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Indigenous Peoples make up around five percent of humanity’s population and yet they are some of the world’s best stewards of nature. Their scientific knowledge and ways of living are rooted in a respect for all life on Earth that informs the way they take care of nature. Indigenous Peoples are leading a new revolution in humanity’s relationship with nature.
In this episode, we meet the inspiring Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim. Hindou is an Indigenous leader from the Mbororo peoples of the Sahel region, Africa. She is the Coordinator of the Association of Peul Women and Autochthonous Peoples of Chad (AFPAT) and advocates for Indigenous leadership and knowledge in international nature and climate policy.
Join us as we learn about the central role of African Indigenous women in earth care. We also discuss the impacts of climate injustice on Indigenous peoples around the world and solutions to address climate injustice. Hindou also shares encouraging advice to Indigenous girls, women and communities facing climate injustice.
Episode time stamps
00:00 Welcoming Hindou
02:43 Hindou’s relationship with nature
04:38 How belonging to the Mbororo peoples has shaped Hindou’s respect and understanding of nature
08:32 Why Hindou’s best weather app is her grandmother
14:45 The central role of African Indigenous women in community decision-making
21:18 The impacts of climate change on Indigenous communities and how Indigenous Peoples are responding
30:48 What we and ‘developed nations’ need to do for climate justice
35:36 Hindou’s advice to Indigenous women and girls living with the impacts of climate change
38:36 How you can support Hindou
39:19 How you can support Black Earth
Support Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim
Connect and Follow Hindou on X and Instagram: @hindououmar
Support Association of Peul Women and Autochthonous Peoples of Chad (AFPAT): https://www.afpat.net/
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Creators & Guests
What is Black Earth Podcast ?
Black Earth is an interview podcast celebrating nature and black women leaders in the environmental movement. Join us for inspiring, informed and authentic conversations on how we can make a positive impact for people and nature worldwide.
Episodes out every Wednesday. Connect with us online @blackearthpodcast on Instagram, LinkedIn and Tiktok.
Hosted by Marion Atieno Osieyo. Healing our relationship with nature, one conversation at a time.
Black Earth S2E2 Final - Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim
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Marion Atieno Osieyo: [00:00:00] Welcome to Black Earth podcast. I'm your host, Marion Atieno Osieyo. Black Earth is an interview podcast that's celebrating nature and the incredible Black women leaders in the environmental movement.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: In this episode, we meet with Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim. Hindou is an indigenous environmental leader from the Mbororo peoples in the Sahel region of Africa. Hindou has spent the majority of her life organizing and advocating for indigenous leadership and knowledge in international environmental policy.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: In this episode, we explore the central role that African indigenous women play in earth care and the impacts of climate injustice on indigenous peoples around the world. We also [00:01:00] discuss solutions and how we can support indigenous girls, women and communities to realize climate justice.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Hi, thank you for having me today. It's really a great pleasure talking to all your audience. So, uh, my name is Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim. I am a Mbororo indigenous woman from Chad. So Chad is, uh, one of the bigger country of Africa, but really in the center, in the landlocked country. And I come from a Mbororo pastoralist communities who are still nomadic 100 percent in some places and semi nomadic in other places.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: And my people live across six countries. [00:02:00] Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, Central African Republic, and now Sudan, and now we've kind of changed, people move over DRC Republic, and now my people used to be around all those lands. Anyway, before colonization, it used to be our land. And then, uh, after the decision of Berlin, so they just like cut our countries in pieces and then divided our people.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: And when I say our peoples, that means my own people. I've got some cousin who get a nationality of Cameroon, other cousin from Central Africa Republic. Other cousin in Niger. In Nigeria. So then I get born in Chad and then I ended up with the nationality of Chadian.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: Thank you. Thank you so much. Hindou. Hindou, how would you describe your relationship with nature?
