Activists Around the World: Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim

Today's focus is on environmental, women's and Indigenous activist (and cartographer) Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to Stephane
never told you protection to by Heart Radio, and welcome
to another edition of Activists around the World. And we
are keeping in theme with the indigenous peoples and what

(00:26):
they have done, what they continue to do around the
world and for the community. All right, so we're gonna
talk a little bit about cartography, I guess, and essentially
how they are making some amazing changes and advocating for
their community. But before we start, and you and had
I recently had this conversation about how we did not
have GPS. Yes, folks, there's there's a lot of us

(00:48):
who remember days before GPS and UH taking around Yahoo Maps,
not even Google, because Google really wasn't a thing at
that point. It was Yahoo Maps everywhere and trying to
figure this out. But even before then, before having the
uh like point by point direction, there was just maps.

(01:10):
Can you read a map? Yeah? Actually? Yeah, yeah, okay,
So if I just handed you like we gotta go
to this and could you read it like not on
roads either, like actual land maps. I don't think I
would be excellent at it, but I think I could
do it. And my mom and I were talking about
this other day because we were in a situation where

(01:30):
a map needed to be read and I read that map,
look at you. I was pretty impressed, and I probably
shouldn't have been. But you know, there's a lot too.
We know, the whole trope about women not knowing directions,
men refusing to ask for directions, all of those things.
I think we need to come back and talk about
cryptography and women. I think that would be really fascinating

(01:51):
because the idea of maps and then three D maps.
I was obsessed in social studies when we would have
the raised maps and trying to fill follow the landscapes
and trying to figure out mountains and the deserts and
what areas go to like agriculture for agricultural needs as
well as for land building as well as property lines. Man,

(02:12):
it's a whole big field that I'm wondering. As everything
has become more and more technology based and we've gotten
more advanced. What cartography looks like today to be honest,
But because of those advancements, it has really really helped
into at least organizing and or bringing predictors for possible disasters,
which is what we're going to talk about today. But

(02:33):
I just had a moment of like cryptography, we don't
actually talk about that much anymore. I wonder why is
happening in that world? Of course arrested development. That dude
was buster. Did you watch that in cartography that you
couldn't actually read? Matthew was just coloring all over the place.
That would be Yeah, I mean, that's a valuable it's

(02:57):
a mental release. You were of myself. You're like, that's
that's good for you. You You self care with that mac coloring, Samantha,
you self care because there is a reason we're talking
about maths in general. I definitely went off because that's
the development. It was funny, all right. But today we

(03:17):
are actually talking about the leadership and activism of Hindu
Umura Ibrahim, who is an environmentalist as well as a
women's activist from Chad and is an embora indigenous pastoralist
as well. And um these are again a few of
the hats that she wears. She is, as we're talking about,
a cartographer and more. And she's really used these technologies

(03:41):
and this skill and uh bringing a community together and
helping her lands and her peoples to try to navigate
what is happening in the climate change, which is impacted
them pretty greatly. She's been active in advocating for her
indigenous community, whether it's spending time with her community as
they continue to fall and heard the land, or working

(04:02):
to help those who don't have access to higher education
to get that access. Uh. It was when she was
in school herself she understood how many Indigenous women were
not able to get the same educational opportunities, so she
founded the Association of Indigenous Pool Women and People's of
chad or As Pat a f p a T and
the organization started as a community based organization that focused

(04:24):
on the rights of girls and women in in Borrow,
but has since grown. In two thousand five, six years
after the founding, the organization received an operating license and
has been working on an environmental level, including participating in
international negotiations for climate change, environmental protection, sustainable measures around
the community, and more. And throughout her advocacy, she has

(04:47):
continued to talk about the intersections of human rights, women's rights,
and environmental rights, and that to fight for justice and rights,
you can't advocate for one without the other. In an
interview for Rolex and Time magazine, she said people need
to understand that we cannot talk about human rights without
talking about environmental rights. We all depend on nature, we
interact with our environment. That's why for me, I can't

(05:08):
protect human rights without also protecting the environment. And that's
something she has been doing for her community. After witnessing
the detriments her community has gone through due to the
continued climate crisis, Ebraheem has been working as a leader
to help her people and those around her in the
in bud Royal community. Climate change has decimated water access
and land access to the herding community. Like Chad, an

