As the world’s largest investor in fossil fuels and one of the biggest funders of the mining, cattle and soya firms responsible for the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, the investing behemoth Black Rock is a key and growing target for climate activism.
But few protests have had as much gravitas and grace as the one I filmed in 2019, when three shamans from the ancient Amazonian Huni Kuin tribe, stood quietly, in the feather head-dresses and beads of their full ceremonial dress, at the entrance to the company’s London headquarters.
Instead of brandishing placards or shouting slogans, the shamans spoke solemnly the truth of the destruction they see first-hand in the forests that are their homes. They then sang a prayer.
Their words, ringing out across the company’s forecourt, held everyone there, activist and employee alike, rapt. You could have heard a pin drop.
‘We are bringing the voices of the forest,’ the shamans said. ‘If we finish with our planet. We finish with everything.’
The shamans’ dignity and self-control was heartbreaking and humbling: any grief or rage at the vandalism, theft and loss wrought on their homelands, they transformed into an act of prayer for and compassion and invitation towards those working in the organisation that funded that destruction. An act of total grace.
Let’s hope they succeed in sparking the monumental change our world needs where decades of more adversarial activism has failed: it is clear that the preservation of the Amazon, the largest and most biodiverse tract of tropical rainforest in the world, is essential not just for millions of different species but for the survival of our human race.