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Well, uh, for me, the relationship with nature is not only a relationship, we're all nature. [00:03:00] We're part of the nature. We don't need to create a relationship with the nature because we are nature. So all of us in this planet doesn't matter that you are white, black, or you are in a developed country or developing countries.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: We depend from nature. We need air to breathe. We need water to drink. We need food to eat. And all that is part of the nature, and we are also one species of the nature among so many. So if like I got the questions how I can describe my relationship with the nature, I'm like, there is no relationship. As part of the nature, I have a duty vis a vis to the other species.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: So what we do in my people, in my communities, is how we can respect the little ant. And how we can respect the bigger elephants, how we can respect the powerful lions, as how we can respect [00:04:00] the weak bears who is flying over the space. So that's mean, so we depend from the rainfall. When the rain is there, it can help grow up the pastures.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Our cattle can eat, we can get a milk, we can eat it. We can get our economy ruling outta it. So that's how we describe our relationship with nature as part of it. We respect each other. We take only what we need. We give back to the nature and we live in harmony together.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: Thank you, Hindou. It really strikes me the way that you've, you articulate that, that you don't have a relationship with nature because you are nature.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, and that's something that's come up several times in, uh, my interviews with, other environmental leaders in, in this podcast. [00:05:00] Um, could you tell us more about where, this belief that you hold comes from, is it something that you grew up with as a member of the Mbororo community or is it something that has emerged as you have evolved as a person?
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: So when we are growing up at the communities, we all know that nature is part of us and that we are part of the nature. So it is the wisdom that passes from generation to generation. How you can respect and live in harmony among other species. I give you a concrete examples. As coming from a nomadic pastoralist communities, you can have a kids of seven year old, who can take a hundred of cattles, go grazing somewhere very far, and take the cattles in a lake, where there is [00:06:00] lion who can come and drink, elephant who can come and drink, gazelle, who can come and drink, and of course the cattles and then the little boy there who go to the water and drink.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: And we know at what time each species is coming to drink. So we know how we can respect. Who is to pass. And as we know how each species is using those resources, we know also how we should use the resources, and they stay all the day outside with those animals, and they come back safe.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: And if like one day they know that the family of elephant or a family of lion are sick or something. The little kids of seven years old come back home and tell his families that, Oh, today I saw something is not normal. This family of elephant or this family of lions. [00:07:00] Maybe they are not normal. They got something and they talk over the history in the families.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: So you grow up like this, so you know exactly how the rest of the species are also very important for your survival and how you are important for their survival. Because you get connected each other, you know that you are belonging to this same environment and that you have to respect. So we are born with it, I can say. We know where we are coming from, where we are heading, as the species also knows. So it doesn't matter that I grow up between the city and my community, I know it because that what I have as legacy from my mom, from my grandma, and then they also get it as legacy from their own, all the generations.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: [00:08:00] And that's also what I'm telling to all the next generation that is coming, which kind of history they have to rely and how they have to respect and protect the rest of the species as they can respect and protect their own self. We depend from each other. They disappear. We disappear. Our culture disappear. Our identity disappear. If we wanted to protect who we are , we should protect them also.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: As I hear you speak now, um, there's something that came out strongly from me is, uh, this, uh, connection between generations. And how much, your culture, your relationship or your presence and your being in nature, um, depends on all generations coming together to transmit and pass on knowledge.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, [00:09:00] and I remember watching a video of your TED talk, uh, which I absolutely loved, and, when I heard you say, my best app is my grandmother, that just filled me with so much joy and inspiration, but there's actually more to that than just being a quote or something fancy to say. So when you said my best app is my grandmother, could you tell us more about, what you meant by that in your TED talk?
