Some sacrifices we never anticipate making. When the world calls, how we answer can change the course of history for entire communities.

Author: Amy Lewis, WILD’s Managing Director, Policy & Campaigns

It was late December in the mountains outside of Taos, New Mexico. A woman waited for word from her husband, who had been called far away by an urgent and mysterious request from his father. She was alone, and pregnant for the first time. After struggling to find a place they could call home together, she and her husband had settled in New Mexico in the belief that they would raise their family here. He was the younger son of an Amazonian chief and she was a daughter of the Zapotec and Mixtec Peoples of Mexico. Both shared an inextricable connection to the land of their births but had agreed that New Mexico was a place they could find common ground. As the woman waited for her husband, the winter days passed in a dream-like solitude.

When he finally called, the fragile future she thought had belonged to her shattered. In its glittering fragments the unfamiliar path of a strange destiny came to light.

“Laura, they want me to be the next chief.”

Some women are born to lead, others spend their whole lives proving to the rest of the world that they are capable of doing so. For Laura Yawanawá, leadership arrived like a bolt of lightning. Her gift to others – her husband, her people, and the world – was to embrace it.

Laura Yawanawá presenting at the 12th World Wilderness Congress

When I first met Laura in-person in 2023 (although I had worked with her over email and Zoom for years prior) I was struck by an unconscious and earthy stateliness that seemed to rise up from beneath the very soles of her feet and which manifested in her every movement, glance, and question. I don’t know if Laura was always like this even before she became a leader of the Yawanawaá in Brazil’s Western Amazon, but if she was, then it is easy to understand whatever cosmic logic brought her to this role. She is, in the vocabulary of colonizers, a queen, all the more so because her regalness is born from herself, requiring no crown to validate its expression.

Since assuming the mantle of leadership for the Yawanawá (her official title is the Executive Director of the Yawanawá Socio-Cultural Association, and WILD.org is a proud partner), Laura has witnessed,and helped to oversee, a cultural renaissance, revolution, and the corresponding ecological impacts for the rainforest. The prior chief, Megaron, had initiated the revitalization of the Yawanawá culture in the 1980s. He saw the Yawanawá population double from under 200 members of the tribe in the early 1990s to a little over 400 in the early 2000s. Tashka and Laura realized that until people wanted to be Indigenous again, the population would remain low.

For centuries, Indigenous People around the world have been persecuted by the dominant culture. They have been described as backwards and primitive, and treated as less than human by authorities. A lasting consequence of this is that Indigenous individuals have internalized these messages and now no longer want to live as or even be Indigenous. At an individual level this is a tragedy repeated a million times over as people work through feelings of inferiority and self-loathing. At a societal level, it is catastrophic for the external ecology of the rainforest.

As the dominant culture begins to wake up to the fact that Indigenous lifeways are the mechanism through which Indigenous Peoples have been the most effective cultural stewards of nature, we must also recognize that there is a very real possibility we will lose those lifeways. If this were to occur, the human and ecological consequences would be devastating. Without traditional Indigenous stewardship, much of the world’s biodiversity would likely already be lost.

The Yawanawá community is located in a part of the Amazon where the rule-of-law is inconsistently and infrequently enforced. Ranching steadily encroaches on the rainforest, facilitated by the arrival of the BR-364 highway, and in many instances it has only been the presence of Yawanawá community members that have stood between ranchers, illegal loggers, and the forest. Fewer Yawanawá People living traditional lifeways in the forest means fewer defenders at the frontlines of climate change and deforestation. In the coming years, WILD, in partnership with the Yawanawá Socio-Cultural Association, Chengeta Wildlife, and Langland Conservation, will be capacitating these forest stewards to maximize their effectiveness in biodiversity monitoring and territorial surveillance. But make no mistake, it is traditional lifeways that are the foundation upon which all this work takes place. If those were to evaporate, so too would our conservation efforts in this region of the world.

In response to this crisis, Tashka and Laura have strategically helped to instigate a Yawanawá cultural renaissance. They have reinvented traditional celebrations and encouraged the education of traditional knowledge of plants, spirituality, and handicrafts. During their tenure as leaders, they have also overseen the introduction of female spiritual leaders. These women oftentimes must endure an initiation that is twice as long and arduous as their male counterparts. Speaking from my own personal experience, I can attest to the fact that despite (or maybe because of) the trials they endure, they are also some of the most powerful and compelling figures in Yawanawá society.

None of these changes and reforms have come without significant obstacles and resistance, but Laura has faced each and every barrier with characteristic grace and a commitment to serving all stakeholders involved. Because of Laura Soriano Yawanawá, the Yawanawá People are better off. Because of Laura Yawanawá the forest is stronger.

On that fateful December day so many decades ago, when Laura learned that her future was not what she thought it would be, she could have chosen to cling to her comfortable plans and stay in her mountain redoubt in Taos. But she didn’t. She let them go and sacrificed comfort for love, life, and leadership. Because of this, Laura is one of my heroes. She is nothing short of awe-inspiring. And during this 2024 WILD Impact Reporting Season when we recognize the sacred sacrifices that our staff and partners make in order to keep Earth wild, I cannot think of a better example of someone who embodies sacred giving more than Laura Yawanawá.

Every day I give thanks for Laura, her husband, Tashka, and the Yawanawá People.

This blog is the second in a series of 5 blogs sharing stories from WILD’s work and impact during 2024. If you are inspired by the work and ideas in these blogs, please consider giving a donation to WILD here. WILD’s impact belongs as much to our community of donors as it does to the members of our organization. To learn more about WILD’s work in 2024, visit here to read our annual report.