Crossing The River

Mari Luz Canaquiri (Kukama Indigenous People, Peru) grew up knowing that the Marañón River is sacred, because they carry life itself. When oil spills poisoned its waters and her people, her voice was dismissed because she was a woman. Refusing to be silenced, she joined other Kukama women to found the Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana Federation, leading with a strength that is inclusive, resilient, and cannot be corrupted. Together, they won a landmark victory: the Marañón became the first river in Peru recognized as a subject of rights. In 2025, Mari Luz was honored with the Goldman Prize—the “Environmental Nobel”—for her fight to defend her river and her people.

Mari Luz Canaquiri (Kukama Indigenous People, Peru) grew up knowing that the Marañón River is sacred, because they carry life itself.

When oil spills poisoned its waters and her people, her voice was dismissed because she was a woman. Refusing to be silenced, she joined other Kukama women to found the Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana Federation, leading with a strength that is inclusive, resilient, and cannot be corrupted.

Together, they won a landmark victory: the Marañón became the first river in Peru recognized as a subject of rights. In 2025, Mari Luz was honored with the Goldman Prize—the “Environmental Nobel”—for her fight to defend her river and her people.

Mari Luz Canaquiri is a Kukama leader and guardian of the Marañón River in the Peruvian Amazon. As the head of the Association of Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana Women, she played a central role in the campaign to grant the Marañon river legal personhood—a groundbreaking move in Peru aimed at protecting them from pollution and oil spills. In recognition of her tireless efforts to defend the river, in 2025 Mariluz was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, often called the Nobel Prize for the Environment.

Mari Luz Canaquiri (Kukama Indigenous People, Peru) grew up knowing that the Marañón River is sacred, because they carry life itself. When oil spills poisoned its waters and her people, her voice was dismissed because she was a woman. Refusing to be silenced, she joined other Kukama women to found the Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana Federation, leading with a strength that is inclusive, resilient, and cannot be corrupted. Together, they won a landmark victory: the Marañón became the first river in Peru recognized as a subject of rights. In 2025, Mari Luz was honored with the Goldman Prize—the “Environmental Nobel”—for her fight to defend her river and her people.

Bárbara Muelas (Misak Indigenous People, Colombia), the first Indigenous woman in the Colombian Academy of Language, has spent her 80 years reviving Namtrik, her mother tongue—one of 65 Indigenous languages that still survive in Colombia despite centuries of colonization. Once spoken only aloud, it is now etched in writing so it will not vanish.

Born to terrajeros during a time in which colonizers forced the Misak nation to work in their own land, she saw her people reclaim their territory in the 1980s and knew that freedom also meant reclaiming their language. Mamá Bárbara translated the ethnic chapter of Colombia’s Constitution into Namtrik, believing each language holds a unique way of seeing the world—and that by learning them, we also come to know ourselves, and the threads that bind us all.

Jacqueline Flores (Asháninka Indigenous People, Peru) thinks that being a plant doctor is not a title—it is an ancient science of direct encounter. One must take the plants, ingest them, allow them to move through the body, and speak. This is a knowledge revealed slowly, through dreams and disciplined diets, where the plants themselves become teachers.

As a traditional healer of the Asháninka people—one of the Amazon’s most profound guardians of medicinal plant wisdom—Jacqueline embodies a way of healing rooted in time, reciprocity, and deep attention. She speaks critically of urban worlds that have severed their ties with nature, trading connection for chemical quick fixes that soothe but do not truly cure.

True healing, she reminds us, is a slow unfolding. It asks us to relearn how to listen—to the plants, to the forest, to the more-than-human voices that have not stopped speaking.

Noemí Gualinga (Kichwa Indigenous People of Sarayaku, Ecuador) is an Indigenous leader and a member of the Amazonian Women Defenders of the Rainforest Collective, an organization dedicated to protecting the rights of Indigenous women and their territories.

Noemí has crossed many rivers — both literal and metaphorical — learning to adapt to life in the city, to other languages, and to unfamiliar rules. She has adapted, but never forgotten who she is or where she comes from. This is the lesson she has passed on to her children.

For Noemí, preserving and transmitting knowledge — and sustaining the deep relationship with their territory — rests on one essential foundation: protecting and caring for their language. Because it is through language that children come to understand the wisdom of the forest and learn how to care for and defend their roots.

In this episode, Grandmother Helen Lindmark (Sámi Indigenous People, Sápmi) shares her deep connection to the land and the Sámi way of life. The Sámi people inhabit Sápmi—a vast, remote region that spans Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Russia’s Kola Peninsula—located within the Arctic Circle and rich in minerals like copper and gold. Because of this, their lands and communities have long been threatened by extractive industries and colonial forces that have sought to suppress their language and cultural traditions. Today, the Sámi are the only Indigenous people recognized within the European Union.

Despite these challenges, Grandmother Helen continues to defend the sacred relationship between her people, their land, and the more-than-human world. Through silence and the practice of deep listening to the language of nature, she reminds us of the importance of returning to our roots and recognizing our profound interconnectedness.

In this episode, Christine Kandie (Endorois Indigenous People, Kenia) shares a deeply personal story of dispossession, resistance, and healing. Following the forced eviction of her people from their ancestral land in 1973, Christine grew up hearing stories of a lake that was like a womb for her community—vital, spiritual, and irreplaceable.

In this episode, we follow her journey from a childhood in exile to becoming the founder of the Endorois Indigenous Women Empowerment Network. Along the way, she has challenged layers of invisibility to demand justice, reparations, and recognition. This is a story about the power of memory, identity, and what it means to keep fighting when you are told to forget who you are.

Patricia Tobón Yagarí (Emberá-Chamí Indigenous People, Colombia) is an Indigenous attorney who bridges worlds: between Indigenous and non-Indigenous cosmologies, communities and the State, Western law and the stories of the Colombian armed conflict, and the processes of truth, healing, and reparation. Her home was her first school, and her career demonstrates that being born between two worlds—and deeply understanding both—is a powerful tool for building bridges between diverse actors.