From Honduras to Mi’kma’ki, Mothers Fight with Courage for the Future of Our Kids

By Jackie McVicar, For Our Kids' Atlantic Canada Organizer

A few years ago, I was working in Honduras alongside environmental defenders trying to stop an open pit iron oxide mine from destroying a national park and three rivers. They had set up a peaceful protest camp and worked to raise awareness about the potential impacts. As a result, the State and the mining company - with ties to one of the biggest steel manufacturing companies in the world - tried to silence the community’s resistance to the project and eight men were targeted through trumped up criminal charges. 

The environmental defenders, known as the “Guapinol River Defenders” spent more than 2.5 years in arbitrary detention before their case was finally thrown out and they were freed. But their release - and the eventual creation of a law to protect the national park they were defending - didn’t come easy. The time they spent in jail was painfully hard for their families, especially the women. 

Their wives, moms, and grown daughters were at the forefront of the struggle to free the defenders, and also to demand the park be protected. They traveled for hours on buses from a remote part of the country to the capital city to keep the pressure up; attending court hearings, organizing protests in front of the Supreme Court, and holding press conferences. They spoke fiercely in national and international forums to demand the immediate release of their loved ones - and for the protection of the rivers.  

It was an incredibly hard battle with many setbacks. But the women didn’t give up.

Juana Zuniga was tenacious and the natural leader of the families. In many ways, she was also the leader of the defenders in jail, since she was one of the first ones to organize the community to stop the company. When there was a strategic decision to make about the case, the jailed defenders would say, “If Juana is ok with it, so are we.” 

As a result, Juana was often targeted with defamation campaigns by media outlets connected to the mining company; at night, unknown men would drive by her house on motorbike to surveil and intimidate her family. Juana had become a single mother of three girls overnight when her partner was detained. Her daughters were often beside her at the rallies and hearings, growing into activists in their own right. 

When asked by journalists about the struggle, Juana would respond time and again: “The river is the inheritance that we will leave our daughters.” She was fighting for their future.

During the height of the battle, I asked Juana why she cared so much about the water.  

“My mom taught me to love the water,” she said, without hesitating. “We didn’t have much but whenever we could, we would go for walks by a lake and I learned to appreciate how much it meant for our life.” 

She remembered arriving in the community of her partner, where together they would eventually start a family - and face a mining giant. “When I came here, I immediately fell in love with the river. At a spring up on the mountainside, I made a pact with the water: I take care of you, and you take care of me.”

Today, Juan’s community continues to face severe environmental threats. The mining company has proposed a pet-coke thermoelectric project to source the energy it needs to run its processing operations. This puts communities, literally living beside the project site, in serious risk. They have called town hall meetings, presented legal injunctions and organized road blocks to try and stop the devastating project from moving forward.

Together, and organized, the affected communities remain strong in their opposition. And Juana hasn’t backed down; she continues to live her life according to her promise. “This river is our life, that of my daughters, of the community. It must run free and be happy,” she said in a recent interview.

From Honduras to territories across Turtle Island, mothers live by this understanding: We must take care of the earth so that our kids and grandkids will be taken care of. It’s about reciprocity and love for a world where future generations can thrive. 

In Mi’kmaq territory, where I live now, Grassroots Grandmothers carry on a sacred tradition of “Water Walking” to honour the life-giving source. Often walking hundreds of kilometers in ceremony, they repeat a simple, but powerful prayer: “Water, I love you; Water, I thank you; Water, I respect you.” 

With that same sentiment, Tonya Francis recently led two Mi’kmaq ceremonies for the land and water in Pictou County, where there is growing concern about two proposed methane gas “peaker plants”.  The provincial government is forging ahead with an agreement with industry that would mean 25 more years of fossil-fuel dependence. Clean alternatives exist at the scale needed; with that in mind, Tonya and others are defending the future of those to come.  

As a Knowledge Keeper, Water Protector, Clan Mother, and Medicine Woman from Pictou Landing First Nation, Tonya is using her gifts to fight back - by bringing neighbours, parents, grandparents and kids together to honour the earth. The ceremonies held in March were an invitation to show respect and love for the earth and our kids’ future. Hundreds from across Nova Scotia’s North Shore participated and the movement grew stronger.   

At For Our Kids, we say that taking climate action is an essential parenting skill. Whether you are honouring the land and water through ceremonies, taking your kids for a walk along a river or protesting extractive industries that threaten our common future, mothers are cultivating that skill, often with their kids beside them, and teaching us all that another world is possible. 

Thank you to the mothers, the grandmothers and people who are teaching our kids to love the earth. Thank you for sharing your love for our world, and for fighting with courage for a future where our children, and the rivers, are free and happy.