Defend the sacred

Tamera Healing Biotope is a living experiment, a place where activists, thinkers, and community builders gather to rethink the way humans live on this planet. This year, it became the meeting ground for the Defend The Sacred alliance—an annual gathering of Indigenous leaders, frontline activists, and young changemakers shaping a different future.

The people who arrived carried stories written in struggle. Water protectors from Standing Rock, organizers from Rio’s favelas, elders from Africa, India, Palestine, and the Americas, each bringing a lifetime of resistance. Young leaders stood alongside them, determined to protect the land, air, and water that sustain us all.

In some parts of the world, activism isn’t a choice. It’s a fight for survival, a pushback against forces that extract, exploit, and erase. I listened to the women of Rojava speak about building an autonomous region in the face of war, North African organizers working to unite the nations around the Nile, and communities in Latin America resisting the destruction of their lands. Each story carried weight, each voice added to something greater.

What struck me most was the way wisdom flowed between generations. Elders spoke with deep conviction, but they also listened. The young carried fire, but they sought guidance. There was no hierarchy, only a shared understanding that survival depends on learning from one another.

Photographing this gathering meant immersing in a movement that stretches across continents, bound by the belief that another way is possible.