Documission · Sacred Forest · Europe mission — late July → early August 2026
Mission Zero
WE ARE LOST.
WE ARE LOST. An 8-day dual-location documission — France Tarn 5 days + Switzerland 3 days — to slow down before the Amazon and test a new way to collaborate between Sacred Forests, the peoples who guard the forest and Western allies.
In brief
Mission Zero is an 8-day dual-location documission (France Tarn 5 days + Switzerland 3 days) bringing two Westerners and two Yawanawa together to test, before the Amazon, a new way of collaborating.
It produces a 2-3 min teaser for Netflix and lays the raw material for a feature-length film to come.
Its red thread: WE ARE LOST. We are lost in our world of money, tools, and control. They are lost facing the brutal arrival of this world into theirs.
The mission transforms this shared loss of bearings into an honest starting point to build a fair alliance. It anchors in two international reference bodies: UNESCO (FIFO Martigny) and IUCN (Gland).
0. Vision
What if the first step to protecting the Amazon was not to go to the Amazon, but to learn how to meet correctly before getting there?
Sacred Forests carries a rare ambition: to mobilise money, technology, story and partners in service of the peoples who guard the forest.
This ambition is necessary. It is also delicate.
Because Western tools have a double nature. They can protect, connect, amplify, transmit. They can also create dependency, extraction, misunderstanding, folklore or invisible appropriation.
Mission Zero offers something simple and demanding: slow down before the Amazon, open a space for joint reflection, and explore the relationship before turning it into a contractual programme.
An assumed geopolitical and international dimension
The mission is rooted in the thousand-year-old prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor — the meeting of Northern and Southern intelligences.
The Acre peoples Sacred Forests wishes to collaborate with are Txana: birds who carry culture across worlds, fundamentally open to Western contact.
This openness is a major geopolitical differentiator — most other Indigenous nations have, on the contrary, closed contact (memory of past destruction, refusal to be filmed, legitimate inherited mistrust). It is this cultural singularity that makes the alliance possible.
It is also what justifies the fact that, by the end of August 2026, the mission closes on the Swiss side with two international institutional anchorings: FIFO Martigny (festival under UNESCO patronage, a mingling of Indigenous peoples from around the world) and a meeting at IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature, the UN body for forests and biodiversity).
Sacred Forests leaves the mission with double institutional credit, immediately usable for the September funders pitch and for COP31 Antalya (9-20 November 2026).
1. The Proposal
A short, raw, embodied adventure to ask the right questions before the Amazon.
Mission Zero brings together:
- Maah (Nooah and Enawê) — intercultural mediator, embodying the living bridge between the Amazon and Europe
- Mik (Leiko) — creator, entrepreneur, carrier of modern transmission tools — Tech / AI
- Xinu Yawanawa — Yawanawa chief / cacique, orator and strategic voice for the Acre territory
- Yaka (Xinu's niece) — feminine and generational voice of the tour
For 8 days, this group crosses a preserved natural area in France then moves into Switzerland to open a space of dialogue around a simple, transversal and radical question:
How do we adapt without betraying ourselves?
This question is transversal. It speaks to the Acre peoples facing the brutal arrival of our world — money, contracts, image, technology. It also speaks to the Western team facing a system that funds, monitors and formats. It is inside this shared tension that the mission searches for its answer:
Can we use money, technology and Western communication to protect the forest without buying, extracting or corrupting what is sacred in it?
2. Presentation
A prototype mission designed to produce useful material before September.
It serves to:
- ·strengthen and anchor the relationship with Xinu and Yaka, Yawanawa representatives
- ·clarify the ethical questions before the Acre field
- ·produce a 2-3 min teaser (1st of the 4 capsules requested by Netflix) + raw material for the long-form film at the end of 2026 + assets usable at COP31
- ·create a strategic logbook of tensions, learnings and decisions to carry into the Amazon
- ·draw up a first V1 roadmap of the Acre programme
- ·secure international institutional credit via FIFO Martigny + IUCN
The subject: funding a proof of method. Showing how Sacred Forests intends to embody innovation before asking others to believe in it.
3. Why Now
A rare window between the TEKOA IRUA tour and the September funders deadline.
Xinu and Yaka are already in Europe with the TEKOA IRUA tour until 10 September.
