[Lingtyp] Fwd: A farewell message from Fiona Watson
Pier Marco Bertinetto
piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it
Tue Jun 2 16:42:17 UTC 2026
Dear All,
with permission from our President, I am glad to forward this touching
farewell.
Some languages would no longer exist without the efforts of these people.
Best
Pier Marco
-------- Messaggio Inoltrato --------
Oggetto:
A farewell message from Fiona Watson
Rispedito-A:
p.m.bertinetto at gmail.com
Data:
Tue, 2 Jun 2026 03:15:54 -0400 (EDT)
Mittente:
Survival International <info at survivalinternational.org>
<info at survivalinternational.org>
A:
pier.marco at bertinetto.eu
Fiona Watson, our head of Research and Advocacy, is retiring after 36
years. Read her farewell message here.
[image: Survival International]
<https://act.survivalinternational.org/s/9514849/87SYnp8r8>
[image: Fiona] <https://act.survivalinternational.org/s/9514850/87SYnp8r8>
Fiona in 2008 with Waiãpi women, resting after celebrations to mark a fish
festival that went on all day
Fiona Watson, our long-serving head of Research and Advocacy, is retiring
after 36 years. She’s been at the heart of Survival’s work for all that
time, forging enduring friendships with Indigenous people and communities
that have formed the bedrock of our campaigns.
In this, her farewell message, she looks back on her long career at
Survival:
*If there’s one thing that the last 36 years have taught me, it’s that the
destruction of Indigenous peoples is very far from inevitable.*
*It’s easy to lose hope, especially today when the world can seem so
depressing. I remember in 2005 visiting the last six members of the Akuntsu
people in Brazil’s Amazon, survivors of countless massacres and atrocities
that the outside world knew little about.*
*When I arrived, the small group of people performed a slow dance of
welcome in a forest clearing, a heartbreaking act of grace in light of all
they’d been through. Today, just three of them are still alive. What they
have endured is unimaginable. Yet even here there is hope: Babawru, one of
the three, gave birth recently to a little boy Akyp, the first new member
of the Akuntsu people to be born in a very long time.*
*On another occasion I travelled to the Yanomami community of Biaú for a
reahu – a funeral feast. Yanomami funeral feasts typically last for many
days, and are as much a celebration of the dead person as they are a solemn
memorial. This one was ten days of feasting, games and just catching up
with old friends. It occurred not long after the triumphant culmination of
the 20-year campaign, led by Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, and globally by
Survival, to demarcate the Yanomami’s territory.*
*The people at that feast were full of self-confidence and pride in their
own identity and culture, an impression that has stayed with me ever since,
and as I lay in my hammock in the huge communal house, I thought ‘This is
why Survival exists. This is what all the years of campaigning were for.’*
*It is, of course, often very different, and where Indigenous people’s
lands have been stolen from them, that sense of dignity and security is
impossible.*
[image: Fiona and Davi Kopenawa]
<https://act.survivalinternational.org/s/9514851/87SYnp8r8>
Fiona Watson and Yanomami shaman and spokesperson Davi Kopenawa in Brazil
(2012)
*In southern Brazil, I made many friends amongst the Guarani people; since
the 1950s almost all their land has been taken from them and turned into
vast agribusiness plantations, and many Guarani have been forced to live in
shacks by the sides of the region’s highways.*
*Damiana Cavanha was the indomitable leader of one such community, known as
Apy Ka’y. Evicted at gunpoint in the 1990s, again and again she led her
people across the road, over the barbed wire fences, and back onto their
land, trying desperately to reclaim just a small fragment of their
territory. Again and again they were attacked, beaten up and shot at, by
police and military in the pay of the landowners.*
*Damiana’s husband, three of her children and a grandson were killed on the
highway. I will never forget Damiana’s courage, her absolute determination
to keep fighting in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Damiana
declared: “I will never leave here. I will die on our ancestral land. I
will not flee. I am a woman, a warrior and I am not afraid.” She died in
2023; the surviving members of the community are still camped by the
roadside, and still demanding justice.*
*Xlaremma Phuti was another Indigenous woman who made a huge impression on
me. When I first met her in her community of Molapo in the Kalahari desert,
she was a renowned healer. One evening, she and others performed the trance
dance around a blazing camp fire, dancing faster and faster until she went
into a trance. Falling almost into the fire, she rubbed burning coals on
her head and then lay still for fifteen minutes, communing with the spirits
of her ancestors to diagnose and cure people’s illnesses.*
*Meeting her again years later was deeply shocking. Like so many other Khwe
(formerly known as Bushmen), she’d been evicted from her ancestral land to
bleak relocation camps. Torn from her land and drained of so much of her
energy and spirit, she seemed a shadow of her former self, and I barely
recognized her. When I asked her if she still performed the trance dance
she replied “No. Not here. The ancestors are too far away.”*
*It really brought home to me the profound psychological impact on
Indigenous people of being forced from their land. I never forgot it.*
*My overriding feeling, though, is of hope for the future. When Survival
started, the modern Indigenous movement was in its infancy. Today there are
countless Indigenous organizations and leaders who are fighting nationally
and internationally for their people’s rights. And - even though we have
always punched above our weight - Survival is far more powerful now than we
could ever have dreamed of back then.*
*Thank you all for your support of this movement – Survival really IS its
supporters. I will leave you with the exhortation Roy Sesana, the renowned
Khwe leader of the Kalahari, used to send to us in the darkest days of our
campaign to secure his people’s right to return to their land: “Saa! Saa!
Saa! Keep going! Keep going! Keep going!”*
*Warmest best wishes,*
*Fiona Watson*
[image: Signed]
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--
========================================================
Pier Marco Bertinetto professore emerito
via Matteotti 197 Scuola Normale Superiore
I-55049 Viareggio LU p.za dei Cavalieri 7
phone: +39/0584/597206 I-56126 PISA
cell.: +39/368/3830251 phone: +39/050/509111
========================================================
editor-in-chief of Italian Journal of Linguistics
<https://www.ae-info.org/ae/Member/Bertinetto_Pier>
<https://www.ae-info.org/ae/Member/Bertinetto_Pier>
========================================================
--
=========================================================
|||| Pier Marco Bertinetto
------ professore emerito
/////// Scuola Normale Superiore
------- p.za dei Cavalieri 7
/////// I-56126 PISA
------- phone: +39 050 509111
///////
------- HOME
/////// via Matteotti 197
------- I-55049 Viareggio LU
/////// phone: +39 0584 597206
------- cell.: +39 368 3830251
===============================================================
editor of "Italian Journal of Linguistics"
webpage <https://www.ae-info.org/ae/Member/Bertinetto_Pier>
===============================================================
--
=========================================================
|||| Pier Marco Bertinetto
------ professore emerito
/////// Scuola Normale Superiore
------- p.za dei Cavalieri 7
/////// I-56126 PISA
------- phone: +39 050 509111
///////
------- HOME
/////// via Matteotti 197
------- I-55049 Viareggio LU
/////// phone: +39 0584 597206
------- cell.: +39 368 3830251
===============================================================
editor of "Italian Journal of Linguistics"
webpage <https://www.ae-info.org/ae/Member/Bertinetto_Pier>
===============================================================
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