Translator: Victoria Rodríguez Reviewer: Krystian Aparta
(She sings in Shuar)
I'm here to tell you a story.
When I was a little girl,
my mother used to say that when I was born, my father asked,
"What is it?"
And my grandmother answered: "A girl."
And my father asked again: "A girl?"
My father wanted to have sons, because in my culture,
men were warriors.
They wanted more men so as to have more wars.
Suddenly, I had that feeling in my heart,
since I was born, that I'm a woman warrior.
I was a girl, and my father wanted a boy, so I said:
"I want to be a warrior when I grow up."
My mother would say:
"When you were a kid, you always smiled and were never afraid of anybody."
And until now, I smile at everybody, and I'm always happy.
And when I die, I'll die smiling.
Eventually, my parents decided that I had to study,
to improve our quality of life.
I walked to the city for 3 days to go to secondary school.
I finished my studies, and came back.
I had that passion, to be a warrior,
that love, enthusiasm, of coming back to my place.
Because, as I did then and I do now, I love my people.
I am Shuar.
Proudly, my parents taught me to value my culture.
And that's what I want to talk about today.
When I was 19...
We had a story that said "There comes an 'iwensh'."
My father and my grandparents told us the story,
it was called "Iwensh Iwia."
A man that ate all humans, and destroyed the land.
He ate all the animals that existed,
and a Shuar man rescued that environment in the end.
There was this thing that I loved, and I hope my kids will love it too.
When I was a girl, I loved climbing trees, because I thought I was a monkey.
My friend said that we were monkeys, "Come on, let's go!"
I also loved going to the river, because we had that free space.
Nobody could tell us where to go.
In that place, that rainforest that I come from,
there's a place where I can run, where I can go freely
without anybody telling me what to do.
My brother and I would always hide from our mom.
And my mom always got furious,
and she had the nettle to discipline us, to become good kids.
My brother would hide below the yucca.
In the end, through that passion, that love,
when I was 19, I started working with my people, with Shuar women.
After working with them, after fighting,
there was always that threat.
Maybe you've heard about the oil exploitation.
That Amazonia, that freedom, that space in the rainforest we have,
we couldn't let them destroy it:
our trees, which I used to climb,
which my children now need to run freely.
Not only my children, also your children will need that space.
It's so fun.
Talking about the rainforest...
Fly an hour by plane and arrive to a place without noise,
where you have nothing.
You arrive to the free space where you can open your eyes
and see what a world you're in.
One day, my fate changes.
I went to the Achuar territory.
I had to go there to work with the women.
As Achuar and Shuar women,
we had run to this green rainforest
which you can see from a plane.
You can't get there on foot.
We started making the chicha,
a sacred beverage for us, as women.
I didn't know what to do then.
I was already in Achuar territory.
I was a Shuar woman; my culture was different,
my tongue was different...
We could share very few things.
I started talking to these women.
A sick woman came.
I couldn't let women die in font of me, giving birth.
There were health issues.
I couldn't let newborn children die in front of me.
So we had to talk, chat.
We started talking with the Achuar women,
with my Achuar women,
to think of how to prevent child mortality in our territory.
We created a program called "Inkiama Nukuri," Jungle Mamas,
where Achuar and Shuar mothers could train themselves for giving birth.
Health was important to Achuar people, to my people and to me.
To see women dying in front of us...
Moving them outside was difficult so that they could give birth.
So labor was also sacred to women.
Giving birth was traditional, very sacred.
No one could ask where she had given birth, how it had been.
So we started training Achuar women
so that they could be part of that vision
that I and other women wanted.
To be there for each other.
We also talked about maternal health.
We wanted to discuss hygiene, too.
In my culture and in Achuar culture, we had no special places to defecate.
We had to build them,
to live in a healthy environment, so that our children could be healthy.
We built composting ecological toilets
that people could use.
I like this one.
In this message, in this footprint, I felt when I was born, I said:
"When my parents told me to be a warrior, it had to be about this."
To empower Achuar women.
To empower us and say:
"Let's learn, let's train ourselves, and share this message with other women."
Since then, we're empowering mothers
so that later, these same mothers
can share this message in other communities.
We've trained a lot of women as regards giving birth.
As I said, labor was sacred and solitary,
and lots of women died when giving birth.
How did we teach them?
With foreign people
who know a lot about labor,
with experienced people.
We've trained Achuar women so that they can have good health,
so that they can save lives in their own homes,
since transportation is very difficult when something serious happens.
Another thing I like is working in my free time,
doing other kinds of activities, like pottery, as you can see.
A lot of materials I've brought:
the mojaba, the piñín, the sapa,
a tool to light the fire.
We do all this in our free time so that women feel engaged.
Another thing that was difficult to me,
the footprint I'd like to leave,
I had to organize things with Achuar and Shuar leaders,
talk to them to gain the space to work with the women.
We've talked to all the men, like 600 from there, sitting down,
so that our project, what we had dreamed of,
would get their approval.
In the rain forest, where there's no technology,
it was so good to see computers that work with solar panels,
to get all the information we want,
since it's so difficult to find that information.
All this training, all these workshops are carried out in our own language,
so that everything is clear,
in order to enable the women to go and spread the message.
I have this beautiful team, I love looking at this photo.
I feel as if I could leave this footprint:
this is my team, with whom I've trained something like 32 women,
and they go round visiting 42 Achuar communities
to pass on the message, to empower women,
to the save women's and their newborn children's lives.
I'll go back to the story about the space, the rain forest,
and I want to tell you a story.
The vegetable garden.
For us, the farm is very important and sacred
because from it living creatures are born,
it is the space where a mother gives birth.
That space is sacred, a spirit called "Nunkui" taught us.
It's a female spirit that lives in the earth,
lives in the rain forest, in the farm, which takes care of it.
If we use the forest, the land, the space, wrongly,
she can punish us.
That was what our parents taught us.
Our parents would wake us up at 3 in the morning.
We would drink guayusa, a plant,
we would all vomit,
and they would tell us what activity we had to do during the day.
We planned everything out.
When I grew up, my mother would say:
"Respect Nunkui, because if you don't respect her,
you'll be idle all your life, you'll have no food to eat.
So you must respect her."
And it was her song she always taught us to dedicate to her
so that she would respect us.
I'm going to leave you with this song about Nunkui.
(She sings in Shuar)
[Narcisa Mashienta, Shuar leader]
(Song ends)
(Speaking Shuar)
(Applause)