[speaks in Māori]
Hello, everyone.
[speaks in Māori]
[speaks in Māori] India Logan-Riley.
My name is India, and I am from a nation called Ngāti Kahungunu,
on the east coast of the north island of Aotearoa,
colonially known as New Zealand.
In February of last year,
catastrophic climate-change- fueled wildfires
tore their way across Eastern Australia.
The smoke cloud was so big
that the sun turned red
in my own homelands, far from the east coast of Australia.
At that time, I was supporting my younger brother in hospital,
and the doctors told us
that they were seeing higher amounts of people
with breathing issues related to the smoke and the air.
In that moment, our health was bound to the
struggle of the land
and people in another
country. In the impacts of climate change,
our fates are intertwined, as are the historic forces
that have brought us together today.
Before we embark on these two weeks of negotiations,
it is important to reflect on how we ended up in this room,
with thousands of
other people masked up and poised to deliberate.
And to do this, I must go back hundreds of years
into the roots of imperialist
expansion, and the story of my own community.
252 years ago, invading forces sent by the ancestors
of this presidency arrived in my ancestors' territories,
heralding an age of violence and murder and destruction
enabled by documents like the Doctrine of Discovery
that were formulated in Europe.
Land in my region was stolen by the British crown
in order to extract oil
and suck the land of all its nutrients,
or seeking to displace my people and end our practices.
The first time I personally experienced
these violent processes was at 10 years old,
when the local council attempted
to steal our community's land for the construction of a highway.
And then after that,
the New Zealand government stole the foreshore and seabed,
and offered it up for deep-sea oil drilling the following year.
These historic forces continue to shape my life
and have brought me here.
I have grown up in these negotiations,
spending my 20s running through these
halls, lobbying decision-makers and staying up far past
midnight hand-stitching banners.
Since my first climate talks in Paris, I've been giving
the same speech.
I've been applauded and awarded for conjuring emotive imagery
of rising sea levels and yearly wildfires
that my community continues to endure.
Six years ago, I first spoke
these stories into this
space, and every year since, I've repeated
the same words: wildfires, sea-level rise,
wildfires, suffering,
sea-level rise, biodiversity loss, sea-level rise.
Emissions continue to rise.
I'm the same age as these negotiations.
I've grown up, graduated, fallen in love, fallen out of love,
stopped and changed a couple of careers along the way,
all while the global north colonial governments
and corporations fudge with the future.
And as Indigenous — sorry.
Knowing that this history
shows us that hands and minds made this present world, and
so it is also hands and hearts and minds that can remake it,
and it is Indigenous
and frontline communities that are leading this remaking.
We're keeping fossil fuels in the ground and stopping
fossil fuel expansion.
We're halting infrastructure
that would increase
emissions, and saying no to false solutions.
In fact, in the US and Canada alone, Indigenous
resistance has stopped or delayed greenhouse
gas pollution equivalent to at least one-quarter
of annual emissions. What we do works.
In the face of mediocre
leadership, Indigenous peoples shine through.
This is all to say that climate change
is the final outcome of the colonial project,
and in our response, we must be decolonial,
rooted in justice and care for communities
like mine who have borne
the burden of the global north greed for far too long.
I cannot put it more simply than that
we know what we are doing.
And if you aren't willing to back us
or let us lead, then you're complicit
in the death and destruction
that is happening across the globe. Rights frameworks
must be entrenched in the Paris rulebook.
Finance must be redistributed from the likes of war games
in the Pacific towards loss and damage in a just transition.
And richer countries have to commit to steep
emissions reductions this decade, rather
than palming off responsibility through carbon markets.
And last, but not least:
Land back, oceans back.
This is all part of following Indigenous leadership.
This is what keeping warming below 1.5 degrees looks like.
This is an invitation to you.
This COP, learn our histories,
listen to our stories, honor our knowledge
and get in line or get out of the way.
Kia ora. Thank you.