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Sure. So when you grow up in the Western culture, you have, the chance I can say maybe you are lucky to see how the technology is developing very fast and then how you can use the technology and sometime you use them forgetting that nature is the best technology ever.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: So, for example, in the Western world, everyone has a smartphone. When you wake up, the first thing that you do is checking the weather app. Normal to see [00:10:00] if it's called to get extra cold. It is hot, to have your sunglasses. What will be the weather if it's raining, to get your umbrella. So it's normal to get ready to go outside and you get a very valued gadget that you can click on it and tell you.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: But imagine if you are at the community who do not even have access to the electricity and who cannot get access to those kind of gadgets to tell them the weather forecast, as my people who are the nomadic. So you need to rely on something. If you are nomadic, you don't have a fixed home. So you have to go and stop in some places and build your home.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: So then you build it only for two, three days and you need to cope with all the weather, surrounding you. So the best application ever for me is my grandma because she can just observe the bird's migration, the cloud position. She can observe her own cattles, how they are lying down. [00:11:00] She can observe the wind directions, the quality of the wind, all the, uh, the plants.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: And then she just predict the weather. That she can tell you if it's going to rain in the next two hours or if the next rainy season after one year going to be predictable or not. So how she do that, for example, when the birds migrate, because one season is ending, another one is starting.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: And when the birds are migrating, at the same time, you have to look at also some trees, their flowers, their, uh, fruits. And at the same time, you have to look at also the wind. So we combine all the different knowledge from the astrological knowledge to the biological knowledge and it's helped us predict the weather. So it is our best application because now in the way the forecast in your [00:12:00] phone can tell you is going to rain surprisingly sunny, you cannot get any SMS who can tell you, 'Oh sorry, I apologize because I predict, but it is not sunny. It is raining or whatever.'
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: But we do not have a right to make this mistake. If you make the mistake, it's not going to rain and it rains, all your stuff will be get wet and you will lose a month of your life. So we do not have any chance to make this mistake. That's why we're observing all the different species of the nature and when we predict our weather, it's correctly giving us the right information. Even with the climate change impact, even with the loss of the biodiversity, we are adapting our traditional knowledge to our way of living because we rely on it, we have no other choice. We have no one who can come and tell us it's gonna rain or it's gonna be hot or flood. And then we have to adapt [00:13:00] ourselves, make our survival as resilient as possible. So this is the best application ever for me.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: For me, it's one of the, the ways I've, um, observed indigenous communities around the world, the way they conceptualize knowledge, which is, bringing astrology, um, physical science, language, culture, all of those things makes up knowledge and understanding of the, the world, the universe, but also, you know, nature.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: And I really appreciate that because [00:14:00] living in Europe, environmental science is very much focused on physical science and what can be observed and measured, but doesn't take into account all the other types of knowledge that can help people, uh, understand, appreciate and respect nature and the fact that they are nature as well.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: So it's something that I've come to appreciate and honor and observe about the way, I have seen various indigenous communities because there, there are many different types of indigenous peoples. They're not just one group of people, but it's a common theme that comes up when I get to understand, how they view and live, um, as nature.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, I wanted to ask you, the role of, um, indigenous women in Africa in, um, preserving and sharing knowledge about nature. Can you [00:15:00] help us understand why they play such an important role in, in this regard and how that can help us in our efforts to restore and heal nature?
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Indigenous women have a detailed knowledge because you have man knowledges who are more in the bigger picture. For example, man can tell you the different kind of the forest , what is inside the forest because other peoples are only seeing just like green trees surrounding or some various trees there.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: So the man can tell you if the trees are the medicinal trees, if they are sacred trees, if they are food trees, etc. And woman can tell you the detail knowledge about which kind of knowledge that is relevant to your health, to your food, etc. So women passing the knowledge to their generation because when you grow up you always little [00:16:00] boy or little girl in our communities, you sit with your mom and then she can just tell you like, 'Oh, do that', don't do that.' And they're like, 'why you don't do that?' 'Like, no, stopped going outside under this tree at midday because it is not normal in our culture because you can get sick or whatever.' So technically you say like, you don't understand, ,but of course, there is some substance that can come out during heat in the middle of the day, or whatever, that can make you sick or that can kill you, etc.