Severn Cullis-Suzuki was just 12 years old and had formed a children’s group in Vancouver with her nine-year-old sister Sarika and friends Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler and Michelle Quigg. When they heard about the meeting in Rio, they toiled for family and friends to raise money to fly south, accompanied by her father, David Suzuki, one of Canada’s top geneticists. The team hired a small booth at a side event and started to ambush anyone and everyone (I met them and I was knocked out by their excitement and intensity). And then they were told at the last minute that if they got to the main boardroom 10 miles away in half an hour, they could have a small place to turn to the governments of the world. “We jumped into a taxi,” recalls Severn, the de facto leader of the team, 30 years later. “I had a unique focus. “I just wanted to talk to them and tell them what was at stake.” If she was nervous when she took the stage in the huge Rio Centro, it was not clear. “I am here to talk about all the next generations. “I am here to speak on behalf of the hungry children around the world whose screams are not heard,” she began, referring only to notes. Severn Cullis-Suzuki at the Earth Summit in 1992. Photo: YouTube The film shows diplomats huddled in front of their anger and rhetoric. “I’m not blind and I’m not afraid to tell people how I feel. In my country we do so much waste, we buy and we throw away, we buy and we throw away, we buy and we throw away. “I’m only a child, but I know if all the money spent on the war was spent on finding environmental answers, ending poverty and finding conditions, what a wonderful place this Earth would be.” Severn Cullis-Suzuki – named after the British River near which her mother’s family lived – burned to the ground. She had been given five minutes to speak but got more. “You teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us not to quarrel with others, to resolve things, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share, not to be greedy. “Then why do you go out and do what you tell us not to do?” she continued. The 542-word speech, blocked in a taxi with her friends, was hailed as “six minutes that silenced the world” and was called “the voice of a generation”. Al Gore described it as the best speech of the summit and today it has been watched millions of times and is mentioned as an exemplary essay writing. It changed her life. For a time she was a young celebrity activist – traveling the world for justice on Earth and demanding action on climate change, forests and pollution – and a child with an academic disposition. She sees the parallels between her and Greta Thunberg. The two met in 2019, when the Swedish fighter came to Vancouver for a climate course. “It was a very intense meeting. There was a lot of violence around her. A man tried to attack her. She is an incredible, charismatic leader. What is amazing about her is how humble and focused she is. I saw the young me inside her. We had so much in common. Now history binds us. Greta has an extra intensity due to lack [global] action.” Cullis-Suzuki focused on indigenous culture, studying biology and anthropology. In 2008 she married the Haida Nation in Haida Gwaii, a group of more than 200 islands some 70 miles off the coast of Pacific Canada, and lived in a shelter with her children where she immersed herself in the culture and language of the natives. She is currently completing her PhD in Haida. So many environmental battles have been led by indigenous peoples, he says. “They are so important now because they know how to survive. They have gone through the six great disappearances. We just wake up with the genius of how they lived on earth for tens of thousands of years. It gives us deep hope. This knowledge really helped me. “People say that people did nothing after Rio, but in fact many agreements were reached. He built the architecture of world environmental diplomacy. Since then we have seen the rise of huge corporate power, with companies now large enough to be in the G7 but free from any democratic oversight. Their influence is now enormous. “I am just worried about my children. Ecological stress has reached the mainstream and young people are coming to terms with their future. We still live the good life. It is clear to all of us. Children are coordinated with injustice and hypocrisy. We live at the expense of their future. “There is a deep disagreement.” Last year, smoke from Canada’s wildfires reached Haida Gwaii, and Cullis-Suzuki moved to Vancouver, where she now runs her father’s large-scale climate and conservation foundation. “Covid has shown us that we can respond to a global emergency such as climate change. We can see what the appropriate answer is. They invested billions of dollars in Covid. Now we know it is possible. We have all the solutions “. Thirty years later, she says she would not change a word in her speech. “I could not. I would not do it. It came from a girl. The voice of youth can be so deep. It hits you a lot “.
