You know the experience when you go to a new city, but you have a friend that lives there and takes you to all of the best places that tourists don’t get to go and you feel like you get this real, authentic experience?  Like getting the inside scoop.  My recent trip to Sumatra felt that way to me.

Many of you have probably heard something about the palm oil problem in Sumatra and how palm oil is threatening the rain forest.  I had heard about this problem, but it is one thing to hear about it and it is another thing to see it for myself through the lens of my friend Nayla Azmi Dalimunthe, an indigenous,  Batak women  who grew up on a palm oil plantation, who has triumphed over adversity, and who has forged her own path in conservation. She is truly a daughter of the forest and a force for change in our world.

The two weeks I spent in Sumatra with Nayla were a mix of emotions, sometimes sad and hopeless, other times full of awe and wonder, but through the ups and downs, I was deeply inspired by Nayla, her work and her community.  Nayla understands the complexity her country faces as she seeks to protect the forest.

During the colonial period several crops were introduced to Sumatra including tobacco and rubber trees, but it is the palm oil plantations that overtook them all.  Funded by big corporations, who are ever expanding, palm oil is a high yield crop that local farmers can grow to secure their families future. As I drove through the countryside of this island, I was struck by the impact of colonialism and the greed of industry. There are palm trees lining the road and the hills as far as the eye can see.  A species of African palm tree I first thought was beautiful, now looks to me like the oil wells that line the landscape of Texas, stripping the land of its natural resources.

The harm done by colonialism extends far beyond the palm oil plantations.  It has been a devastating force that has stolen the identities and cultural heritage of indigenous people worldwide.  For Nayla, who sees the forest as her home, it has been a long journey to find herself in her own story.  It has been my honor to be a person she is willing to share her story with.  She has had to overcome discrimination, bullying, sexual harassment and gender bias to be able to follow her dream of working in conservation.  The Batak people are known to be fighters, and true to her people, Nayla has stayed in the fight and has found her own voice amidst those who have tried to silence her.

I learned a lot about the Batak people this week.  Nayla shared her journey to reclaim her indigenous roots, understanding where she has come from and how important the forest is to her people. She has found a home in the forest, with ecosystems and animals that she considers as her ancestors.  In Batak, the word for tiger is “Opung,” which means Grandfather. Her desire to protect the forest and the animals who live there comes from a deep place of love and respect for all living things.  When you see the tiger or the orangutan as your ancestor, of course you would do everything you can to protect them from harm.  The abuse and corruption that Nayla has experienced in the field of conservation has compelled her to stand firm in her values and find places and people with whom she aligns.

When Nayla met Darma Pinem, founder of Nature for Change, she knew she had found someone who cares as deeply about the forest as she does.  Nayla started working with Nature for Change during the founding in 2011, and together Darma and Nayla started to see good things happen in the small village of Tambang Lawan.  Nature for Change supports the local community, providing programs that center around reforestation, forest patrol and community empowerment.  Nayla started teaching children in the village, the people there became her family, and her her own voice and passion grew.  She had a vision to create a safe space for women to have opportunities to work in conservation.

While walking with Nayla in the forest, we watched as a mother orangutan built her nest.  These beautiful, endangered orangutan will build new nests every day.  Nayla is also building something new.  In 2021, Nayla launched her own company rooted in her story, her commitment to equality and her passion for ethical conservation work. She named her company the Nuraga Bhumi Institute.  In Batak, “nuraga” means new body and deep dedication, while “bhumi” means land or earth.  Together “nuraga bhumi” signifies a new body with a deep dedication to the earth.

  Learning wisdom from one of the best mother’s in the world, Nayla has chosen to focus her attention on the next generation, teaching the young ones the ways of the forest through her community school, offering Caring For The Earth classes to women in her community, and creating an all women ranger program that partners with the Gunung Leuser National Park to protect the forest.

Her community school keeps growing.  Right now they have 75 children coming to their classes and they hold three different classes a day. They hold these classes in a small room above a garage, but Nayla already has a space picked out to build a new school, to enrich and serve this community program that has already been so successful.

When I visited Nayla’s school, the children were learning about recycling by making keychains out of a mixture of recycled paper and glue.  There was much joy, laughter and learning happening in that small room crowded with young ones who will become future protectors of the earth.

Nayla’s all women ranger team is made up of her former students.  They survey and protect forest borderlands, looking for traps and evidence of poaching, as well as planting new fruit trees to support the natural habitat.

I’m not sure I can adequately explain the significance of this ranger program.  Often in Sumatra, for a girl to make money to help support her family, she is sent to Malaysia to work in a factory for a very small wage.  Nayla has created a community program that currently employs seven women.  They are paid well, can stay in the community, support their families and they have the opportunity to work in the male dominated field of conservation, to reclaim the forest for themselves.

When we stopped at a vista overlooking Lake Toba, the ancestral land of the Batak people, Nayla sat in the same way her grandmother once did in this place.  I asked her later what she was thinking about.  She told me about how she feels vulnerable and empowered at the same time.  Vulnerable, as she understands how long it takes to reclaim and reconnect to her roots.  Empowered because she knows there is always a way to come back and believes that our ancestors will guide us.  As Nayla said, “ There is a reason I was born on this land, water, air.  I am a protector like my ancestors and it’s my time to continue, regenerate, nurture, protect, conserve and sustain for my own legacy, as I will be an ancestor one day.”

This journey has left me with my own questions.  What land do I connect with?  What are the roots that run deep within me?  How can I also be a protector of this beautiful planet we are all living on? So often in our modern world, I can live in a state of disconnection.  I must take off my shoes and feel the earth. I must run my hand through the sand, remembering where I come from. I too am a daughter of the forest.