How Silencing Indigenous Women Leads to the Death of the Earth

In places where rivers once glistened with life and forests whispered ancient stories, there now echoes a silence that feels like mourning, the death of the environment does not begin with wildfires or rising seas, it begins with the silencing of women whose voices have always been rooted in soil, rain, seed, and story, it begins when the knowledge of Indigenous women, the original stewards of our planet, is excluded from climate decisions, biodiversity policies, and the boardrooms of global governance, these women have been custodians of resilience, keepers of sacred ecology, translators of the land’s rhythms, when their voices are ignored, the pipeline that once carried wisdom, sustainability, and intergenerational memory collapses and what flows in its place is devastation.

Consider Nemonte Nenquimo, an Indigenous Waorani woman from the Ecuadorian Amazon, whose grandmother taught her that the forest breathes with memory, when oil companies, emboldened by colonial agendas and capitalist hunger, carved her homeland into extractive plots, she did not just resist a pipeline she resisted erasure, Nemonte brought her people’s wisdom to court and won, but even her victory felt like a whisper in a world that screams for profit, a note drowned out by celebrity noise and media distraction, she was not alone, from the Amazon to the Arctic, women like her have been pushed to the margins, even though their communities safeguard 80% of global biodiversity while comprising just 6% of the world’s population, their ecological knowledge—of agroforestry, seed-saving, medicinal plants, seasonal cycles—is irreplaceable, yet routinely omitted from the halls where decisions about the Earth are made.

This exclusion is not accidental, it is structural, it is patriarchal, it is colonial and it is violent, in biodiversity frameworks like the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, Indigenous women are rarely mentioned, even when “Indigenous Peoples” and “women” appear in the same breath, intersectional invisibility strips them of recognition, of policy power, and of survival, this is not a gap, it is an attack. Johnston and colleagues call it “a rape of the Earth” as mining, deforestation, and monocultures flourish in the absence of those who know how to heal and regenerate. Sami feminists echo this rage, linking bodily violation with the desecration of land. Françoise d’Éaubonne warned of this long ago: when the pipeline of wisdom from woman to world is severed, nature and femininity die in tandem, feminism or death is not a slogan, it is a warning.

Even those gifted with visibility are not spared, Greta Thunberg, a white—so privileged—Swedish teenager turned climate icon, has been relentlessly mocked by male world leaders. Donald Trump called her “very angry and problematic”, dismissing her need for “anger management”—when she's just autistic, but putting herself out there to fight for what's right, not what's easy—before feigning ignorance of her existence. If this is how the system treats a white girl on the global stage, imagine what it does to Indigenous grandmothers whispering prayers over dying soil, Greta is gaslit by power structures, Nemonte is ignored by them, both are punished for speaking truth, but one is barely heard at all.

In Peru, at Lake Titicaca, where mercury and industrial runoff poison sacred waters, Aymara and Quechua women did not wait for help, eighty-six Indigenous women formed the “Women United for Water Network”. They taught themselves water-quality testing, flew drones over polluted inflows, and demanded action from a government that barely acknowledged their humanity. Their leadership redefined environmental expertise, not through titles, but through tradition, urgency, and care, and yet, they were met with media silence.

Everywhere, the same pattern emerges: knowledge systems rooted in relationship, not ownership, are cast aside, women who understand how to farm without poisoning the land, how to fish without emptying rivers, how to live in reciprocal balance, are left out of the very conversations they should lead. As UN Women reminds us, when biodiversity dies, it takes livelihoods with it, especially for rural women who gather firewood, fish dwindling waters, farm shrinking soil, food security declines, diseases rise, girls are pulled from schools, sometimes into early marriages, the burden grows heavier on those with the lightest footprint on the Earth.

And all the while, in policy rooms and economic forecasts, the death continues, the environment does not die with fire alone, it dies with every meeting where Indigenous women are not invited, with every report that forgets their names, with every act of paternalism that frames them as passive victims instead of vital protectors. Traditional seeds disappear, medicinal plants vanish, cultural rituals fade, a thousand lifetimes of symbiosis with the land are paved over in the name of growth, this is not loss, it’s extinction.

The pipeline of intergenerational wisdom has been broken, not just physically by roads and oil shafts, but symbolically by misogyny, white supremacy, and greed. What flows now is not water, not knowledge, not community, it’s silence, death, profit, and the land remembers what we chose to forget. Until reparative frameworks center Indigenous women—not as symbolic gestures, but as authoritative architects—there is no sustainable future, until movements like Mujeres Amazónicas and the Women United for Water are funded, heard, and followed, there is no hope.

To protect the Earth, we must repair the broken pipeline, not the one buried in steel and oil, but the one built through song, soil, and stories, we must listen to the women who still whisper to seeds, whose voices echo with rivers, whose resistance is rooted in love, until then, the planet will continue to mourn in silence for every voice we refused to hear.

Source

• Waorani People Win Landmark Legal Victory Against Ecuadorian Government - Amazon Frontlinescall to conservation community 
• Indigenous peoples call for direct funding to protect nature at COP16 on biodiversity
• Meet the Indigenous Women Leading Conservation Efforts in the Great Barrier Reef | Condé Nast Traveler
• 30 by 30 
• Transforming Water Security through Women’s Leadership – FP Analytics
• “The river is a mother”: 4 indigenous women water protectors from Peru’s amazon | Chaikuni Institute
•  Women as Essential Climate Leaders: Transforming Water Management Leadership in Peru - Forest Trends
• Indigenous river campaigner from Peru wins prestigious Goldman prize
  
  

BIO:

Sara Carbone, 22, Ambassador and Italy’s Rep, she studies and specialize in clinical and evolutionary psychology, she wants to become a child psychotherapist. In her free time she likes to read, write, watch series, ice skate and go to the cinema. She's very interested and takes an active role in protecting those who are victims of violence. Her field of studies allow her to enter places where different stories are shared every day and she likes to report what she thinks the world should hear.

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