Lumad

It wasn't until much later, around 2017, when I was...

Actually, in my student organizing, student activism days, and then there were the Lumad indigenous peoples who were traveling from their indigenous lands from Mindanao to my university to seek refuge because their communities are being bombed and militarized.

And so they were there and telling us about how they were experiencing all this harassment and militarization and bombing from the government and from our military, all because they were protecting their land, protecting the forests from extractive mining industries, from extractive fossil fuel industries as well.

And then there was a very, very... simple conversation with one of the leaders where after he told us about all these really difficult realities, he kind of just shrugged and said, well, that's why we have no choice but to fight back.

So we have certificate from the Philippines to allow us to facilitate the movement of coffee from home to here, our second home now in Canada.

And Coffee for Peace has been instrumental in getting us connected with other farmers, whether Lumad farmers or farmers who were migrant farmers, too.

Not, like, native in their land, but have moved there for, you know, safety reasons.

As you may know, there's been a lot of conflict in Mindanao, and Coffee for Peace has been doing a lot of peace building work, community building.