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For us, stories are living beings. They breathe life into our homes, into our forests. They pulse in our blood, in our dreams. They stalk us like jaguars, clack like peccary, sail like macaws, run like fish. They are powerful beings. Like rainbows, they bring peace. Like lightning, they bring war. And they are always changing. That’s how we know that they are alive. A story dies when no one tells it.
Sometimes, I can sense my father in the woods. I can feel him when I’m alone in the forest. A wind will pick up and all will go quiet and a little dark, and I know that my father is watching me.”
“I don’t know if she is bad. She is not one of us.”
Time was painful, the way it passed.
Víctor had died quickly. Grief was long and slow.
“I will speak like a jaguar,” I said. “I will make the companies tremble.”
your people’s stories are what keep the rainforest alive.
Was this how love was supposed to feel? A wild, dizzying heartbeat on a bridge above a creek far away from home?
It sounded so simple. Maybe destiny is a simple thing, after all.
The laughter was jaguar medicine.
to laugh at my own suffering, to laugh like wind in the forest, to laugh all the way into battle. It was part of my people’s power. It was our medicine. It was the mask we wore for protection, the laughter of survival.
“But if we ask them about their dreams, about their visions for their communities, then they will tell us about what is sacred. They will tell us about what they love.”
“How do you say ‘I love you’ in Wao Tededo?” he asked, his voice unsteady. I opened my eyes. “Ponemopa,” I said quietly. “Ponemopa,” he whispered,
“Once they destroy the community, then it is easy to destroy the individual.”
“Famous is when more people know you than you know,”
“When is Mommy going to finish that fucking budget? I want to go home to be with Grandma.”
The cowori are not better than us. They are afraid of us. We remind them of what they have forgotten. They don’t hear the voices of their ancestors anymore. They don’t plant their own food. They give birth in hospitals. They don’t live in communities. They try to conquer us, not because they are better but because, deep down, they are afraid.”
“Never speak when you are angry. Silence is better. Go to the waterfall together. Then speak.”
that to protect the Amazon was to protect the one home that we all share: Mother Earth.
in my spirit’s depths there was a warrior – but one who was both brave and afraid?
