#WCW: Nina Gualinga
This week’s #WCW is Nina Gualinga, Amazonian environmental activist and all-around queen of our little green hearts. She decked out in black and red face paint, traditional beads, and bird feather earrings. Her message was clear: “Keep Oil in the Ground.” And unlike other hypocritical eco-darlings that marched alongside her (cough, Leo DiCaprio, cough), she has the resume to back it up.
The lovely lady herself (Amazon Watch)
Gualinga hails from Sarayaku, a small indigenous community nestled deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The Ecuadorian government has notoriously attempted to spur economic growth by drilling for oil in the culturally and ecologically rich rainforest regions – even in national parks like Yasuni. Gualinga cried foul on their “poverty alleviation” rhetoric, sensing that the most vulnerable populations would suffer even more dramatically at the expense of the upper class. And she wasn’t about to let her community’s way of life, so rooted in the sustainable management of natural resources, kowtow to systematic profiteering and destruction. So she spoke out – on The Huffington Post, at COP20, and, most famously, in AmazonWatch’s video “KEEP OIL IN THE GROUND,” which has been viewed over 1.8 million times.
Watch "Keep Oil in the Ground"
Ecuador’s indigenous communities’ struggle against big oil is an ongoing battle, with small victories lighting the path. But with a strong woman like Nina Gualinga at the helm, they’re not likely to go down without a fight.
