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| Photo courtesy Brandi Morin |
Cree Journalist Brandi Morin -- In Ecuador Reporting on Canada's Mining Atrocities
By Brandi Morin, Censored News, December 10, 2024
I've just returned to Canada after two weeks reporting from Ecuador's sacred lands, where the ancient Andes rise like guardians, their mist-shrouded peaks holding centuries of Indigenous wisdom.
Here, where emerald mountains cascade into valleys painted with every shade of green imaginable, I documented horrific atrocities committed by Canadian-owned mining companies, backed by both the Canadian and Ecuadorian states, against Indigenous Peoples.
Where emerald mountains cascade into the Amazon basin – a living tapestry where towering ceiba trees stretch their cathedral-like buttresses into rich earth, where iridescent morpho butterflies flash brilliant blue against a thousand shades of green.
In this realm life pulses in every corner – from the haunting calls of wildlife echoing through dawn mist, to the brilliant flashes of macaws painting the sky, to the delicate orchids that bloom in the embrace of ancient trees.
The parallels to Canada's treatment of our own people are stark – the same calculated playbook of manufactured/false consent, manipulation, and human rights violations. But here, in these mountains where condors still soar and in forests where the very breath of Earth rises from countless leaves, the violence escalates to near-execution levels.
Ecuador's landscape strikes the soul with its raw beauty – from the snow-capped volcanos of the Andes where Indigenous communities have lived in harmony for millennia, to the Amazon's cathedral-like canopy where every breath we take is generated.
The Indigenous Peoples here are the stewards of these lands, their traditional knowledge and ways of life intrinsically woven into every valley, every river, every sacred peak. Yet these same communities now face brutal persecution for defending their ancestral territories.
The lungs of our world are being strangled by corporate greed. While hummingbirds dart between orchids and ancient trees reach toward the sun, humanity remains complicit in this violence through our greed, ignorance, over-consumption, and silence.
For safety reasons, I've kept quiet about many details during my time in Ecuador. But know this – a comprehensive piece for Ricochet and IndigiNews.
Indiginews is coming, along with a major documentary.
Canada, your reckoning approaches. The truth of what's happening in these sacred mountains and forests will no longer remain hidden.
About the journalist
Brandi Morin is an award-winning Cree/Iroquois/French journalist from Treaty 6 territories in Alberta, Canada. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Al Jazeera English, The Guardian, and The New York Times.
IndigiNews
Ricochet
Also watch:
Apache Stronghold defending sacred Oak Flat from a copper mine
Film by Brandi Morin and Geordie Day for Ricochet Media.
Mining the sacred: Indigenous nations fight lithium gold rush at Thacker Pass
“Thacker Pass - Mining the Sacred” was co-produced by Ricochet Media, IndigiNews and The Real News Network.
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