His words

When my mother was still pregnant with me, my grandfather — then the spiritual leader of the Huni Kuin people — identified that I would be the next spiritual leader of our community. […] My grandfather began my training when I turned 6, teaching me everything he knew about the right plants for treating wounds, insect bites and snakebites. He also taught me about the sacred medicine of ayahuasca and how to connect with my ancestry. I have no formal education: my learning comes from the forest.

At six years old I would go into the forest with him, and he would tell me about the medicinal plants, the birds and the trees, like the Samaúma, which is sacred to us. We have two clans, the jaguar and the deer. […] I feel very privileged to have had the chance to live alongside my grandfather, who taught me to hear the message that comes from the forest and carry it to the world.

I slept on boats, and often did not know what I would eat. But all of it taught me not to give up.

I also realised that demarcated land is not ours. It belongs to the Union, and the government may dispose of it as it wishes in the future. So I decided to enter the system: with the money I earned, I bought 11 hectares on the outskirts of Rio Branco, where I built the Huwã Karu Yuxibu Centre.

The demarcation of Indigenous lands is very important, it is our right. May the Union bring that recognition […] so that we can start talking about autonomy. Demarcating matters, but so does the Union recognising that the territories can be handed to us so we can preserve them. Only then will we be able to guarantee them for future generations.

Today the place shelters 42 families, around 210 people — who, without government support, were at risk in the big cities, including being recruited into crime. […] At the centre we preserve our culture and identity, including traditional cuisine and the ancestral knowledge of the forest.

It is possible to live in balance between tradition and the city. That is what we are building. A collective future, where we care for the forest, for people, and for ourselves.

In Rio Branco you find Japanese food, Peruvian food, food from all over. But ours, which is so rich, nobody knows. We are standing on top of a treasure and pretending it doesn't exist.

We want to offer food, a place to live, and a space where they can go on living their culture while they attend university.

I am the director and founder of the Huwa Karu Yuxibu Center. I am from the state of Acre da Amazônia. I am an activist representing my people, we work for the preservation of the forest, of nature, as well as lives and wellbeing for humans. Our project is to strengthen the cultural identity of the Huni Kui people, bringing our true origin to our people, our identity, customs and practices.

Today nature is speaking to us in many ways — floods, earthquakes, droughts. These are warnings we fail to understand. Among original peoples, always connected to nature, we understand that she is reacting. It matters a great deal to us that people start listening more to what we say, because we are transmitting nature's messages.

During the pandemic deforestation increased. Even my own land was burned. Five hectares in three hours of fire! […] Each destroyed tree destroys a memory of our ancestry. We lost many medicinal plants and thousand-year-old trees.

Music for us is concentration and balance, it is healing. Our music is prayer, our chants come from the birds — it is the forest's message, bringing healing and spiritual therapy to our people.

The telenovela gives visibility, in a way, because it reaches many people. They are beginning to know Indigenous people and to understand that we are here to preserve. We are caretakers of everything built in this sacred creation of the universe.

We are realising the dreams of our ancestors. We have been shouting for a long time for the world to hear. 'The Future is Ancestral' is being a vehicle so we could get here. We sing to heal. It took a long time, but we have arrived.

We are simply transmitting what mother nature commands of us. It matters a great deal to the Huni Kuin people because, in a way, it is our identity, our origin, our reality that people are seeing — our knowledge and our worth.

We consider ourselves as messengers of peace, messengers of love. I believe that the healing of humanity is in love and we have to practice that true and pure love that comes from the heart, with its ability to really strengthen the heart for those who need humanity.

As a spiritual leader I respect all religions, all denominations, because I know it is Divine Creation. […] All of us on this planet are in a single boat, and we are only passing through here.