I have just returned from an expedition to the Amazon. Those two weeks included some of the most profound moments of my life.
As many of you know, I have been working on projects focused on the Amazon for a few years now. I was due to go to the rainforest in 2020 as part of Amazon — Raised Up Sky. When borders closed, I began working remotely with a team of filmmakers on the ground, who travelled deep into the forest to capture drone photogrammetry scans of some of the Amazon’s most remarkable trees.
Despite two years of zoom calls with Indigenous leaders, scientists and artists trying to understand what life was like in the Amazon, I knew this could only provide a window into their world at best. Until last month, I only had an intellectual understanding of their relationship with the forest ecosystem. I did not fully grasp what they were up against, and I wanted to understand the worldview shared with me in these zoom conversations on a deeper level.
I think many people, myself included, have a notion of the rainforest being a sort of paradise. I had a feeling it would be mystical and magical. And it was that, but elements of it were also very challenging. Mentally, and physically.
I was welcomed to the community of Benki Piyãko, a key figure who I interviewed for the Raised Up Sky documentary and have stayed in touch with through the process of creating the artwork. Benki is a phenomenal human. He is an indigenous political and spiritual leader from the Ashaninka tribe, a thousands-years-old people living in Acre, Brazil and in Peru. The Ashaninka is the largest indigenous group in Latin America and one of the only tribes to have preserved their ancestral knowledge. As their leader, Benki has spent his life working for the preservation of nature and the protection of the rights of indigenous peoples, their cultures and lands.
Everything about Benki defies definition — you can’t compartmentalise him. Having spent his entire life deeply anchored in spirituality and the life of the forest, he is also a very successful businessman keyed into social media, and has a powerful circle of influence. But he’s also the kind of guy you can have a beer with.
One day, Benki took a group of us into the forest. Someone asked if he could show us how he speaks with the birds. He asked us all to sit down, and began to make different sounds, recreating the various calls of the forest. Many of these sounds, I’d never heard a human voice create before. He rolled a leaf for some of them, made sounds of various bird species, monkeys and other animals. Growing up, Benki spent time living in the forest and learnt all these languages in order to hunt, and for protection.
Coming out of our two weeks in the Amazon, there is a lot to digest, and a lot that I understand on a new level about the rainforest. The Ayahuasca ceremonies, and the institute where I stayed, are topics I have much to say and share more about. The rainforest is gruelling on many fronts and full of contradictions, but equally makes a lot of sense — both to the mind and heart.