Helena Gualinga

Sumak Helena Sirén Gualinga (born February 27, 2002) is an Ecuadorian environmental and human rights activist from the Kichwa Sarayaku community in Pastaza, Ecuador. Helena Gualinga was born on February 27, 2002, in the Indigenous Kichwa Sarayaku community located in Pastaza, Ecuador. Her mother, Noemí Gualinga is an Indigenous Ecuadorian former president of the Kichwa Women's Association. Her older sister is the activist Nina Gualinga. Her aunt Patricia Gualinga and her grandmother Cristina Gualinga are defenders of Indigenous women's human rights in the Amazon and environmental causes. Her father is Anders Sirén, a Swedish-speaking Finnish professor of biology in the department of geography and geology at the University of Turku. Gualinga was born in Sarayaku territory in Pastaza, Ecuador. She spent most of her teenage years living in Pargas and later in Turku, Finland where her father comes from. She attends secondary school at the Cathedral School of Åbo. From a young age, Gualinga has witnessed the persecution of her family for standing against the interests of big oil companies and their environmental impact on Indigenous land. Several leaders members of her community have lost their life in violent conflicts against the government and corporations. She has stated for Yle that she sees her involuntary upbringing in such an agitated environment as an opportunity. Gualinga has become a spokesperson for the Sarayaku Indigenous community. Her activism includes exposing the conflict between her community and oil companies by carrying an empowering message among the youth in local schools in Ecuador. She also actively exposes this message to the international community hoping to reach policy-makers. She and her family describe numerous ways in which they, as members of indigenous communities in the Amazon, have experienced climate change, including a higher prevalence of forest fires, desertification, direct destruction and disease spread by floods, and faster melting snow on mountain peaks.