From ASU to the Amazon: Student bridges communities with solar canoe project

While Elizabeth Swanson Andi’s peers were lining up to collect their diplomas at the fall 2018 graduation ceremony at Arizona State University, she was on a plane headed to the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador.

She had the opportunity to visit a community within the Waorani Nation Territory through the Iyarina Learning Center, an organization dedicated to learning and research in the Ecuadorian Amazon, to establish relationships for projects to come. The trip was organized by a Global Consortium for Sustainability Outcomes grant led by Associate Professor David Manuel Navarrete. Professor Leah Gerber was also part of the trip.

Swanson Andi is a member of the Venecia Derecha Amazonian Kichwa community in Ecuador. She explained that the Kichwa people and the Waorani Nation are somewhat ancestral enemies.

“It was interesting because I grew up hearing stories about Waorani. Now I am establishing these relationships because I think it's important for healing and to face larger problems that are affecting us all,” she said.

Swanson Andi had just completed her bachelor's degree in geographic information science, and saw how people were using GIS to support environmental solutions and sustainability projects.

“I was so nervous about leaving my life in Ecuador to come for school,” Swanson Andi said about coming to ASU. “Once I got into the classes, they were so different from any class I had ever taken. I fell in love and I just felt like this is where I need to be.”

Now, Swanson Andi is a graduate student in ASU’s School of Sustainability, part of the College of Global Futures.

To get to the Waorani Territory from her Kichwa community, Swanson Andi traveled two hours to the end of a road, then hopped on a canoe for three hours to the first stop, and then another eight hours to the next stop. 

Traveling on the canoe is a unique experience. Passengers sit on a piece of wood fashioned into a seat directly on the floor of the canoe.

“You can feel the vibrations of the motor and the water, and there is something very special about being at the water level and seeing the forest on either side of the river,” said Janna Goebel, assistant professor in the School of Sustainability, who has also traveled these routes. “It’s not too hot because you are traveling rather quickly and there is a breeze. It is, however, loud, as the gas-powered motor sounds like a leaf blower.”

Swanson Andi found the Waorani Territory was similar to her community in many ways. Her goal was to build relationships and see what life was like there.

“I felt at home. It was the first time I was in a Waorani community, but we immediately clicked,” she said, mentioning a little girl she befriended named Nemi. “I would sit next to the river and she would come next to me and look for lice. In our communities in the Amazon, that's a way of showing love and connection because you don't do that to just anybody. It's something that only Indigenous people do within their own people and family and relatives.”

That's also where she first got to know Manuel-Navarrete, an associate professor in the School of Sustainability. Swanson Andi’s first impression of him was that he seemed like someone who was very open to listening. He wanted to understand the forest and the people.

Swanson Andi said one of the reasons she chose to pursue a master’s degree at ASU was because she was inspired by role models like Professor Melissa K. Nelson. She took Nelson’s Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledges course during her first semester.

“It was my first time in a university setting where my professor was an Indigenous scholar and half of the classroom was filled with Indigenous students. Having a professor that not only understands the realities and challenges we are facing in the Amazon but is also contributing to the solution-building gives me hope,” she said. Now, Swanson Andi works with Nelson, Manuel Navarrete and Goebel on the Solar Canoes Against Deforestation project. 

Solar Canoes Against Deforestation introduces affordable canoes powered by the sun to the Amazon, boosting ecological sustainability throughout the rainforest. The team is piloting the solar-powered canoes and a network of solar recharge stations with Waorani riverine communities that can be scaled across Latin America and beyond.

The not-for-profit organization is a partnership between ASU, the Iyarina Center for Learning at Geyepare and Fundación Cotococha. 

The canoes promote travel by water as an alternative to cutting down trees to build roads. They also reduce pollution from oil spills and gas-powered motor emissions, as well as noise pollution — that leaf-blower sound Goebel described.

Manuel-Navarrete said he knew Swanson Andi was a perfect partner for the solar canoes project because she embodies the role of a boundary person, bridging Indigenous and Western worldviews — a capability that is crucial for an ambitious project like this.

Swanson Andi said the team is committed to maintaining relationships with the current communities they are working with and continuing to build more along the same rivers.

Goebel said Indigenous students, like Swanson Andi, bring lived experiences and knowledge that demonstrate holistic approaches to sustainability solutions that are interconnected with land, history and community.

“Elizabeth embodies deeply rooted cultural knowledge and a global vision for sustainability. She inspires me with her extraordinary sense of purpose,” Goebel said. “Indigenous students are often at the frontlines of this work. Universities should seek to support them with educational experiences that affirm their important leadership roles and capabilities.”

“I think one of the things that gave me goosebumps was just seeing the collaboration across different Indigenous people,” Swanson Andi said. “My uncles were working with Waorani uncles from two different nations on this huge technological innovation.” 

She recalled the first time she saw her relatives traveling on a solar-powered canoe. They were in the section of the river that she spent her entire life playing in.

“They were going through and I saw my cousin with her baby in her arms and my auntie, and they're all laughing in this canoe,” she said. “It filled my heart with so much joy. There's also so much nostalgia about thinking of what life was like back then and what life is like now.”

The solar canoe project is not just about introducing solar-powered canoes. It's about ensuring that these technologies integrate into local lifeways, addressing deforestation while respecting and enhancing Indigenous autonomy.

“It was a way to connect my two worlds, and people began to understand what my life has been like, because it hasn't really been a common one that most people can relate to,” she said.

“Without a figure like Elizabeth, who understands both the scientific, technical and policy aspects of sustainability and the spiritual, cultural and ecological wisdom of her community, such projects risk being perceived as external interventions rather than community-driven solutions,” Manuel-Navarrete said. “Her presence ensures that the project remains co-produced, rather than imposed, allowing Indigenous communities to adapt, modify and lead the initiative in a way that aligns with their needs and values.”

Swanson Andi is also a talented photographer and storyteller. She said ASU offered an opportunity for her to not just learn, but to share her own experiences.

“That was a really cool moment for me, a shy girl who grew up between two countries and always felt misunderstood,” said Swanson Andi, who didn’t know English until she was 10 years old. “For me to be here now and using this space to truly fulfill that purpose and that responsibility is really exciting for me.”

Swanson Andi said she has always wondered what a bird thinks when it looks down on a river, so she recently started using drones to shoot footage of the solar-powered canoes from above. She said she felt like a bird in the sky, seeing the future of the Amazon. She also expresses herself by writing poems and creating visual poetry, which she posts on social media.

Through sharing, Swanson Andi said she realized a lot of people outside of the Amazon feared it because they didn't really know anything about it, or what they did know was very stereotypical. 

Even people within her own home country in Ecuador believed Indigenous people no longer existed, that they were a thing of the past. Her cousins in the Amazon wondered what her life was like in Tempe, and her best friends in college were curious about life in the rainforest. So she began using her Instagram feed as a way to showcase how she lived.

She said in the Amazon rainforest, storytelling is not only a way to entertain, but also to pass on wisdom from one generation to another.

“Stories have always played a role in survival in places like the Amazon rainforest,” Swanson Andi said. “The Amazon has been labeled as dangerous because it can be, but if you know how to live in it, it's one of the most beautiful places on Earth.”