The Waorani leader says millennia of living in harmony with their surroundings give Indigenous groups unique insights into the consumerist west

Every Waorani child knows the story of the boa’s mouth. How the snake inches forward, watching, its movements almost imperceptible, before it strikes, swallowing its victim whole.

Nemonte Nenquimo knows the boa’s bite. Beguiled as a young girl by the blue eyes and bright dresses of an American missionary child in her Amazon village in Ecuador, she consented to be baptised and left home to study at a church school.

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© Photograph: Benjamin Cremel/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Benjamin Cremel/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Benjamin Cremel/AFP/Getty Images

Lula's government recently announced the lowest Amazon deforestation rate on record. However, he faces a Congress dominated by the far right and agribusiness interests, which often back measures weakening environmental protections.

More than a dozen Indigenous representatives from Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador are participating in the Oct. 19-23 U.N. conference on transnational organized crime, known as COP13.