I know we all need money to live, but we can also live consciously, working together, working as a team. Look at how my community has risen from such extreme poverty that today we can have food at home, we can study, and we can meet our needs. We don't have everything, but we can live in a peaceful place. But nowadays, mining and oil companies are truly destroying our entire habitat... our safe habitat, our house, our home...
Nora: Your life.
Meliza: Life. Because without water we can't live. Without oxygen we can't live. We in the Amazon are the lungs of the world. We are giving all that oxygen to the whole world because the whole world needs us to survive. And for us, fighting against these giant corporations is like me fighting an ant. The oil and mining companies are immense, while we, the communities, are so small. We are people who fight for nature, but not everyone has the same awareness of the need to fight.
Meliza: We have adapted to this environment because we have always lived here. Our ancestors lived in this habitat. Today, we remain adapted to our environment with all that natural knowledge, what I call real knowledge. This knowledge is in our pores, our skin, our genes, our blood. That's why when you're born in the jungle, you're already born with all those gifts. We're already in our environment, we already know it. We know this mosquito, we know this butterfly, we know this insect, we know this snake. When a snake bites us, we already know which plant to use, and we don't need to go to the hospital.
Nora: How do people learn all of this?
