Who is Benki Piyãko, the activist shaman who has a solution for climate change

He passed through Milan on a tour of meetings to make his cause and his project known. Benki Piyako, 47, known as the Dalai Lama of the Amazon and, in his indigenous culture, as a messenger of God, is an activist shaman of the Ashaninka community located in the Amazonian state of Acre, Brazil, and proposes his solution to save the forest of the Amazon and tackle climate change. He founded an Institute of which he is president, Yorenka Tasorentsi Institutewhich aims to defend the forest, nature and life on earth.

“We have many concerns relating to the Amazon forest, I will speak first of these and then of all the beautiful things that derive from the vision we have on how to save it”, thus began the indigenous spiritual leader who came to visit Milan where he held a talk, at the Ronin, to raise awareness of the urgency of protecting the lungs of the planet in order to be able to intervene on the environmental disaster for which man is responsible.

An event that was possible thanks to some organizers of the meeting, sensitive to the theme, and among which stood out Johanna Maggy, ex of Fabio Volo, teacher of Pilates and holistic health coachan education he acquired by participating in the movement Aniwa which unites the spiritual leaders of the Amazonian indigenous communities committed to preserving their culture and knowledge.

Benki, as his friends call him, in traditional dress and with the calmness of a great spiritual leader, told his story of resistance to give back to his people the forest that had been taken from them.

“In 1980, government bodies allowed illegal logging and drug traffickers to enter the forest. Trees and biodiversity have been destroyed, in favor of cattle breeding. In 1992 we succeeded in delimiting the territory of our Ashaninka community, after we had already started working on reforestation since 1989, on preventing the killing of animals for using their skins and on eliminating the enslavement of our people. Between 1989 and 2000 I tried to recover the biodiversity, the culture we had and I learned how to regenerate the forest and protect the cultural heritage of our people with the help of a group of 60 young militants, to whom I transferred this knowledge to integrate them into the present and apply them to future projects. With this group we managed to plant a million trees, we learned to select the right seeds, roots and healing plants by listening to the elders. In the Ashaninka village there were schools that offered children only industrial food, such as canned sardines. With the help of my brother, we guaranteed the schools food that was sustainable, abundant and coming from the forest. I wanted to make it an important element for the growth of the boys. In 2001, tractors and other machinery for cutting trees arrived on our territory and at that point I decided to enter politics and bring the needs of twenty-two indigenous territories before the authorities, to let government bodies know what was really going on. So they became aware of the water reserves that were scarce, of the trees that were being cut and of what the inhabitants of the forest were suffering».

«Thanks to various partners up to now we have repurchased the territories that had been taken from us and thus we have also demonstrated that there is a way to recover the forest. We have reached 1500 hectares of reforested land and we want to buy more, because there is a way to reclaim the land. The basic idea of ​​the institute we have created is to exchange practices, cultural traditions that allow the earth to be regenerated and made habitable again. Encourage dialogue between science and other sustainable indigenous agroforestry, fish farming and beekeeping practices. Today in the world we are facing huge problems due to gas and oil extraction leading to destruction, from the earth we always continue to take and not to give. The world is in crisis and the responsibility is ours. The problems of climate change, scarcity of water resources, polluted air do not concern just one people but the whole world. The work of our institute aims to create a network of people interested in reforestation in the Amazon but also in any part of the world. In France there is already a reforestation project using the knowledge and techniques of our community and my son is helping to spread our method. With President Lula in Brazil we await the birth of a ministry dedicated to the needs of the indigenous people as he himself announced”.

After all, Lula himself, 77, on a visit to COP27, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, expressly declared his intention in this regard: «Climate security depends on the Amazon. We will stop the deforestation of the Amazon, which has grown by 73% in the Bolsonaro years. And we will severely punish all illegal activities, from agricultural to mining, that put the rainforest at risk,” as reported by the Repubblica website.

«Over the past four years, Bolsonaro’s government has done everything to remove economic support and protection from indigenous territories, it has encouraged the arming of the population, our first step will be to disarm civilians through pacifist dialogue. There were 200 billion trees cut down during his rule alone. Bolsonaro did not offer education for young people, he did not help the indigenous people during the pandemic, intentionally, to exterminate them, yet they managed to resist. With Lula’s program you will do it all over again. We are still here firm and strong and continue our fight».

Benki has in the past been invited to take part in Brazilian political life, he has been offered roles as mayor, deputy, he has also been invited to run for president of Brazil, now he is part of a technical team in this transition period waiting for Lula to officially take over as president on January 1, 2023.

A friend and supporter of Benki who was with him in Milan on this date of his European tour, Rudy Randa, intervened to clarify the Institute’s objectives. The former banker, born in California, is the founder of Boa Foundationan organization that buys indigenous territories to give them back to Amazonian communities, one of its commitments stems from the desire to just want to help the world.

“I understood that I had to listen to the indigenous elders and their wisdom. Why do I do this? Because the earth is in trouble, if I had only been in my Los Angeles bubble it would have been easier, but I know that the problems out there are not just for a few », he said at the end of the Milanese talk Rudy Randa. «I believe in the prophecy of the Rainbow Warriors that has existed for a long time, says that there will be a time when humanity will be in great danger and at that time a group of people, from all parts of the world, will do their utmost to restore harmony, unity and create a new future of peace, love and abundance. A prophecy can only be a story or something that can manifest itself and actually happen, and this only happens if people take action to make it happen. We are the people we have been waiting for and Benki has awakened our conscience».