Women: Protect the environment, care the culture, and create the best future

    

In their beautiful face and heart,

women have a beautiful mind to protect the environment, care the culture, and create the best future with powerful and beautiful ways.

When I was in New Zealand, I have a chance to learned how to did weaving with a group of Maori women. They are friends of my host family. I went there with my host family to help one of her friends that want to do weaving. We did weaving with the native plants in New Zealand.

When I did weaving there, I remember two things: paint in the New Zealand museum and Sumba women. There are some women in the paint that I saw in the museum when I went there to meet with the mentor coordinator. In that paint, I saw all the women using traditional clothes and they doing weaving just like Sumba women did until now. They are doing weaving too.

In New Zealand, since a long time ago, women did weaving using Harakeke plants (Phormium tenax) to make traditional woven bag, bowl and other things while in Sumba they doing weaving using Lontar Leaves (Borassus flabellifer) to make the same things. All things that made by Harakeke or Lontar leaves are very important for indigenous people and traditional rituals. Thinking about women activity in New Zeland and Sumba make me realized that women have a big contribution to keep the culture alive.

By making the culture alive, women also gave contribution to saving the environment. When they did weaving, at the same time they need all the plants that they use. Why can we still find until now the plants that they used for weaving even though they have been using it since long time ago? Do the plants have a long time to live? Actually, the plants can disappear every time, but the women make them still exist until now because they need to do weaving. They need to make their culture alive. They need those plants to their future so they must to make the plants keep growing all the time and make them exist in this world. They know how to treat the plants and save the environment. They know how to protect the culture and the future.

Every woman has their own way to protect the future, like what Maori Women and Sumba Women did. I always want to write about the power of women in protecting the culture, the environment, and the future. I think young generations need to know that and get inspired to take part in protecting all those in their own way instead of destroying the environment. I hope in the future I can write more about this.

Picture 1: Sumba women doing weaving for long time ago until now. My friends in Sumba took this picture this year in a village and post at a project account in Facebook: Bumi Kami. Source: https://web.facebook.com/bumikami.id/photos/a.358932121508423/504272803641020/?type=3&theater

Picture 2: Maori women doing weaving since long time ago and until now. 

I took this picture last two week when I saw a paint in museum.