‘It’s our home’: Pygmies fight for recognition as forest protectors in new film

The word “pygmy” conjures images of hunter-gatherers living deep in the Congo rainforest, far removed from the modern world. But that modern world is closing in on them, as the forests in which they live fall to provide the rest of the world with timber and make way for huge industrial farms. Now, the pygmies of the Democratic Republic of Congo are coming together to demonstrate both the value of the forest to their society and their role as stewards of this resource. “It’s the place of spirits, invocations, incantations and reincarnation,” says Marie Lisenga in a recent short film, Pygmy Peoples of the DRC: A Rising Movement. “It’s our home.”   The documentary is part of the If Not Us, Then Who? project, with its mission to showcase how communities are critical in protecting forests and tackling issues such as climate change. Like many indigenous groups around the world, the DRC’s pygmies are struggling to hold onto the lands they have tended for generations. “No indigenous are recognized,” says Kapupu Diwa Mutimanwa, a leader of the Twa ethnic group and president of the League of Indigenous Pygmy Associations of Congo, known by the French acronym LINAPYCO. “There are customary indigenous laws, but they are not recognized by others. So we must change this.” The way the pygmies say they’re treated harkens back to racist beliefs dating to colonial times about who they are. “We are considered as ‘sub-human’ as an inferior race, people who cannot even think,” says Joseph Itongwa Mukumo,…

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