September is a major strategic deadline for Sacred Forests: funders pitch + delivery of the 1st Netflix capsule (of 4 requested) + confirmation of the next phase of the Acre programme.
November is the second deadline: COP31 Antalya (9-20 November 2026) and other international events in the same window. Sacred Forests must present something there. Maah, who leads the COP mission on the Sacred Forests side, plans to use the teaser and one additional capsule as material for conversations and networking.
The window is rare: before the Amazon, before the contracts, before the partnerships, before the heavy constraints of the field, it is still possible to create a free, sensitive and strategic space to experiment with co-creation.
This window makes it possible to:
- ·create an embodied relationship with Xinu and Yaka
- ·test the sensitive questions before the Amazon
- ·produce material more alive and convincing than a PDF deck
- ·clarify the ethical posture of Sacred Forests
- ·let an initial operational roadmap emerge
- ·secure two institutional anchorings (UNESCO + IUCN) within a single time window
The format is short. The stakes run deep.
4. Why Document?
Sacred Forests already has rushes. Mission Zero has a different function.
Existing images usually show
- ·the peoples
- ·the forest
- ·the projects
- ·the impact
- ·the field
Mission Zero explores
- ·the encounter before the agreement
- ·the questions before the answers
- ·the guardrails before the technology
- ·trust before money
- ·co-creation before deployment
- ·complexity before promise
The value of the film is strategic: making visible the way in which Sacred Forests wants to work.
Legal and strategic note
Xinu is in Europe in autonomy, outside the tribal structure and outside any institutional touring framework. The material captured during the mission belongs to a sovereign individual framework — it remains legally usable by Sacred Forests even if the Yawanawa-collective agreement evolves over the next twelve months. This point directly defuses the risk, already experienced on past expeditions, of footage becoming unusable after the fact for lack of a clean contract.
5. What It Isn't — What It Is
Explicit framing, to defuse objections.
WE ARE LOST is not
- ×yet another institutional documentary
- ×a folkloric capture
- ×a marketing campaign
- ×a heavy shoot
- ×a pre-packaged Netflix series
- ×a fixed solution
- ×a mission where Westerners come to train Indigenous people
WE ARE LOST is
- ●a relational prototype
- ●a proof of method
- ●emotional material for September
- ●a notebook of questions before the Amazon
- ●a concrete embodiment of Rewild Minds
6. The Through-Line — ON EST PERDU / WE ARE LOST
WE ARE LOST
ON EST PERDU / WE ARE LOST is not an admission of failure.
It is the honest starting point of a shared quest.
Indigenous peoples
Are lost faced with the brutal arrival of our world inside theirs: money, contracts, image, social networks, climate, funders, storytelling, AI, drones, new expectations, new dependencies, and on top of that destruction, appropriation, corruption.
They must answer a crucial question:
"How do we adapt without betraying ourselves?"
We, Westerners
Are also lost. We have built a world of powerful tools, money, technologies, narratives, networks, comfort and control.
But we no longer know where our food comes from, how to find our way without GPS, how to live in relation with the living, how to help without taking power, or how to protect without owning.
"How do we help without dispossessing?"
This Mission Zero begins inside that lucidity: in the courage that no one alone holds the answer.
Xana — the distinctive narrative object
The "we are lost" through-line only works if the encounter between the two worlds can actually take place.
In most cases, however, it cannot — many Indigenous nations have closed the door to Western contact, out of memory of past destruction.
Xana changes the game.
Xana is the claimed identity of the Acre peoples — the bird who carries culture between worlds, the pride of communicators between realms. At birth, these peoples all consider themselves Xana. It is this cultural singularity that makes the alliance possible — and that justifies why Sacred Forests chooses these peoples precisely, at this precise moment.
On the ground, Xana will be embodied concretely by an encounter with a local ornithologist in the Tarn (the vultures' home), in a cross-learning where the 4 vulture species of the Tarn mirror the Amazonian carrier birds (Shennawa = blue bird). This staging anchors the Eagle & Condor prophecy without decorative mysticism — told by Xinu, lived by all.
7. The Underlying Questions
These questions do not open the film. They run through it in the background, across every conversation, every silence, every image.
- 01
Can we support the forest without owning it?
- 02
Can we protect the living without corrupting it?
