, with the forest and the mountain. This is in each one of us – a relationship with what we call Ayas, Apus, Apachetas, Achachilas – the energies that inhabit each space and place. As we lose these spaces and territories, we are also losing these intimate relationships, and our way of living in permanent connection with the whole – a cosmo-vision and cosmovivencia [way of sensing the world] that connects us constantly with the environment as a whole, unlike western culture, where everything is hierarchized, influenced by anthropocentrism and Eurocentrism, that places humans at the centre of everything. For our peoples, by contrast, everything is one and one is everything – everything is in constant relationship, without superiority. We are all equally, in a balanced way, holding the whole.

Malvika: How do you understand the relationship of the peoples with the territory and the political thought of self-determination?

Avelina: When we talk about territory we mean political inter-relationships, and self-determination by those who live in a territory. The main organization is the community – the organic joint action by all the sisters and brothers in any territory, and their inter-relationships with other territories. We therefore understand the territory as fundamental, the origin, that which sustains us. Our political thought revolves around the territory. The territory begins in our body and extends through the interactions of our body, of our being with other beings, through the bonds we generate. The political thought of self-determination tells us just that – who I am, how I feel from my territory, my place, my essence, from the stories of my grandmothers and grandfathers, beyond the power of a State – a government that can say No to us or force us to think in terms of globalization. I believe that in each territory or space there is a particular way of doing politics and relating to the environment.

This is self-determination: understanding oneself in the midst of that whole and acting in a way that honours it.

Malvika: What role do you think indigenous forms of justice play in challenging extractive projects? Could you explain what indigenous justice means for your nationality (indigenous group) and what is the status of indigenous justice in the Ecuadorian legal framework?

Avelina: Indigenous justice for our peoples and nationalities – not just on the extractivist front – means restoring balance, returning to harmony, to relationship with the whole. It is not intended to punish, humiliate, or incarcerate those who make mistakes. Harmony is sought through reorganization, in a respectful, loving, and dignified way of relationship, through reflecting why an action is incorrect. This goes far beyond the simple idea of punishment.

In Ecuador’s legal framework of indigenous justice, it is recognized that each people or nationality has the right to act in its territory, with its own councils and specific forms of territorial organization. Here in Ecuador, it is evident that we do govern ourselves, at least in terms of indigenous justice that operates within communities. This is a right we have established years ago that will continue.

Malvika: Can the world of medicine and the world of the ancestors somehow guide or inform the political imagination we need to transform today’s world ravaged by environmental destruction and spiritual loss? If so, what connections do you see between the material world of political economy and the more spiritual world of ancestors, spirits, and our intangible selves?

Avelina: One of the most important elements of the Andean cosmovision and cosmovivencia is medicine, which is born from spirit. Here Spirit is understood as Ajayu or Samiri. Ancient medicine can guide us in many ways. When we talk about medicine, we are not separating the mechanical, physiological part of the body, and its anatomy, from the mind. We talk about everything as a whole. Talking about medicine with words from our ancestors involves the whole, in coherence and harmony with the cosmos.

So a person who has the gift of speech, maybe as a journalist, has medicine in their words, if they use them coherently, in a loving way. Each philosopher, writer, poet, painter, singer, or dancer makes use of medicine too. Medicine is the totality of knowing how to live, in a loving, honest, dignified way. It reminds us to be guided by our ancestors, who bring us to that time of the ayllu. The ayllu for our peoples means the great cosmic family.

The ayllu is based on the principle that the plants, animals, minerals, and human beings are all one; they form a whole and constitute this cosmic family. Our peoples are living this new time called pachakutik – the timeless time when this knowledge awakens and returns again to be part of our daily lives, to re-establish order and cosmic harmony through recovering the historical memory, identity, space, and culture of our ancestors. From our ancestors, we can reconfigure this memory that unites us.

Each experience that is born from collective work, from shared knowledge and ceremony helps to integrate the whole. In a ceremony, we gather in a circle, we look at each other, support each other, recognize each other, remember each other and our lineages, and then we deliberate. When it is guided by Spirit, a proposal is holistic and has integrity.

So, please understand that it is time to work in community, in a collective way. This is a very important use of historical memory to transform the current world, through respect for those around us. In the Andean world, there is life and spirit everywhere. We can’t destroy the environment. No, we won’t go and destroy our brothers or sisters.

