By Activists from around the globe took to the streets of New York City the week of September 22nd in protests and events commemorating Climate Week 2024, a week of action to highlight the need for action in the face of the global climate crisis. While RAN participated directly in the events, we also put our Community Action Grants (CAG) program in top gear to ensure that BIPOC climate defenders from frontline communities could participate in the week’s events. RAN showed solidarity from the Gulf South to the Amazon to Upstate New York so our frontline partners could make their voices heard.
As the Amazon region faces unprecedented dry spells and fires are igniting across South America, activists from the regions most affected were able to show up at Climate Week and highlight the struggle their peoples are facing. CAG grants were used to fund the attendance of three frontline activists from the Amazon at the Rainforest Reception organized together with Amazon Watch: Nemonte Nenquimo, Waorani leader and co-founder of Amazon Frontlines and Ceibo Alliance, Puyr Tembé, First Secretary of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil’s Pará state and co-founder of ANMIGA (Ancestral Indigenous Women Warriors of Brazil), and Brazilian Congresswoman Célia Xakriabá. At the event, the three powerful women brought a message of hope and resistance to the events of Climate Week and highlighted the need for climate action now! As part of work to support frontline environmental defenders in the Amazon, RAN also supported screening the We Are Guardians film about Brazil’s forest guardians during climate week and after at select cities in the US.
RAN’s Community Action Grants also sought to highlight the struggle of Indigenous peoples in the Ecuadorian Amazon by sponsoring a delegation from the Pueblo Originario Kichwa de Sarayaku to attend Climate Week. The Sarayaku delegation attended Climate Week to share lessons learned from their pioneering Kawsak Sacha, or ‘Living Forest’ proposal, to create a new category for permanent protection of native land free of natural resource extraction and based on the interconnected relationship Indigenous peoples have with their forests, water, and spirits. The Sararyaku delegation also participated in events and dialogues around the next steps to secure long-term protection for the Upper Amazon through Indigenous-led solutions, including participating in the “Rights of Nature Tribunal.”
Through our Community Action Grants, RAN also supported a delegation from the North American Indigenous Center of New York (NAIC-NY), a Native-women-led grassroots organization committed to Indigenous empowerment through cultural continuance, intersectional equity, and advancement of economic justice for Native nations, communities, and peoples living in and beyond New York City, New York State, and the Northeast. NAIC-NY brought Indigenous elders from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which includes nine Tribal Nation reservations spanning New York State and Canada, to participate in multiple conferences, panel discussions, and speaking engagements. By bringing Native peoples from the Northeastern Corridor, Lenapehoking, and New York City, the NAIC-NY delegation was able to engage with other BIPOC-led organizations and share their unique experiences and perspectives on the global climate crisis and the fight against climate change.
CAG grants also helped connect the struggles of BIPOC communities in the Gulf South to the events at Climate Week by supporting a delegation from The Vessel Project, a BIPOC-led grassroots mutual aid, disaster relief, and environmental justice organization from Southwestern Louisiana. The delegation was able to bring their groundbreaking work against LNG expansion in the Gulf South to the conversations happening at NYC Climate Week. Climate Week was another example of how RAN’s Community Action Grants serve as a megaphone, amplifying the voices of those most affected by climate change and ensuring they are able to occupy spaces where important decisions about our environment are made.
In October, RAN also provided support for delegations to participate in the biodiversity COP16 in Cali, Colombia, including women-led Indigenous delegations from Brazil organized by ANMIGA and Ecuador by Mujeres Amazónicas, as well as Indigenous youth from the Bolivian Amazon involved in a decade long fight to stop the construction of major dams that would impact traditional territories and biodiversity. At both Climate Week and COP16, RAN also provided funding for Our Village, an inclusive and intersectional space hosted by If Not Us Then Who in collaboration with the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities. Through our CAG grants, RAN will continue to prioritize supporting Indigenous leadership at major global climate and biodiversity events on the road to the historic COP30 in Belém in the Brazilian Amazon in 2025.