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: So then they just translate those knowledge from one generation to another one by educating them. So women as the educators. They're the teachers of all the generations through the different various knowledge, but they're the teachers also of the culture, of the identities.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Me, I remember benefiting from sitting with [00:17:00] my mom, with my aunties, my cousin, my grandmom. We just like tell the history, but each history. Each anecdote have a big benefit because we do not just tell the history and laugh and move without taking lesson from what is said. And this is very important because women are the best one who are storytelling and then the storytelling who can give you a big sense of how you can use it for the next generation, for your own life.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: It's not the history that just like you can keep it in and that's it when you leave and it's fine. It's we remind you when you are acting, you know, uh, work in being adults or etcetera. So, for example, when they say like, Oh, African woman, you have a lot of storytelling, uh, for your kids. So may you just like tell us and then the story telling is around all these [00:18:00] animals and meet with this one and then he say this and he say that and then people just take it like as a joke and reading books.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: For us, it's not a joke, it's the reality of how they can pass the history to the kids to make them understand the importance of the nature, the importance of the culture, the importance of the identities. So they are the best one who know each generation, which kind of history that you have to tell them in order to understand the challenge crisis that is surrounding them.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: So I think women have big things to bring in our communities as the world's communities and indigenous women or African women have a lot to bring. It's not the issue of like, uh, let us make the equality or let us make gender things or whatever. You already have that. In our culture, women can [00:19:00] say it without that being in front.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: So that's what we say. Uh, in French we say, 'L'annui porte conseil' so like, uh, 'the night can make you reflect.' So when the man, community leaders, elders, they sit, they discuss about the big challenge, and then they never get an agreement, they just stop the discussion, they say, you know what, let us think about it overnight.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: When they get home, there is no anyone who can come in and say like, hey listen, tomorrow morning is these things. Every man talked with his wife or talked with his mom about the sacred discussion that they had among man chief leaders. They say like, we had this discussion, then it have been very challenging.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: And then the woman say like, well, I think you are off of this. You can do [00:20:00] A, B, C, D in these discussions. And then they close the discussions when they go back to the discussions with all the men. And then you found somebody who said, like, I got an idea overnight. We can resolve this issue by saying this and this and that.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Or another one said, like, yes, I confirm. And at the end of the day, the little ears who are telling them the truth and the realities are the women, who didn't attend those meetings but who are taking the resolutions of big decisions that men couldn't resolve it during the day. They did resolve it during the night.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: So they (women) are the voices in the shadow, but they are the wisdom who can let the communities move forward any time. they are the wisdom of the childrens, passing them all the history, protecting them building their future, but they are the wisdom of the rest of the society that are giving them all the solution that [00:21:00] they want. So women's voices in African culture, indigenous culture are very important and respected in one or another way. It doesn't matter if the respect is put them in the light or in the shadow.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: I've been following your work for the past few years , I know you've been, you've been actively involved in organizing indigenous communities since you were like 16. Um. And you've done it at the community level, at the national level, internationally through climate policy, um, [00:22:00] and really trying to ensure that, um, indigenous communities are, uh, empowered to be able to share their knowledge and their wisdom to speak their voices and really influence climate policy and solutions that will help them build their own resilience to climate change.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, can you share with us some of the challenges right now when it comes to climate change and nature loss that's particularly affecting, um, indigenous communities in Africa and across the world?
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Yes. Uh, actually small corrections. I started when I was 12 years old. The official authorization of my organization that I got that was when I was 16. So, uh, somebody put it back on 16 and I just like, you know, I'm like, it's fine.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: I'm sorry about that. [00:23:00]
