Weave The Heart Beyond The Map
Forests, Sovereignty, and Peoples in Voluntary Isolation
JOIN US | LONDON CLIMATE ACTION WEEK
Exhibition & Film Premiere
22-25 June - The Rights & Nature Hub
Connecting territories through storytelling, weaving, photography, and film, this immersive journey begins with the Ayoreo of Paraguay’s Gran Chaco and extends to the Awá in Brazil and the O’Hangana Manyawa in Indonesia. Shining a light on Indigenous Peoples in voluntary isolation and the growing pressures on their forest territories.
Join us in London for a week of immersive exhibition and the premiere of a powerful new documentary on the Ayoreo peoples inhabiting the Chaco, Paraguay, exploring the trauma of contact and the path to community healing. Followed by a panel on the dire situation and the impact of the leather trade on driving illegal deforestation with its sprawling cattle operations.
Register to attend and learn more about our programming.
THIS IS A CALL FOR SOLIDARITY.
Across forests, islands, and plains live peoples whose histories reach far deeper than the borders drawn across our maps. Indigenous communities throughout Central America, Indonesia and the Amazon, carry ways of life that have endured long before the world was divided into nations.
Weave beyond the limits of what is visible...
"To weave the heart beyond the map is to act with care from wherever we are. To plant seeds of solidarity across distance. To honor the right of peoples to remain as they are, living within lands that have always known them."
FEATURED COMMUNITIES
Woven To The Land
The Ayoreo
Paraguay
The Ayoreo of the Gran Chaco were the last Paraguayan people to be forcibly contacted. Today some live in permanent communities and others remain in voluntary isolation, entirely dependent on the forest for survival, culture, and identity. Rapid deforestation, land grabbing, and further forced contact threaten their territory, health, and way of life.
The Awá
Brazil
The Awá live in the Amazon rainforest of eastern Maranhão, in village communities with recent contact, as well as in small nomadic groups in voluntary isolation throughout this region. They depend entirely on the Amazon forest for their survival, culture, and identity. Illegal logging, deforestation, violence, and land invasions threaten their safety, health and territorial rights.
The O'Hongana Manyawa Indonesia
The O’Hongana Manyawa (Inner Tobelo) see the forest as their source of life, culture, and ancestral connection. However, mining, displacement, and negative stigma threaten their land, identity, and survival, despite their deep ecological knowledge and sustainable way of living.
THE O'HANGANA MANYAWA
Deep in the forests of Halmahera lives a people whose culture, identity, and survival are inseparable from the land they call home. With 60 mining companies now operating in their territory and generations of forced relocation, criminalization, and exploitation behind them, the threats have never been greater. Yet over 1,000 community members remain, resisting and protecting their lands.
Meet the creatives
Genilson
Guajajara
Guajajara | Brazil
Filmmaker and Photographer
Elizabeth V. Swanson Andi
Napu - Kichwa | Ecuador Photographer, Filmmaker & Sustainability Researcher
Maria Luisa Santana
Pataxó | Brazil
Writer & Training Programs Manager
Nura
Batara
Toraja I Indonesia
Storyteller & Photographer
Eko
Krisna
Sunda | Indonesia
Filmmaker & Storyteller
Jaye Renold
UK
Filmmaker
Joel Redman
UK
Photographic Artist & Storyteller
Sara Aliaga Ticona
Bolivia | Aymara
Photographer
Paul Redman
South Africa
Executive Producer
A Call to Action
LEARN. LISTEN. SHARE. SUPPORT.
Weave the Heart Beyond the Map invites us to extend our empathy and solidarity beyond the limits of what is visible, to recognize lives, cultures, and sovereignties that exist outside the lines that organize our global imagination.
Do you want to bring the exhibition to your city? Contact us
Do you want to learn more?
Read and download the reports and publications.
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Tamucode:
Chronicles of a Gnocide
by Colectivo Quipa, Iniciativa Amotocodie, IWGIA
Grand theft chaco: The luxury cars made with leather from the stolen lands of an uncontacted tribe
by Earthsight
The end of the Ayoreo? The race to find proof of Paraguay’s uncontacted people
The Guardian
The price of beauty: Popular collagen brands drive deforestation and rights abuses in Paraguay
Global Witness
Wall Street banks fuel NYC-scale deforestation in Paraguay's vital forest
Global Witness
Collaborating Organizations
If Not Us Then Who? is engaged in an ongoing global awareness campaign highlighting the role Indigenous Peoples and local communities play in protecting the planet. They work in partnership with communities to make films, take photographs, curate content, commission local artists, and host events — aiming to build lasting networks, target unjust policies, and advocate for greater rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities to bring about positive social change.
Since 2002, Iniciativa Amotocodie has been working to protect the Paraguayan Chaco and to defend the rights of the Ayoreo people, including those living in voluntary isolation. Their approach combines legal defense, territorial monitoring, community empowerment, and environmental conservation — ensuring that the last uncontacted peoples of the Chaco can live in peace and that the forest they depend on can survive for future generations.
Quipa is a multidisciplinary collective of activists, community leaders, and systems thinkers, founded in 2023, committed to protecting the planet's vast biocultural heritage. Their work breaks away from globalized extractive logics, envisioning futures imagined from the local outward to the global — defending Indigenous territories against extractive projects that threaten ecosystems, cultures, and futures.
