Indigenous Group Brings 'Canoe of Life' 6,000 Miles from Amazon to Paris to Call for Climate Action

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On Tuesday, as the sun rose in Paris, a delegation of indigenous people from Sarayaku, in the Ecuadorean Amazon, set out in a handmade, wooden canoe along the Villette Canal. The Kichwa people of Sarayaku have been fighting oil exploitation on their lands for many years; in 2012 they won a case at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights against the Ecuadorean government for permitting oil drilling on their land.

"Democracy Now!'s" Juan Carlos Dávila and Amy Littlefield were there as the Sarayaku launched their canoe after its 6,000-mile journey from the Amazon. "Those who are actually negotiating right now, they might not have to live with the consequences of climate change, but I will," Nina Gualinga, a Kichwa activist from Sarayaku, says of the COP21 negotiations. "Who are they to decide over my future, over my sister's future, over my children's future?"