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: No, it's not. It's not you. But like, uh, yeah, people wanted to put like the references based on the Western way of looking at things and then I'm trying now to correct it. I'm like, yes, from the Western way, you say, like the official paper where they are written, I started when I was 16 years old.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: But no, the fight is started since I was 12 at the primary school and I started because of the climate change impact in my communities. So we got impacted by climate change in environmental and social ways.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Environmentally, we the rainy season that change alot. The rain come now more heavily with alot of floods that flood all the crops and even the peoples in the cities or the drought where there is not enough rain, and then of course no crops can grow up little pastures and people fight each other to get access to the natural resources.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: So that extreme [00:24:00] weather events become more frequent in all our society, in all our communities, and it's not only in Chad, but so many other indigenous communities. When you look at the Sámi in the Arctic, when the glaciers are melting and also like the winters are become very difficult for them, the rangers have to dig very hard in order to get the pastures.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Or when you get to the small islands and you found the indigenous communities facing, facing more and more, the hurricanes that destroying their own villages, they cannot get enough fish. The coral are dying, the sea level are rising.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Or you can go also to the Himalayas Mountain when you see also the glaciers are melting, ,the communities have to move. So it's the same, the climate change impact from the fire on the tropical forest to all what we are experiencing, are becoming more and more hard. And as indigenous peoples living and depending from the nature, we are the front line of the [00:25:00] climate change. We are the most impacted in the climate change.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: And yet we refuse to be a victim. We are not the victim. We become a victim because of the action or inaction of the developed world. The action because they are digging and still digging the blood of the earth, taking all the minerals, the natural resources, the oil outside and that killing us because it's accelerating the global warming.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Or because of inaction that they are not taking. They are not stopping the fossil fuel. They are not taking their responsibility to pay for the climate adaptation, to pay the historical responsibility to the developed world, and especially to the indigenous peoples who are getting impacted.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: So those action or inaction, are making indigenous people at the frontline more vulnerable to the climate change impacts. But of [00:26:00] course, indigenous peoples, all together, we gather around the world. We fight within the climate change convention, the biodiversity convention, the desertification convention, to show them that our solutions can lead the world to a carbon negative, can give them the solutions, but they have to trust us.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: We have to take the decision with them yet it's not happening. It's moving. Yes, but very slowly because if we look at just this week, the record of heat around the world, it's horrible. We have been alarming them since so many years. In country like mine in Chad, we have like more than 48 to 50 degrees Celsius. They was not acting because it's not their home.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Now, when you look at Europe, US and all the bigger countries, some of them facing [00:27:00] 40 degrees Celsius or 48 degrees Celsius, and then the science is standing up and saying like the world is hitting the record. But the world hit the record since many decades ago where people are dying because they do not have voice to talk, or their voices are not considered.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: The Lake Chad, where I live from, dried up of 90 percent of his water. It used to be 25, 000 km2 of the fresh water when my mother get born in 1960 and now the water is between 2 to 3, 000 km2, where you have more than 40 million people living depending from this water. It is alarming for our region. It is a big face of climate change, but peoples do not consider it as urgent action to talk about it.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: But yes, today they are considering talking about it because the world is hitting the record. So [00:28:00] we need this equality. We need this justice because it is a climate injustice. Where it is touching you, you act. Where it is not touching you, it is other people, you just take them as pity peoples.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: They have to understand one thing. Climate change do not have a visa, do not need a visa, do not have a frontiers. Climate change can hit everyone. Maybe not in the same time, differently, but it is a threat for the world. We need to put all our energy together as the world's communities, surpassing our differences.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: In the global north, countries need to stop investing in the fossil fuel. They have to pay their responsibility to resilience for the global south for the adaptation for the global south. [00:29:00] They have to pay this money. They do have it. They have to stop all what they call development because it is over development that they are leaving.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: And anything, if it is over, it will make you mad, like alcohol, they can say it's good, but when you are overdrunk, you cannot control yourself. So overdevelopment, can make them mad to not control what is happening and they can be facing all the consequences. So they have to act and act for themselves and act for everyone right now because Indigenous peoples are acting through the little that we have of our traditional knowledge.,
Marion Atieno Osieyo: Many of our listeners are very committed to action. They, they really are about, [00:30:00] doing everything that they can to, to address the climate injustice and really start to repair and restore nature. Um, and I know that indigenous communities play a really central role in helping us to address what is happening in the world when it comes to, uh, mother earth and all the associated injustices that come from that.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: What are some of the things that you feel, most critical for our listeners to support when it comes to supporting indigenous communities in addressing climate injustice?
