Tom Wheeler | Executive Director, Treesistance; Founder, Sinchi

Tom Wheeler | Executive Director, Treesistance; Founder, Sinchi

• Tom is the Executive Director of Treesistance, Founder of Sinchi, a nonprofit that upholds the UN’s Declaration of the rights of indigenous people.
• He is also a founder of a number of other initiatives before he moved into this space.

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With globalization and urbanization, forest lands are shrinking and so are the indigenous communities across the world. With the global dialogue on environment preservation, the prime focus needs to be on preserving these communities owing to their strong relation and understanding of nature and environment. In today’s episode, we discuss the need of preserving these communities for the larger good of mankind. 

[00:41] – About Tom Wheeler

• Tom is the Executive Director of Treesistance, Founder of Sinchi, a nonprofit that upholds the UN’s Declaration of the rights of indigenous people.
• He is also a founder of a number of other initiatives before he moved into this space.
• Tom also volunteers at an orphanage in Cusco, in the heart of the Andes. 

[06:25] – To what extent is founding Sinchi to help indigenous people, a coincidence by just being in that location otherwise if you had been in a different part of the world would have resulted in supporting something different? Do you feel it would always have led to helping supporting local indigenous people?

• There are a lot of fascinating things we can talk about with indigenous culture, wisdom, and heritage.
• It opened my eyes to a completely different perspective. When we talk about the narrative which we see within the West, it’s very one-dimensional in some senses and there are completely different world views.
• This was something which was open to me at that point and that’s where my journey started, but it led me to actually walking across Greenland solo in the South where I actually spent time with families and learned about their communities and their culture.
• I’ve always had a thirst for travel and for meeting different cultures, but it has sent me on a kind of journey of discovery, and I’ve found that every indigenous culture is very different.
• I really love this idea that we have responsibilities and not rights towards nature. I think that’s a beautiful perspective and way of thinking.

[10:30] – What does Sinchi do?

• At its core, it’s about upholding the U.N. Declaration of indigenous rights which are very important legal instruments.
• Our work exists in many forms, stemming from projects in Australia, Indonesia, Botswana, Benin, Mexico, North Norway, North America, and South America.
• These projects have run from underground initiatives, academic projects to creating a journalism guild to documentary projects to providing grants to indigenous storytellers or communities.
• We also run a bi-annual indigenous artist awards to elevate indigenous artists and storytelling. We’ve hosted events, festivals, film screenings, debates in Europe to raise awareness but at the moment our core focus is on the Amazon.

RESOURCES:

You can connect with Tom Wheeler : LinkedIn 

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Thanks for listening! 

• Tom is the Executive Director of Treesistance, Founder of Sinchi, a nonprofit that upholds the UN’s Declaration of the rights of indigenous people.
• He is also a founder of a number of other initiatives before he moved into this space.
• Tom also volunteers at an orphanage in Cusco.