- 03
Can we fund guardians without buying their freedom?
- 04
Can we document without extracting?
- 05
Can we transmit modern tools without importing our dependencies?
- 06
Can we use AI, drones and storytelling as tools of sovereignty rather than capture?
- 07
Can we create an equitable alliance without subordination?
- 08
Can the Eagle and the Condor fly together without one dominating the other?
8. The Deliverables
Material that unfolds from September 2026 to late 2027.
Main teaser
2 to 3 minutes · Delivered September 2026
First of the 4 capsules requested by Netflix to grasp the depth of the potential subjects. Serves at the same time as the funders pitch for the September session and as the cornerstone of the future long-form film. A short, clear object to open a presentation, set the tension and show that Sacred Forests is working on a new way to enter into alliance.
Open the funders pitch and the Netflix conversation.
Strategic Logbook
Field document
Compiles reflections, tensions, ethical questions, hypotheses, learnings, anecdotes, questions to carry into the Amazon, provisional conclusions, and a dedicated note on "Sacred Forests seen from IUCN" drawn from the Gland meeting.
Turn the mission into a pedagogical and strategic tool, not just into video content.
1-Year Roadmap — V1
Co-development
A first co-development roadmap between Sacred Forests, Maah and the Indigenous representatives concerned. Not fixed. It allows us to leave the mission with a better understanding of what can be tested in the Acre programme: audiovisual transmission, drone, AI, inter-ethnic journal, pedagogy, data sovereignty, ethical framework.
Leave Mission Zero with a credible working map for what comes next.
Qualified Rush Bank
Internal archive
An organised selection of images, sounds, extracts, moments of speech and natural sequences.
Feed the site, the pitch, a mini-series, social networks and future presentations.
COP31 Capsules
November 2026 · Antalya
One or several short capsules derived from the teaser, designed as conversation and networking material for the Sacred Forests delegation at COP31 (9-20 November). Maah, who leads the COP mission on the Sacred Forests side, drives this delivery.
Support the COP31 delegation in its networking and conversations.
Long-form Film — Documission
25 to 60 minutes · Q3 2026
A raw, embodied, emotional and strategic film. Inspired by the new creator documentary formats: personal narrative, strong identification, hero's journey, authentic storytelling, real conversations, natural beauty, living rhythm, moral tension, inner journey, pedagogical clarity. The post-production of this film is a separate step, to be confirmed after the mission depending on the outcome of the teaser.
Give Sacred Forests strong material to explain its method, convince funders and prepare future partnerships.
3 additional Netflix capsules
2026-2027
The next 3 capsules (out of the 4 requested by Netflix) will be produced over the course of 2026-2027, on themes to be defined with Sacred Forests based on what we learn during Mission Zero.
Carry the Netflix conversation forward over time.
9. The Field Format
Duration: 8-day dual-location.
Phase 1
France — Tarn / Aveyron
5 days · Rewilding Minds
Le Rêve de l'Aborigène festival (Airvault, 24-26 July) → transit to Lozère → bivouac on the banks of the Tarn (Nature et Rivière campsite, Trouillas) → kayak in the Tarn Gorges from La Malène + wild bivouac → meeting the ornithologist in Cubières (Grégory Chamming's, the vultures' home, Xana scene) → Point Sublime + 4-generation family restaurant.
Phase 2
Switzerland — International stage
3 days · UNESCO + IUCN
Transit (passing the Viaduc de Millau, symbolic highlight of the route) → Martigny → FIFO (UNESCO festival, mingling with other Indigenous peoples of the world, 31 July → 8 August) → IUCN meeting in Gland (UN body for forests and biodiversity, one hour from Martigny) → official closing with the handing over of the bridge gift — Timekettle + AirPods Pro 3 — to Xinu and Yaka.
Field team
Mik (Leiko) — direction, art direction, personal drone, parallel Mik Explore vlog
Maah (Nooah + Enawê) — intercultural mediation, field coordination, PT translation
Xinu — chief, spiritual leader, orator
Yaka — symbol of the sacred feminine and the new generation
Bastien (pending) — lead camera operator, van life alignment, to be confirmed
Dedicated teaser editor — Shona DeWitt contact — modern YouTube codes, remote post-production
Pro FPV drone pilot — self-funded by Mik — free agent, capture + vlog
Chamonix mountain guide — Maah's Colombian friend — Phase 2 Switzerland
Approach: van life, nature, conversations, walking, river, drone, bivouac, agile and human shooting, no heavy production setup, integration of institutional moments (FIFO, IUCN) while staying light.