So, I think it is essential to recover our spiritual practices in order to transform our political imagination, at a time when most proposals from the popular or social sectors continue to be hierarchical, repeating patterns of the prevailing anthropocentrism.

Speaking about the intangible self, about the spirits, the ancestors, the first thing is that they still form a coherent reality, despite all attempts made by western culture to eradicate them. They still continue to exist. The knowledge and messages that drive us to connect with our ancestors continue. The intangible self for all our peoples continues to be the central nucleus of life. When we talk about the material world, the political, economic world, we are not isolated from this whole. How do we do politics, and live in this world? It’s undeniable that we are matter and matter needs to feed, transform, breathe, with specific needs. However, when we connect our energy with the wisdom of our spirits, we can do this with love and respect. What do I want to share with this environment?

We speak of three fundamental principles in the Andean vision: correspondence, complementarity, and reciprocity. Correspondence is where I correspond to part of a particular territory. The sense of complement-arity means how I can complement the other, how the other complements me. This principle is not one of opposites, but of complements. Honouring it means always seeking to integrate with the other. Reciprocity is when this little plant invites me to share its fruit with me, this energy. In the ancestral Andean-Amazonian cosmovision, we do not seek to accumulate. I do not want money to distinguish myself from the other. If I’m going to have something it is to share with the other, to reciprocate the other.

Malvika: Could you please share with us your personal story and that of your community? How and where did you grow up? What has been your relationship with indigenous politics and social movements in general? What attracted you to the world of medicine?

Avelina: Speaking of my personal history and of my community, I was born in the Andes in a town called Tumbaco that has one of the oldest mountains as its guardian, Tayta Ilalo (the illuminated place). It is a sacred mountain for many communities around it. My mother comes from a thousand-year-old community in the centre of Ecuador in the province of Cotopaxi in La Maná. She belongs to the Panzaleo peoples of the Kichwa nationality.3 My father is mestizo, descended from African and Ecuadorian heritage. My great-grandmother worked as a slave on a cotton farm in northern Peru and my grandfather comes from that territory. My father’s mother is from the Palta peoples of Kichwa nationality of Ecuador, so my father is mestizo. I grew up in a recreated community context, with brothers and sisters who had to leave their territories in the countryside during the ’60s and ’70s. In my father’s case, there was a great drought in his territory, so they migrated. In the case of my mother, she also left her territory at a very young age, coming to Quito, the capital of Ecuador. They got together with other brothers and sisters who came from indigenous territories, in the mountains, and also territories of the Afro-Ecuadorian brothers and sisters. Having left our original communities, we recreated the concept of community with this diverse group of people. So, with my parents, here in Tumbaco, I grew up in diversity, with a vast wealth of knowledge of different Indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorean peoples. Tumbaco was a place that kept the essence of indigenous ritual, with many healers from the territories, located in Tayta Ilalo. So I had the opportunity to interact and share from a very young age with brothers and sisters who were already working in curanderia, ancestral medicine.

I was initiated by my grandmother, Francisca Cajas Machimba. When I was nine years old, she started me in the practice of medicine, in the world of spirits. At the age of nine for the first time I could see how she saw [clairvoyance]. My paternal grandmother Avelina Andrea Correa also had this gift, and so did her twin brother. My father Rigoberto Rogel had it too. He supported me and continues to support me until now with his knowledge and experiences, working a lot with minerals, rocks and stones that are considered our grandfathers and grandmothers. For many harmonizations we work with the medicine born from different semi-precious stones, that come from the territory, from the river – ancient medicine for harmonizing body, mind, and Spirit.

I have been involved with Indigenous Peoples’ and social politics since I was very little. My mother, Teresa Cajas Machimba, left her territory to work in a factory, and played an important role in Ecuador’s trade union movement in the 1970s-80s. So, I accompanied my mother to the Ecuadorian Congress. I watched all the struggles, the workers’ strikes, and I began to understand and integrate the struggle, the resistance. Being the daughter of immigrants and daughter of Indigenous People, I understood deeply the issue of discrimination, not only in Ecuador but throughout the world, of demonizing, persecuting, invisibilizing, pointing the finger at difference, at those holding onto a different memory.

Many people who have gone to the city want to get rid of that memory, of that ancestry, since they have been somehow influenced by machismo on TV, in the movies. There is an evident whitening in our countries. Few people honour their ancestry, their origins. In my case, I am the opposite. I return to wearing the clothing of my grandmothers, even though I’ve had the opportunity to experience academic life in different countries. This enriches my position of how I feel in life, and how I act. I firmly believe that always being consistent in the service that one proposes to others is fundamental in life.