(05:31):
important water source for her community, has gone down to
ten percent of what it originally was. This loss has
not only caused hardships for the land as a resource,
but it started a violent competition for the farmers trying
to get access to the water and other dwindling resources,
as well as displacing many families in the community. She
watched as the impact grew and she began experimenting with

(05:53):
an idea to not only have the indigenous community come together,
but to lead together to work on creating a mapping
sens them that could help locate and allocate resources for
farmers and herders within the indigenous community. She knew that
because Indigenous people were the most affected by the climate
crisis at that point, that they would be able to
find a way to create a system to make progress

(06:14):
in combating the harms of climate change. She stated, as
an indigenous people's we know how to protect our forests,
We know how to manage funding. You just have to
respect the way we do it. We want to be partners,
not recipients or beneficiaries. Um and. She has been very
very vocal about the fact that they need to be
the leader in this conversation, and I absolutely agree. One

(06:35):
of Abraham's first projects included working with meteorologists to get
accurate local forecasts that eventually became text musage alerts to
help herders and others to get information that that is
often unpredictable, but trying to get that information in advance
right um And. She then went on to work with
local indigenous farmers to started mapping exercise, getting community members
to plot migration patterns and corridors for cattle to water.

(06:58):
Um Then she met with fishers to get information on
access to shores and moved on to getting information from
farmers for cropland data and Ibrahim collaborated with UNESCO and
the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee are I pack
I p a CC to create a three D map
of Chad's Sa Hill Desert region with ever two fifty

(07:19):
thousand MEMBORDA rule that's a tough one to pronounce. I
hope we're gonna get some likes UM, people who rely
on farming and hurting. The map helped the community to
plan for future climate needs and mitigation UM. It allowed
for the voices of the indigenous people to be a
part of the science and technology conversations to make decisions

(07:40):
for the future and how to work sustainably for their community. UM.
And even more, the project helped Indigenous women to have
a voice and decision making power in a way that
continue to uphold the traditions of their culture. UH and

(08:05):
her continued work and advocacy has made her a leader
not only for her community but across the nation. In sixteen,
Ibraham was selected to sign at the historic Paris Climate Agreement,
and in eighteen she attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference,
where she reiterated the importance of government responsibility and how
they and policymakers were the ones who could create real

(08:25):
change instead of putting it solely on individuals, which happens
way too often. And in twenty nineteen she was appointed
as an Advocate of Sustainable Development Goals by the U
N And with all that, she has served as co
chair of the International Indigenous People's Forum on Climate Change,
and she is also a member of the Policy Board
of United Nations and so much more. And with all
of this responsibility, she has garnered awards and accolades for

(08:48):
her work, including seventeens National Geographic Society Emerging Explorer Seen
and eighteens BBCs one Women twenty nineteens Pritzker Emerging Environment
Genius Award, twenty nineteens Time Magazines fifteen Women Championing Action
on Climate Change Award, twenties Refugees International Richard C. Holbrook

(09:09):
Award for her work and promoting the rights and interests
of vulnerable communities. And in one she became a Laureate
of Rolex Awards for Enterprise. So a lot of awards, yes,
and she's got a lot of responsibility as being chairman,
co chairs and advocates all around the world and not
just obviously uh in Chad, and she's been doing a

(09:29):
lot more. I believe she's got some write ups happening.
She's of course going around doing speeches, and she's doing
so much and making sure that Indigenous people are at
the forefront in this conversation, and even knowing that as
a woman she didn't originally get the respect that someone
else made a man would have, but she still pushed
to get this done because it was a lot about

(09:50):
being a peacemaker and bringing her community together because it
was causing so much strife individually and causing so much
tension in her community with this lack of resources. Yeah, yeah,
it's incredibly important work and as always inspiring to see
what she's doing and continues to do. And I'm sure
we'll check in and we'll have updates of more rewards
and more accomplishments and everything. But yeah, as always, if

(10:13):
you have any suggestions for people we should talk about
um the segment that, please let us know. You can
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