I thought hard about what information to include, emphasize or analyze on this specific post. Why you ask? Because we can analyze injustice and criminal behavior for hours or get to the point. This story is as brief as it can be.

In life coaching sessions, we often use visualization, in order to connect emotionally to a situation that can help us evolve and face whatever troubles us. Here is a quick exercise; close your eyes and imagine you own a shop. You step out for a bit to go get some lunch and your best friend minds your business while you are gone. Upon your return the police and ambulance are there. Your dearest friend was murdered during a robbery. Gut wrenching. Now open your eyes, and imagine the face on this photo could be your friend; he was definitely someone’s best friend, child, sibling. His name was Paulo Paulino Guajajara or el Lobo (the wolf in Spanish). He was a native of the Amazon in Brazil guarding the Arariboia native reserve in Maranhao state forest. He was murdered with a shot in the head from illegal forest loggers, while on a hunting trip on November 1st, 2019 (credit, Reuters). On February 13, 2021, I received an Instagram post (#justiceforisac) about professor Isac Tembe, who went on a trip in his indigenous land the day before, Alto Rio Guama, in Paragominas, in the northeast of Para, and was murdered by military police with a close range shot to the chest, in the northern Brazilian state in the Amazonia National Park! He was a beloved teacher, aged also 24, led the Youth group Kamarar to safeguard the forest and brother to the local Chief of the Tembe-Tenetehara people.

Why should you care? I mean, most of us are currently dealing with covid related, or not, stressful issues and depending in which country you reside, these socioeconomic problems have reached an all time high and have been going on for a while. Do you care about breathing? Yes, I am referring to good old oxygen; do you think we can afford to run out of that? No? I don’t either. Neither did Paulino, Isac or numerous other local inhabitants of the Amazon forest. So they got educated on our civilized culture and use of technology, to properly monitor the destruction from deforestation of their land and its consequences on the whole planet, not just the Amazon forest, Earth’s largest lung. So they were murdered, Paulino, ‘the wolf’ with a bullet through the head, and Isac through the chest. Both only 24 years old.

What can we do? I can tell you what I did; my homework. And from the comfort of my home, I surfed online, found out a list with products made from the Amazon woods, plants grown on deforested land and their use in several products, and I simply stopped buying them. That easy.