*

Conversation between Mama Avelina and Isidro Lucitante with his son Alex Lucitante, in the community of Santa Rosa de los Cofánes, Sucumbíos province, on 16 January 2022.

Isidro Lucitante is a widely respected shaman from the Cofán people, who live in Ecuador’s northern Amazon region, close to the border with Colombia. His son Alex played a key role in the acclaimed Sinangoe legal victory in October 2018 that safeguarded 32,000 hectares of Amazon rainforest from gold mining.4 The Cofán, though few in number, are famous for their plant-based spiritual tradition, which they have maintained despite devastation of much of their lands by the oil industry. Like Ecuador’s other Indigenous Peoples or ‘nationalities’, such as the Waorani (who won a similar victory further south), the Cofán exercise considerable self-determination, and their organizations form part of CONAIE.

Avelina: We are here sharing with brothers of the Cofán people, with a revered spiritual teacher, who comes from a family with a long tradition in yagé medicine. Tayta Isidro Lucitante and his family are going to tell us a little bit about what it means to be Cofán, and what their life story is. Alex?

Alex: Well, I’m Alex Lucitante. I’m from the Cofán ancestral community. I’m 29, in a long learning process of yagé medicine, and I’m an activist in defence of human rights and ancestral territories. We Cofánes are originally from here, this territory. All the grandparents of our grandparents were here. They walked these San Miguel, Aguarico, Bermejo and Putumayo Rivers – a route that our Grandparents walked throughout their existence. We have lived here and lived everything on the basis of yagé medicine. This has guided us, allowing us to understand life, the harmony of our territory, our close connections, our close relationship with the territory, and how to live in this harmony that our Grandparents taught us. This harmony is at great risk.

For us as Cofán, living in this territory is a legacy that our Grandparents have given us. Unfortunately, we have all been through difficult situations, because of all the changes that have taken place. Our Grandparents at their time experienced great difficulties, problems, threats. Now we are going through other types of difficulties – discrimination, lack of respect for our medicine, and great risk for our people. And more than this, there is a threat to the true meaning of our way of life in this territory.

I have said to people before that the day the Cofán begin to disappear, the territories will begin to disappear as well. The day the territories disappear, other Indigenous Peoples will also disappear. And the governments have tried to make us invisible, to hide us and to always push us to the periphery. They make us try to think that we need a big house, a car. Enclosed within four walls is what they call home. But I understand why the forest is so important. Because I grew up with my father and mother and had the great opportunity to walk with my brother in the jungle, hunting, fishing, I understand what it is like to respect nature, how to take care of it, but at the same time to live in connection with it. Every moment that we go fishing or hunting is a learning experience. It’s like you’re going to learn every day from the forest. The life of Cofán is here. We have nowhere else to go. If they send us to the mountains, that is not our home.

A judge, a lawyer from the Ministry of Energy came. She said our forest is not just Indigenous Peoples’ land, it’s for all of Ecuador, but this is not so. We don’t intend to occupy all of Ecuador, simply what our grandparents have used, that we manage by making our lives in this territory. If they throw me out there in the deep forest, I can live for a week, a month. I won’t die because this is my home. But if I brought a lawyer from Quito and they threw him or her out there in the forest, in two days they would die. Why? Because it is not their space. And it’s the same, if they throw me out in the mountains, in two days I would die because it’s not my space.

There are certain differences that need to be understood. They need to be respected, but it’s tricky. The only way to be able to understand the reality is here – with medicine, with connection, understanding, good thinking, respect.

I have said to the lawyers with whom I have spoken: you think you know about the Indigenous Peoples’ reality? What you don’t know, it’s better not to give your opinion, to not say anything, to remain silent.

So this is what I can share with you, these are some of my feelings. The stories of my grandparents move me a lot. They have mastered the art of medicine in order to harmonize the forest, the earth, and the sky. They had to take a lot of medicine. And it’s from their medicine that we continue to conserve our reality, trying to recover the tradition so that it’s not lost, and so that outsiders can’t cheat us by arriving here lying to us saying that they will take something from us and leave something else in return which separates us from our reality.

Avelina: Thank you very much Alex. Isidro, I would now like to ask what it means to you to be a spiritual leader, recognized through the path of a long line of your ancestors? How would you define yagé medicine? What is yagé medicine for you?

