04/06/2026
World Environment Day 2026 is here, and the global theme is "Inspired by Nature. For Climate. For Our Future." UNEP is shouting , calling it "the urgent signals the Earth is sending, and the signals we choose to send back."
As for us in Papua New Guinea, our response, our urgent signal, is by protecting our Home.
The whiteman, the outsiders, the colonisers, they look at our trees and rivers and they call it the ‘environment.’ We look at it, and we simply call it ples or peles or place.
We protect peles because peles ultimately protects us. There is no line separating us from the land. We do not separate peles from the grassland, or the forest, or a mine site, or a park. We live in a park, a beautiful, living paradise. We are part of it. So when the earth is signaling us, we cannot sit around and debate. We need to respond with haste. ITS OUR ONLY HOME.
If you are in Simbu, protect Wara Simbu. If you are in Madang, your last remaining forest needs your shield, chase the loggers away.
Look to our history, look to the Sepik! Our leaders already showed us how to answer the earth's signal. They gave us The Supreme Sukundimi Declaration, where the Clan Leaders of the Haus Tambaran stood as one collective voice. They declared that the River is the life of the people, and it must be protected at all costs against the destruction of outsiders and the proposed massive, extractive projects like the proposed Frieda River Mine.
As the powerful campaign and documentary reminds us: Sukundimi Walks Before Me. The River Spirit, the ancestral knowledge, and the voices of our unborn children walk before us into battle. We are only the vessels of this spirit, chosen to guard our land.
So when the corporate forces of colonial bureaucracy come to exploit us under the lie of ‘development,’ we must find our ancestral courage. Rise up, protect your peles, because when we save our rivers and forests, we save ourselves. means .
