Women from the Amazon Audio/Video Podcast
This episode traces the story of the Munduruku, an Indigenous community on Brazil's Tapajós River, whose cosmology holds a strong connection to nature. Today, illegal gold mining has poisoned their waters with mercury, turning an act of ancestral care into a source of sickness, miscarriage, and loss. I spoke with Munduruku filmmaker Ricelia, human rights researcher Sarah Kerremans, and mercury-cycle expert Professor Willy Baeyens (VUB) to trace that contamination from the Amazon basin to the Atlantic. At its center, this episode is a portrait of Amazon women: the first to bear environmental harm, and the first to lead the fight against it.