Monday, October 13 2025, 3 - 7:30pm Invited Talk: Tulio Viteri October 13, 2025. 3:00 p.m. Park Hall, Room 265 Film screening: Helena from Sarayaku October 13, 2025. 5:30 p.m. Ciné, 234 West Hancock Invited Talk Monday, October 13th, 3:00-4:00pm Park Hall, Room 265 In honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2025, the Department of Anthropology is hosting an invited talk with Tulio Viteri, the Director of International Relations for the Indigenous Kichwa community of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Mr. Viteri will give a presentation on the Living Forest Proposal, a grassroots initiative for Indigenous-led conservation and climate change mitigation. In 2012, Sarayaku declared the entirety of their rainforest territory as Kawsak Sacha–Selva Viviente (The Living Forest, in Kichwa and Spanish respectively). The declaration was a formal act of collective governance which institutionalized Sarayaku’s commitment to revalorize ancestral notions of nature and enact a pioneering model of environmental protection based on traditional knowledge. In 2018, Sarayaku launched a proposal for Indigenous-led territorial protection and conservation entitled “Kawsak Sacha–The Living Forest, A Living and Conscious Being: The Subject of Rights.” With this new proposal, Sarayaku began a campaign to translate the principles of the Living Forest into national law and international environmental and climate policy. Sarayaku leaders and activists have been deeply engaged in spreading their proposal to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences. In 2015, the Living Forest Proposal was presented internationally by Sarayaku delegates in Paris at the UN Climate Change COP21, and to the President of France, François Hollande. Since then Sarayaku representatives have been promoting the initiative to audiences all over the world, including the Pope and the Dalai Lama. Speaker Bio Tulio Viteri has travelled abroad extensively as the Director of International Relations for the community of Sarayaku. Most recently, he has given lectures on the Living Forest Proposal at the 2024 UN Science Summit and the 2025 UN Climate Week, both in New York City. Film Screening: Helena from Sarayaku Monday, October 13th, 5:30-7:30pm Ciné, 234 W Hancock Avenue In honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2025, the Department of Anthropology is hosting a public screening of the film Helena from Sarayaku, followed by a Q&A with the director Eriberto Gualinga, an internationally recognized Indigenous filmmaker from the Kichwa community of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The full-length documentary depicts Sarayaku’s struggle against environmental degradation in their territory and how this struggle gave rise to the Living Forest Proposal for Indigenous-led rainforest conservation and climate change mitigation. Traveling between her life in Finland and her mother’s homeland deep in the rainforests of Ecuador, 17-year-old Helena Gualinga yearns to protect her Indigenous community from extractive development and the repercussions of climate change. Her story highlights the efforts of the Kichwa people of Sarayaku to recognize the Amazon rainforest as Kawsak Sacha (Living Forest in Kichwa). The Living Forest is both a cultural philosophy and a proposal that states the rainforest is not a resource to be used, but a living entity in need of protection. With the help of her Sarayaku elders’ wisdom, Helena sets out on a journey to educate the world about the importance of conserving the Amazon rainforest, participating in climate marches, and giving speeches about indigenous sovereignty. A story of perseverance and resilience, the film is an ode to Indigenous communities striving to preserve their culture as they face the consequences of a globalized world and the hastening effects of climate change. Filmmaker Bio Eriberto Gualinga is an award-winning Indigenous filmmaker from the Ecuadorian Amazon. He has a degree in cinema from the University of the Arts in Guayaquil, Ecuador and has been documenting the landscapes, livelihoods, and political struggles of his native village of Sarayaku for almost two decades. In 2002, he created his first short film, Soy Defensor de la Selva (I Am Defender of the Rainforest), which won the Anaconda Prize for Best Documentary at the 14th Latin American Festival of Film and Video. In 2012, Los Descendientes del Jaguar (The Descendents of the Jaguar), which documents Sarayaku’s legal case against an oil company at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, won the Best Documentary prize at the National Geographic All Roads Film Festival. In 2022, Helena from Sarayaku premiered at the Environmental Film Festival in Washington, D.C. and since then Eriberto has hosted screenings and talks at Dartmouth University, Columbia University, and New York University, among others. For more information, contact Louisiana Lightsey (louisiana@uga.edu)
