A Cry for Survival

“We Are Guardians” documents a global indigenous movement using any means necessary to protect our planet’s dying lungs

My work documenting the sordid mess of politics in Washington often drives me towards nihilism. Over the past few months, the political theater dominating the continuing farce of the 2024 election has often left me shaking my head, as genocidal violence enabled by a bipartisan consensus in Washington has expanded now beyond Gaza to encompass Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Yemen. 

The frequency of my despair is part of why I felt so grateful this summer for the chance to meet a pair of inspiring filmmakers whose opus recently appeared in the Human Rights Watch film festival. Their project, “We Are Guardians,” has won a series of documentary film awards, including the Green Film Award from Cinema for Peace, the Grand Prize at the Environmental Film Festival, Best Documentary at the Raindance Film Festival, and the Audience Award at the 47ª Mostra Internacional De Cinema Em São Paulo.

A global horror unfolding in plain sight

“We Are Guardians” depicts life on the front lines of the mounting global climate catastrophe. Directed by filmmakers Edivan Guajajara, Chelsea Greene, and Rob Grobman, it features protagonists including indigenous activists Sonia Guajajara and Puyr Tembe and their work to protect a priceless global resource.

Far from the board rooms in which executives make decisions to plunder irreplaceable natural resources, and from the committee chambers where policymakers enable predatory industries to undermine our shared future, indigenous communities work in unseen ways to preserve what vanishingly little remains of (what the British Broadcasting Corporation described as) “the Lungs of the Earth.”

The film particularly examines resistance by indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon to illegal logging and deforestation. Several industries fuel the problem, particularly including timber and beef, taking advantage of lax international enforcement of existing regulations and—at the time the film was produced—official encouragement from Brazil’s government under the corrupt and disgraced leadership of Jair Bolsonaro.

Among the many subplots in “We Are Guardians” are the hopes of indigenous advocates for the return of Brazil’s current President, Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, known most widely as “Lula.” The film depicts Lula’s victory over Bolsonaro in Brazil’s historic 2023 election, and ends on a hopeful note.

Yet the subsequent history has proven disappointing, perhaps illustrating the complicated process of policy changing circumstances on the ground. Responding to Lula’s victory and his administration’s escalation of enforcement efforts to protect the Amazon, the industries fueling illegal logging have accelerated their attacks on the Amazon, mobilizing into what have described as a wartime posture.

The film also looks beyond Brazil, exploring how the farm lobby in Washington misdirects resources to support corporate agribusiness, rather than values like sustainability or equity. Looking at the process less internationally, focusing only within the U.S., a further irony emerges. Rural states tend to be represented by policymakers aligned with agribusiness industries, even while the voters within them struggle. Farmers, for instance, have been driven to suicide at up to 350% of the national average.

“We Are Guardians” also goes beyond trade and agribusiness to further explore the role of international finance and banking institutions. Ultimately, the range of industries complicit in deforesting the Amazon is almost as vast as the Amazon itself.

A visionary and beautiful documentary film

“We Are Guardians” also highlights the complicated economics driving deforestation, depicting the challenges confronting not only indigenous communities, but also loggers, their families, and their own aspirations for their children. It is both poignant and disturbing to realize how marginalized are people on the ground on both sides of the divide between protector and plunderer.

The film’s cinematography is as spectacular as the region it depicts. Aerial shots of the Amazon offer a birds’ eye view of breathtaking sunrises and sunsets, as well as plumes of smoke rising from a forest facing increasing numbers of threats from seemingly all directions. Meanwhile, footage from within the jungle features indigenous patrols searching for loggers, as well as loggers searching for resources they can extract. The level of trust necessary to establish the opportunity for these stunning interviews is as impressive as the shots themselves. 

It also effectively conveys nuances that might surprise some viewers. For instance, the element of betrayal that emerges within communities on the front line may seem more likely emerge in a Hollywood drama than in a documentary film about indigenous communities on the front line of the climate catastrophe. One of the film’s protagonists laments that ”“[e]ven our relatives themselves are selling the trees,” and says that “I thought I’d fight the loggers, but other indigenous attacked me….They have my picture.”

The film’s beauty extends beyond its visual imagery and the haunting themes it raises. Its soundtrack is no less compelling, conveying the full range of emotions inspired by the many interviews and impressive cinematography.

Communities vs. countries

It also insightfully explores the tension between environmental conservation and economic opportunities to support international trade and pursue what economists describe as “comparative advantage.”