Isidro: Thank you very much for taking the time and interest to understand this wonderful knowledge of yagé. First of all, I am happy to be maintaining this knowledge, that I received from my grandparents, my uncles, and all the ancestors who have lived in this region and passed on this knowledge of yagé. Actually, we Cofánes originate from here, this region. I am 60 years old, and I have grown up here, with recognition and let’s say with the wisdom of our grandparents. My grandfather passed away in 1992 at the age of 115. He used to tell me the whole history of where our Cofán ancestors were before the Spaniards came, in this area of San Miguel; and how they managed to obtain their knowledge of yagé. We hear that in a previous era, God existed here on this earth, on this planet. God pulled from his hair and sowed it and from there, this sacred plant was born, the yagé plant. After this, God left humans to discover this knowledge. From there, this knowledge was born.

Previously, almost the whole family were shamans – children, youth, women, men, everyone. This led to conflicts between them and seeing this God intervened and placed the blessing on humans so that not all people become shamans. From then on, only those who were capable of learning were to become shamans – whoever has the ability, can reach the knowledge of yagé. My grandfather told me this story, and I still remember it as I continue to share the knowledge of yagé.

Avelina: Pay [kichwa shorthand for thanks]. Alex, a question for you. As an activist, and defender of the territory, also as a healer, who is aware of all the issues that not only concern the Cofán people, but pertain to other Indigenous Peoples and nationalities, not only in Ecuador but also in Colombia, in Peru and elsewhere – what do you think about the idea that society at large tends to put a burden on Indigenous Peoples to save the world? Everyone goes out, let’s say, to protest in the cities, speaking in defence of the territory without knowing what territory really is. Everyone wants to defend the rights of nature without actually doing any real work. They put the burden of this task on us – the brothers and sisters who live in the territories or those who are sustaining this ancient historical process. What do you make of the civil society somehow washing their hands off just as the governmental institutions do? They organize some protests from time to time with banners, and then they go home to sleep without worrying anymore because they are not in the territory, and do not live through the problems that exist there. So how do you feel as part of this territory about what’s going on? Do you feel overloaded? Do you think it is something in which we all need to equally participate? How do you see it?

Alex: In a ceremony, I once saw this whole situation. While taking the medicine, there was a moment when the medicine said to me – you pay for the suffering of all humanity. I asked myself why this is so. Do we pay for something that we do not commit? That’s why I take the medicine. This means, we are here harmonizing the whole planet.

Yes, it’s true, there are many people, organizations worldwide, undertaking big campaigns for the defence of the environment, of biodiversity. I don’t like those terms very much though, because they seem capitalist to me. Terms like ‘natural resources’. The aims are usually oriented towards profit in the end, and real support never reaches the territories. And I have shared these thoughts with the organizations too, and told them that if they really want to support the Indigenous Peoples, they should go to the territories. Do not take any initiatives based on your way of thinking and writing about us from afar. Don’t do that because when you go to the community to understand what support the community really needs, it’s not the same as what they think outside. When their strategies are dictated by the technical aspects, without understanding this reality of the communities, they are not helping too much.

So, I have always said in that way that it is better that all these people who want to support do so from the reality of the community. How do you live in the community – in relation with it? How do we live? What are our own thoughts about the reality that we live, and what are the threats? What are the worries that we have for the future? All the sessions they organise seem good to me in one way, but it will be much more effective and impressive when on the part of all the activists and all the people who are protesting, they bring the knowledge and the voice from here.

From there, I think that kind of support can be much stronger. Here, we who understand these territories are at risk – the risk that the companies and those supporting them can come and try to make us disappear. But we always continue with faith in medicine that everything will be fine, always keep walking forward, carrying these messages that are true.

Avelina: Isidro, I wanted to ask you if you could tell us in your language the words that relate to our elements – the air, sun, water, and mother earth. Alex can help us by translating?

Isidro speaks in the A’ingae language.

Alex (translating for Isidro): We Cofánes as trustees take care of what is the water, the land, the space, the forest. We have always done this. Our grandparents have done it because there is a mandate from God, from the medicine that we are the ones who have to take care of this forest, all the space, the air we breathe, to counteract the contamination from spreading all over the world. That we must take care of this space so that we are all well. We not only care for ourselves, we care for the world, so that everyone is well. And all this thanks to the teaching of the grandparents, and as if by order from God that we call chiga here. Our grandfathers and grandmothers showed us this way, taking care of everything that nourishes us so that the oxygen itself can be pure, our breathing can be pure and we can live well.

