Can Our Culture Survive Climate Change?

This is an amazing piece which is not only visually beautiful but also extremely informative. This is a part of the opinion series, The Amazon Has Seen Our Future, about how the people of the region are living through the most extreme versions of our planet’s problems.

The author starts by talking about her 15 year old daughter Y'Wara and telling us about her Menina Moca Ceremony of becoming a woman. Sonia describes various steps about the ceremony in details. She also describes how the government has now interfered in the land they were living in. Because of mining lands for gold and iron, and to produce timber for paper and soy and cattle it has become increasingly difficult for the community to find monkeys, pacas and tinamou to eat. She then goes on to describe how the only clean river close to her community, Buriticupu River, is also drying out because of climate change and deforestation. She also describes how the birds central to the rituals have disappeared and telling us that they now have to buy things from outside to subsist.

To access to all the parts, I recommend you to access the page on Amazon RainForest.