Immerse yourself in the colorful sights, vibrant sounds and local languages spoken in three tropical rainforests. Produced by veteran documentarian Lia Beltrami, Guardians of the Rainforest allows us to see life unfold through the eyes of indigenous women and communities struggling to survive.
We hear so much from second and third-hand sources about the experiences of people living in the rainforests. Guardians of the Rainforest allows us to see them come alive before our very eyes, almost as if we are there in person. Lia and her team at Aurora Vision have captured several women in their communities going about their daily lives, cooking, working, dancing, weaving, telling us about their hopes and dreams. Alongside these idyllic, paradisiacal scenes, we also hear firsthand testimony regarding deforestation and other forms of environmental exploitation and how this affects them. And since you cannot divorce indigenous populations from spirituality, alongside them, we learn from several religious leaders regarding the role of faith communities in the defense of their rights.
The sun rises in the Amazon…
Maria Auxiliadora Fernandes da Silva, a Dâw tribe leader from the Lower Rio Negro region in the state of Amazonas in Brazil, takes us on a boat tour. She tells us what the forest means to her, about the rights of passage she went through to become a woman leader, of her passion for plants…. We also learn about the suffering of her people, both past and present, and a bit about the efforts of indigenous peoples to defend their rights and their territory. Yesterday, her people were slaves; today, they are at risk of hunger, human trafficking, deforestation, and illegal mining. Her dream is that “men and women and the government would respect nature.” Leaders from a variety of faith-based organizations are joining forces in support of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon in an effort to preserve their cultures, the rainforest, and creation.
From the Rio Negro in Brazil to the Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo…
Here we are immersed in scenes from the daily life of members of the Pygmy tribe whose lives depend on the forest and the river. An entire community “opens the door” of their village to us. They explain their understanding of Nzambe, their name for God. We drive with them through their forest surrounds, observe life in their village among their leaf-covered homes, watch as they prepare their meager food, and break spontaneously into music-making, dancing, and playing games. Due to the deforestation taking place in their surroundings, the animals they depend on for food are driven away due to the noise of machinery or the destruction of their habitat. The Pygmies are proud of the ancestral traditions handed down to them, including conservation methods that ensured a steady supply of fish in the river, and the allotting of a portion of the forest to each village who had the responsibility of conserving it. Here too, religious leaders are helping to mobilize the population in an effort to protect their forest and create a monitoring system to document the ways the forest is being destroyed and who’s responsible for the destruction. They are willing to face the repercussions for defending their territory, because, as Mama’ Elisée tells us, they will soon find themselves in a desert if they don’t.
Watch Guardians of the Rainforest on Amazon Prime
We’ve landed in our final destination – Borneo Island among the Dayak.
Here we join the Dayak in a traditional festival and see the beauty of their culture amidst the rice plantations and rubber trees. Several Dayak women take us on a tour through their environment, demonstrating how creative they are in using all of the natural resources around them. We see others at work weaving mats, baskets, and cloth. But as Robika Apriati explains, there’s a predominant feeling of sadness among them “because the original ecosystem no longer exists in Kalimantan…. [We] are increasingly disappearing together with the plants and animals…. We are now almost extinct…. We Dayak people are victims of injustice.” Instead of the chirping of birds, the sound of chain saws is heard nearby. Here too, leaders of various religions are mobilizing to defend both the ecosystem and the indigenous peoples. As H. Ikhwan Pohan, the head of the Religious Affairs Ministry of Sintang explains, the people in this area “realize that life cannot exist without coexistence with nature.” In addition, women are forming groups to preserve the environment.
Our trip ends in a prayer – the sound of the human voice lifted up to heaven mingles with the cry of the wild birds.
Lia Beltrami has brought 50 documentaries to life, including “A Burst of Song,” filmed in India, which won 60 awards worldwide. She has won a total of 128 awards for her films and was appointed Representative of Religions for Peace at FAO-UN. In 1997, she founded Religion Today Film Festival, and the group Women of Faith for Peace in Jerusalem. Lia is the CEO of the production company Aurora Vision, and is the art director of photo exhibitions such as “Emotions to Generate Change.”