Production intent: capture the truth of the process, without rigidifying the encounter or controlling every scene.
10. The 4 Characters
Four voices, four shores to connect.
Xinu Yawanawa
Cacique · orator
Xinu carries a spiritual, communal and strategic voice connected to the Acre territory and the Aldeia Sete Estrelas. His presence allows us to face the difficult questions with someone who knows the real weight of transmission, cultural sovereignty, forest medicines and communal responsibility.
Yaka, Xinu's niece
Feminine voice · new generation
Yaka brings a feminine, generational and sensitive voice. She prevents the narrative from resting solely on the figure of a chief or an orator. Her presence opens a more intimate reading: heritage, youth, transmission, adaptation, sacred feminine, a young gaze on Europe.
Maah and her 2 children
Bridge · mediator · COP mission lead
Maah is the relational bridge. She knows the codes, the sensitivities and the risks of misunderstanding between the two worlds. She guarantees the encounter is held with rightness. Maah also leads the COP mission on the Sacred Forests side and is the linchpin of the Phase 2 institutional opening. Her contacts to IUCN (husband of a close friend) and to FIFO Martigny make possible the two international anchorings secured in Switzerland — anchorings that will then serve directly at COP31 in Antalya.
Mik and his Border Collie
Creator · transformed witness
Mik embodies the other shore: creator, entrepreneur, neurodivergent, carrier of modern storytelling, AI and transmission tools. His role: put his own view of the world into question through contact with the guardians of the land, and explore how to genuinely serve the connection between the two worlds.
11. Proposed Narrative Journey
From deep nature to the international stage.
Phase 1 France (stages 1-5) opens the intimate space and embodies the narrative and spiritual dimension. Phase 2 Switzerland (stages 6-7) inscribes the mission in the international institutional arena.
Phase 1 — France — Rewilding Minds (5 days)
The Festival
Le Rêve de l'Aborigène · Airvault (Deux-Sèvres) · 24-26 July 2026
We meet Xinu and Yaka inside their current mission: chants, talks, workshops, transmission, crafts. The movement is already in motion — bridges exist between the cultures, but remain insufficient given the scale of the challenge.
The Intimate Encounter
Transit to Lozère · Nature et Rivière Campsite (Trouillas)
After the festival, the group slows down. Rest, respect, first intimate conversation. We set down and explore the real tensions: money, image, technology, autonomy, contracts, trust, the risk of involuntary corruption.
The Flow of the Living
Tarn Gorges · kayak descent from La Malène · wild bivouac
River, kayak, bivouac, fire, walking, natural landscapes. The living becomes the frame for thought: how do we create an alliance that resembles an ecosystem rather than a vertical project? Topics: inter-tribal learning platform, AI, drone, aldeia-style organisation, transmission, mutual support, sovereignty.
Xana, the narrative heart Pivot
Cubières (Mont Lozère) · Grégory Chamming's — En Quête du Vivant
Emotional and strategic pivot of the film. Xinu tells the story of Xana, the bird who carries culture from one world to another, and also tells the prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor — in the presence of the raptors and vultures of the Lozère. The ornithologist learns as much from the Indigenous guests as they do from him. The 4 vulture species of the Tarn become a living mirror of the Amazonian carrier birds. This stage anchors concretely the geopolitical and spiritual dimension of the mission. It produces what is likely to become the signature image of the whole project.
Perspective
Point Sublime (Saint-Georges-de-Lévéjac) · 4-generation family restaurant
Stepping back. Observing the vultures and the local biodiversity. The complementary roles inside an ecosystem. Understanding that a healthy ecosystem rests on different, complementary, non-hierarchical roles. Mirror question: what is our right place in this alliance?
The viaduct becomes a metaphor filmed along the road: two worlds that seemed impossible to connect can hold together, provided the structure respects both shores. This is not the closing of the film — it is a symbolically charged passage between Phase 1 and Phase 2.