At one point, an interview with a Brazilian activist turns to international aid, with an important message for western viewers. The activist observes a program funded by European country aiming to channel resources specifically to Latin American states that have pledged to enforce environmental restrictions, noting that the support is ultimately misdirected. Rather than supporting the indigenous communities best poised to do the work, the program instead funds government agencies that sometimes work at cross purposes. In at least one area, activists report that law enforcement officers paid to protect the forest instead appear to have overseen deforestation projects to build homes in prohibited areas for themselves.

The challenges confronting indigenous communities also highlight an underlying issue that applies to communities well beyond them. For roughly three hundred years after the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the international state system was organized primarily according to nation states. That paradigm held until the end of the Second World War, when the victorious allied powers oversaw the creation of various international organizations, such as the United Nations, its various satellite organizations, and economic analogues like the world bank and international monetary fund.

The creation of the Bretton Woods institutions aimed to herald a new era of international human rights, in which the world would guarantee the rights of individuals even against violations by their respective governments. That vision has crashed on the shoals of terrifying realities, visible not only in the Amazon, but particularly in the Middle East from Gaza to Lebanon, where civilian populations endure arbitrary state violence.

The importance of guarding these human rights in Brazil may seem less visible relative to other places in the world where their abuses appear more dramatic. But it is important to recognize the importance of human rights wherever they are threatened. Brazil presents a further dimension, since violations of the rights of indigenous communities also harm a priceless and vanishing natural resource with critical importance to the future of humanity.

Yet the film has an important perspective to offer with respect to international institutions. It follows indigenous advocates to the Conference of Parties (COP) climate summits, through which the United Nations periodically convenes voices from around the world to consider climate solutions and potential international agreements. Voices highlighted in the film describe COP as more focused on public relations than a meaningful opportunity to address a shared global challenge. On the eve of another COP summit focused on biodiversity, this message could not possibly be more important and timely.

A Q&A with Director Chelsea Greene

SB: Are there any ways for viewers of the film to support the Guardians directly?

CG: Yes! With gofundme. They are setting up their own registered nonprofit in Brazil but it takes time and sending donations to Brazil is more difficult than you'd think. So we set up this tax-deductible gofundme link where the funds go to RandomGood Foundation, then are transferred to the Guardians. 

SB: Where can people learn about upcoming screenings in their community, or how they might set one up?

CG: You can fill out this form to host a screening and see our website for upcoming screenings.

[Note: “We are Guardians” will be screened at Monarch in San Francisco this Wednesday, October 23. Tickets remain available online]

SB: Are there any trade associations that certify wood and paper products that do adequately police supplies for illegally forested word? Are there any campaigns underway to influence them that viewers can support and share?

CG: There are currently not any trade associations that certify rainforest hardwood in a way that would investigate properly the labels from Brazil. Brazil actually has an incredible supply chain tracking system for wood—but it gets corrupted at every point. There is a law in the U.S., the Lacey Act, that prohibits the sale of illegally obtained wood. But the issue is the law enforcement is not working on this enough. You can buy Ipe wood online freely without recourse. 

SB: The film depicts Lula’s victory over Bolsonaro in the 2020 election as a potential turning point. What has the subsequent history been? Recent news reports suggest that loggers have responded to Lula's policies by escalating their attacks on the forest.

CG: Lula commissioned military police operations to remove the loggers and illegal invaders from Puyr's territory and where Valdir works. But the companies destroying the forest have doubled down lobbying the Congress to weaken environmental protections. In order to actually protect the Amazon, we can't rely on any politician in office. We have to make the companies and banks stop meddling in politics while at the same time stopping international trade of these goods, and incentivising and supporting local and Indigenous communities to transition to a regenerative economy. There is over 100 million hectares of degraded abandoned land in the Amazon that companies who want to produce beef and soy could use to expand their operations using regenerative techniques to restore soil nutrients. 

SB: What has the role been of U.S. foreign-policy over the last 10 or 20 years?

CG: U.S. foreign policy has played an influential, albeit sometimes inconsistent, role in Amazon rainforest conservation. As you can see in the film, the conservative political mindset from the US has been very influential in Brazil. Bolsonaro's relationship with Trump, and the evangelical movement traveling from the US to Brazil has built a strong culture war between the right and left. They are brainwashed to think that the expansion of agriculture is the only way for Brazil to become a global superpower like the U.S. (which they all emulate). 

Poignant passages

Several statements made by Brazilian activists rang in my ears well after watching “We are Guardians.” Looking to the future, one remarks that “We do not have the right to destroy the lives of future generations,” while another observes that “The only inheritance we can leave to our children and grandchildren is the land.”

“Without the forest, we have nothing,” says a third, setting up what—to me—was the most powerful comment in the entire film: an invitation to “Reforest the mind…the heart…[and] the world.”