Avelina: Thank you very much. A final question, Alex. How do you see the political context and the Cofán people within this context and the Indigenous Peoples’ organizations? Do you feel people really understand what is currently happening? What relationship do you have politically with not only indigenous organizations, but also with other social movements and with the brothers and sisters who are in the city?

Alex: At the political level, our mother organization here in Ecuador has suffered considerable crisis, due to personal interests. There has sometimes not been a common interest in strengthening communities. And if in some way we are developing autonomy in our territory here, it is thanks to us taking charge of our own management.

I grew up seeing leaders being manipulated by NGOs and foundations which are governed by global capital interests. This has led to division in communities and generated conflicts and contributed to the weakening of organizations. The leaders would try to bribe people with chickens. A family cannot develop in a territory simply with chickens if there is no long-term plan. So, there are things that haven’t been done.

Seeing this, we as young people and activists felt the need to generate spaces for exchange, articulating messages from our communities that can be positioned at the national and international level. I decided at one point to lead the process of defending rights, defending ancestral territories, after seeing that there was no progress at the level of collective rights even after 25 years. At the territorial level I think just two communities have knowledge of collective titles now, no more than that. All of this has personally motivated me to
articulate these issues at the national level. So, with our national organization CONAIE, regional organization CONFENAIE [Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon], and CONCONAWEP (the organization of our neighbouring Waorani nationality), we have worked collectively to achieve the great victory in Sinangoe against the mining companies, and we were politically formed through this.

We are in process of positioning this autonomy and self-determination of Indigenous Peoples and nationalities all over the country. The issue of consultation is crucial. A ruling is about to be issued, and they have held hearings to develop this. These are great steps that we are achieving. We have also felt encouraged by the current leadership of CONAIE and CONFENAIE, who have a clear vision and integrity to integrate the issues of all nationalities at the level of territory. This is important because then the voices of resistance will not only come from the Cofán community but from all the nationalities of Ecuador which are all becoming strengthened.

The scenario for our young people will be quite clear. Why are we fighting here? So that the oil and mining companies can’t enter our territories and take over. The state has to start respecting community decisions. There have been tense moments. For instance, sometimes when a company comes, some people go to negotiate, others go to sign documents in a hidden manner and such things.

But I think that as long as there is a clear discourse about understanding our territories by our leaders all
will be well. It would be much better if the leaders who are outside can also approach these spaces of medicine, to further sharpen their message.

Why are we here? Sometimes one learns a lot, from the experiences of lawyers who teach you, from anthropologists who make you see, but all of these individuals ultimately learned from the communities, from the teaching of our grandparents, carrying out research in our communities. They learned from there. But what do we do? We go to consult them about what they learned from our grandparents.

This is the invitation I would like to extend to our leaders to connect with medicine as guide, and we will continue to strengthen this fight. We grow stronger as we fight more and more and continue to build, so that finally the indigenous communities can be relaxed, more protected and our territory safeguarded.

Avelina: Well, thank you very much Isidro. We thank your home, your space, your family. Thank you, Alex, for having shared with us your wawas [children in Kichwa], your family and also those beautiful songs – the music combines well with the ancient medicine and the sounds of the forest.

Footnotes:

* These conversations took place in Spanish and were translated into English by the author.

1. CONAIE is the largest and most politically influential social organization in Ecuador in the last three decades.

2. The two decrees, no. 95 pertaining to petroleum policy and no. 151 pertaining to mining policy, which were introduced by the government of Guillermo Lasso within the first six months of assuming Presidency in May 2021, seek to extend the frontiers of both petroleum extraction and large-scale mining. Following this, the Amazonian wing of the national Indigenous movement (CON-FENAIE) presented a demand to declare these decrees unconstitutional as they do not respect the collective rights of Indigenous Nationalities, including the right of consultation.

3. The Indigenous Peoples of Ecuador are grouped into 14 Nationalities, and the Kichwa Nationality is composed of Pueblos (distinct peoples), see https://www.iwgia.org/en/ecuador.html

4. Alex Lucitante, ‘“Without Unity There Can Be No Triumph”: Indigenous Voice On a Historic Victory Against Gold Mining in the Amazon’, Amazon Frontlines, 18 December 2018, https://www.amazonfrontlines.org/chronicles/kofan-voice-victory/