“We Are Guardians” Documents Indigenous Peoples’ Fight to Preserve the Amazon Basin, Culture and Our Climate

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival recently screened “We Are Guardians,” a vital new documentary revealing the complex and compelling on-the-ground realities in the Amazon basin. The filmmakers describe their project:

“We Are Guardians is a rich, intimate journey meeting the many people who are living an intricate daily balance in the Amazon basin, one of the world’s most disrupted and threatened regions. We follow Indigenous leader and activist Puyr Tembé and forest guardian Marçal Guajajara as they fight to protect their territories from deforestation, as well as an illegal logger who has no choice but to cut the forest down to feed his family, and a large landowner at the mercy of thousands of invaders and extractive industry. Through intimate, character focused storytelling, the film reveals the many intertwined social and economic issues driving this complicated landscape.

But We Are Guardians take us further, beyond the beautiful rainforest of the Amazon basin, to understand how it is inextricably connected to the entire planet. We explore the science of this incredible world treasure and its critical role in stabilizing our global climate. We see the economic connections to Western free markets that link goods derived in the Amazon region to Western consumers. Most importantly, we experience our own role in this delicate balance that plays out daily before our eyes, and learn from the wisdom of Indigenous cultures who remind us that we are — all of us — guardians.

The film is directed by Indigenous activist and filmmaker Edivan Guajajara and environmental filmmakers Chelsea Greene and Rob Grobman, and produced by Academy Award winner Fisher Stevens.”

You can watch the trailer, find a screening location near you, read the reviews and contribute to the effort here.

We are privileged to be working alongside one of the film’s directors, Edivan Guajajara, and senior executives of Mighty Earth in our ongoing effort to spur the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to hold accountable global meat-processing giant JBS for its false and misleading statements concerning its climate impact. Earlier this year, we filed claims—supported by voluminous evidence—with the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower. Our whistleblower filing garnered widespread attention by national and international media including the Washington Post and the Financial Times, helping to shine a light on JBS’s egregious misconduct concerning its bogus claims, made to U.S. bond investors, that it is taking meaningful action to achieve it stated goal of reaching “Net Zero by 2040.” The truth about JBS’s environmental conduct is far different than the picture it paints for investors, consumers and governments, and its harm to our planet and its inhabitants is profound. You can read a copy of our SEC whistleblower submission here and you can read Mighty Earth’s press release about the filing here.

If you are aware of other examples of companies misleading investors through “greenwashing” claims, please contact a whistleblower attorney at The Galbraith Law Firm by emailing kevin@galbraithlawfirm.com or calling 212.203.1249, for a free confidential consultation and evaluation of your potential whistleblower claim. Whistleblowers can be either company insiders or outside observers who have detected and documented corporate wrongdoing.