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: So climate justice, it is also a human right justice. It's a gender justice. It's a [00:31:00] intergenerational justice. It's a racial justice. When you look at around the world, you go to a developed world, who are the most impacted? The people of color, or you can say migrants, or you can say, I don't know, communities who do not have capacities. Because they are not living in the protected places and when the hurricanes hit or floods or whatever environmental crisis is happening , it is not easy for them to rebuild back their life as quick as possible.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: It is a gender justice because when you look at all what is happening around the world, like the recent flood in Pakistan or the recent flood in Chad, Nigeria, Niger, the women who have [00:32:00] children or who do not have are the most impacted. Because they lose everything, and then it's not easy to act as a woman, men leave them behind.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: If it is flood or drought, the man used to go away to find the solutions. They become internal migrants, they leave the woman who can deal with the daily action every day. It is intergenerational injustice because the old communities creating this climate change by using the natural resources without thinking or caring about the next generations, what will be their life.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: And then the next generation is starting living a very difficult life and very difficult way now. And it is also a human right injustice because those who are the most impacted, do not have right to development, do not [00:33:00] have right to water, right to lands, etc.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: So, climate injustice have to end and people have to understand climate injustice, it is also inactions that they are not taking. They must include the human right best approach. If the developed world say like we are a democratic nation, we are a human right nations. So they must start by understanding what they are saying and by applying what they are saying. You cannot just like take a nice word and take it and say it there without implementing.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Otherwise you are not a human right nation. You are a right violating nation. So better that you just like shut up, say I'm not democratic. And then I will be moved forward to improve. You cannot say it without implementing. That's really what needs to [00:34:00] happen, as a first step to the climate justice.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: For examples, when the committee, in Copenhagen, say they're going to give a hundred billions every year to the developing nations for the climate adaptations. They never reached a hundred billions from 2020, until this year. It's like, yes, we get the hundred billions for the years to give to the developing countries. I was in the parties during Macron event on pact for climate finance, they clap forever for the hundred billions.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: And then African countries said like, wait a minute, the hundred billions was before that we reached this critical time of the climate change. Now we are beyond 100 billions and even the 100 [00:35:00] billions that we are talking about, who from our very impacted countries get opportunity to access it because they created a criteria that is not accessible at all to the nations that impacted the most because they think that it is our money, we have to put all the criterias and at the end of the day, the other the peoples have to fight to get those or we cannot get anything.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: So this climate injustice need s to be fixed now, otherwise they are not a just or democratic nations at all.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: What advice would you give to other indigenous girls and women, uh, in Africa who are living with the impacts of climate change in their communities?
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: I think for the indigenous women and girls, I can tell them that you are already doing it. You are the force of the nature [00:36:00] and you can do it again. Put all your effort to show how much you are acting for your people because you are doing it for your own people. You are not doing it for the other people.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Don't accept being a victim because you are a solution. Maybe you do not see what you are doing. It's helping the entire world to get into the solutions. Of course, you can fall down because you're human, but stand up with the proudness and move forward. Don't look at those who pull you back, look at those who are taking you straight forward.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Go ,move to show what you are and who you are. You are a woman because you're the mother of [00:37:00] the nations. You are going to become a woman as little girls because you're already caring about your family, about your communities and that give you a strong power because you are the power of the nature.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: You can make it as indigenous women and indigenous girls of African nations. We are there. We are building up. We are building our nation, and we will be building for the entire world because we are not a egoistic woman. We are a collective fighters. So you're a warrior. Doesn't matter that you act small or big. You can do it. And I'm so confident that indigenous women, indigenous girls are the solutions. We are the future. We are not the past.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: Wow. Thank you so much, Hindou. [00:38:00] Um, I am so grateful for the time that you've given us today. And, uh, there's so many things that have come up in our conversation. Remembering that we are nature, uh, honoring the wisdom across generations, addressing climate injustice and, equity in finance. Oh, there's so much that you've shared!
Marion Atieno Osieyo: So, I just want to thank you for your time today and really looking forward to supporting you going forward. How can our listeners, follow you or follow your work? Is there a website or?
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Sure. So social media, everyone can now follow my Twitters @hindououma r or of course, uh, you can follow also in the website that is in French. And, unfortunately, another colonial language, uh, but, you can support all what indigenous peoples are doing. This is the most [00:39:00] important for all of us.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: And of course, support, and support and support. We'd really love you to support us.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: Thank you. Thank you so much, Hindou.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: Thank you so much for joining us in today's conversation. We'd love to connect with you and hear your thoughts. We are on Instagram, Tiktok, and LinkedIn at Black Earth Podcast. Don't forget to share this podcast with your friends, your family, your network, your communities. And you can also subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.
Marion Atieno Osieyo: Black Earth is a proudly independent podcast, and we are on a mission to reconnect and heal humanity's relationship with nature. If you'd like to support us, we are on Patreon at Black Earth Podcast. [00:40:00] Thank you and see you in the next episode.