Fighting for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples with Q'Orianka Kilcher - Inspired Spirits

Fighting for Indigenous Rights with Q’Orianka Kilcher – Inspired Spirits

Q’Orianka Waira Qoiana Kilcher (born February 11, 1990) is an American actress and singer, of Indigenous Quechua and Swiss heritage. She has never pumped a gallon of gas in her entire life and drives a Honda FCX, a fuel cell vehicle. She creates bags from recycled materials as well as her own clothes.

But her main cause is her fight for indigenous rights in Peru. At the moment her non-profit organization Youth4Truth is raising money to supply the indigenous peoples in the Amazon who try to protect their lands from oil drilling, mining and logging companies, with cameras to document their cause. Just two weeks ago they were met by a violent response of the Peruvian army who started shooting at the protesters, including men, women and children. 25 people died. To make sure this does not happen again, the rest of the world needs to be aware of what is going on and cameras will certainly help.

She even dedicated her Young Hollywood Award to the protesters and their leader Alberto Pizango and then flew to Peru to see what was going on with her own eyes.

A few years ago she had already once been to Peru and was shocked to find that oil companies where dumping their waist in the local rivers which is also the only water supply the indigenous people in the area have.

Q’Orianka uses every opportunity to speak up for the rights of indigenous peoples. Here you see her at the International Forum on Globalization where she highlights the importance of indigenous issues to all humanity:

Please support Q’Orianka’s YouthforTruth organization by donating here! Also, follow her on Twitter for more updates.

photo by William Kallay

This entry was posted on Monday, July 20th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Inspired and tagged with Indigenous, Inspired, videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.