Phase 2 — Switzerland — International stage (3 days)
FIFO Martigny
International Folkloric Festival of Octodure · MartignyExpo · under UNESCO patronage
Phase 2 opens with the mingling. Xinu and Yaka meet other Indigenous delegations from around the world — Andes, Africa, Asia. The Xana movement they embody enters a visible global fraternity. The festival runs from 31 July to 8 August 2026, perfectly aligned with the mission window.
IUCN Gland
IUCN World Headquarters · Rue Mauverney 28, Gland (Vaud)
Recognized as a legitimate international actor. Maah has a direct contact (the husband of a close friend) who makes this meeting possible. Discussion: the role of Indigenous peoples as conservation leaders, synergies between ancestral knowledge and new technologies (AI, environmental data, audiovisual), data sovereignty, new financing and governance models. At the closing moment, Mik offers Xinu and Yaka the Timekettle headphones + AirPods Pro 3 — a translation technology, a concrete symbol of technology in service of the relationship, self-funded by Mik. This moment embodies the narrative: tech is no longer a symbol of domination, it becomes a tool to better hear one another.
Musée Barbier-Mueller · Geneva Closing
Barbier-Mueller Cultural Foundation · Geneva
Meeting with the museum's leadership. A major international reference in indigenous collections, with over 50 years of engagement. The foundation is opening a program of events with indigenous communities and partners — a rare synchronicity with the mission. Contact via a close friend of Maah, the institution's new director. Details and meeting date to be confirmed.
12. The Educational Dimension
Making sensible what a PowerPoint cannot transmit.
For funders
- ·the complexity of an intercultural alliance
- ·the legitimate fear of falling into a trap
- ·the risk of dependency
- ·the difference between funding an impact and entering into a relationship
- ·the necessity to co-create rather than deploy
For the tribes
- ·how to use modern tools without losing the soul of the ancestral
- ·how to understand money as the energy of a relationship rather than as survival logic
- ·how to turn technology into a tool of ethical and sovereign transmission
- ·how to create alliances without being absorbed
For diplomats and institutions met at COP31 Antalya
Where most conservation projects arrive at COP with figures and promises, Sacred Forests arrives with embodied narrative material on what it means to "listen before acting", "fund without colonising", "preserve an ecosystem while respecting those who inhabit it".
The geopolitical dimension of Xana — Acre peoples fundamentally open versus a majority of Indigenous nations who are closed — becomes a strategic argument: Sacred Forests does not work with "Indigenous people in general". Sacred Forests works with those who consider themselves Xana, that is to say with those with whom an equitable alliance is culturally possible.
13. Added value
Several strategic objectives served in a single mission.
create strong material for September
step out of the classic PDF / pitch format
offer a more human and more distinctive narrative
clarify its ethical posture before the Amazon
prepare the relational ground with Xinu / Yaka
show that the project works complexity, not just impact
give a first concrete form to Rewild Minds
identify the tensions around image, money, tools and sovereignty before being on the ground
Decisive argument — institutional credit
In 8 days, the team secures two international institutional anchorings that are hard to obtain otherwise: a passage through FIFO Martigny (under UNESCO patronage) and a meeting at IUCN (the UN body for nature conservation).
Both openings are immediately usable for the September funders pitch and for the COP31 presence in Antalya in November. The Organismo × Mik Explore alliance, carried with the support of Sacred Forest, is positioned as an internationally recognized actor.
The expected outcome goes beyond the film. It is proof that a new way of doing conservation can be innovated — more relational, more conscious, more co-created.
14. Rewild Mind Signature
So yes, perhaps we are lost.
Lost the way one is at the beginning of a crossing, when the old world is no longer enough and the new one has no map yet.
Between two worlds.
Between what we have built and what we want to repair.
Between the urgency to protect and the risk of repeating the same mistakes of the past.
But perhaps it is precisely there that a true alliance begins.
Mission Zero proposes to stay at that place long enough not to lie to ourselves.
Not to pretend that money is neutral.
Not to pretend that technology is innocent.
Not to pretend that love of the forest is enough to avoid power relations.
And yet, to move forward.
Move forward with more care. Move forward with more listening.
In the encounter. In the dialogue. In the experimentation. In the courage of not yet knowing.
Connect two ways of perceiving. Two intelligences of the world.
And perhaps at this place, the Eagle and the Condor can begin once again to fly side by side.