“For us, the plants, the trees have life, they have a spirit, that’s why we have to respect it, take care of it and protect it. The women in my community have planted trees, bananas, cassava. We are dressing Mother Earth.” — Briceida Iglesias, the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests, Panama.

“Guna Yala is where we come from. It is not just a territory; it is more than that. It is a community — a family. ‘You are the next generation,’ my father told me. ‘And you must fight for your future.’ That gave me the drive to finish college and return to work for my community.” — Yaily Castillo, the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests, Panama.

“Everyone agrees on the conservation of nature, on fighting climate change. But in practice they say that where you put the money you put the heart, and governments are not putting the heart. We want to be seen as partners in this fight.” — Gustavo Sánchez, the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests, Mexico.

“Our spiritual, ritualistic and cultural practices are closely linked to the flow of nature. We use the rivers as a means of transport, but the rains have become scarce, isolating many communities. Several species — flora and fauna — are disappearing, which has led to a shortage of food and has limited our ability to perform certain rituals. This has had a dramatic impact on our culture. The cause is partly climate change, but these changes can also be linked to our government’s dismantling of environmental policy.” — Dinamam Tuxá, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, Brazil.

“We have no more land to put our animals, to grow our medicinal plants. We want our trees back. We want to give our children our own medicine. We are part of the solution. We have our local knowledge, and we have ancestral knowledge. Give us a chance to bring our knowledge to the table.” — Aissatou Oumarou, the Network of Indigenous and Local Populations for the Sustainable Management of Forest Ecosystems in Central Africa, Chad.

“Hope always needs to be nurtured. Everything is a process and, like any slow process, it has its time. Just as things in nature also have their time. And we only ask the creator for strength to give us wisdom, discernment. But we don’t feed on hope. So day after day, we fight.” — Cristiane Julião Pankaruru, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, Brazil.

“My grandparents were forcibly evicted to make way for the construction of a hydroelectric plant. As a result, our relationship with our sacred sites changed, as did our way of highlighting our identity through our language. It’s an example of how a development can destroy the very life of Indigenous peoples. I worry that we are all going to lose the cosmogonic spiritual wealth that we have within our Mother Earth.” — Sara Omi Casama, the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests, Panama.

“If we don’t preserve our traditional knowledge, it will disappear. We are cultivating intergenerational dialogue to enable our elders to share the knowledge that they have with the younger generations, so we can protect and preserve it for generations to come.” — Aehshatou Manu, the Network of Indigenous and Local Populations for the Sustainable Management of Forest Ecosystems in Central Africa, Cameroon.