GENEVA: Indigenous communities from North America are at talks on a global treaty on plastic pollution in Geneva, pleading the case for the environment they depend upon, which is slowly being choked by microplastics.
In the grounds of the United Nations headquarters, overlooking Lake Geneva and the Alps beyond, a chant suddenly drifted through the humid summer air: a “water song”.
Standing barefoot in a circle, six women and a young man from multiple North American Indigenous communities decided to do a spontaneous purification ritual.
A melancholic second chant follows, dedicated to the well-being “until the seventh generation” of “all the delegates” from the 184 countries attempting to thrash out what would be the first international treaty on tackling the worldwide ever-growing scourge of plastic pollution.
The UN-hosted talks, which began last Tuesday, resume on Monday for four more days, with oil-producing states and the so-called ambitious group of nations still far apart on what the treaty should encompass.
The young man in the middle of the circle, wearing a hat with two feathers attached, hands each of the six women a bowl containing burning seal fat and plant powders. With both hands, Suzanne Smoke, from the Williams Treaties First Nations in Ontario, Canada, moved as if to catch the rising smoke, rubbing it on her face and body.
