Simcoe County woman appointed to the Order of Canada

Thirty years of living in the Brazilian rainforest does something to a person.

To Barbara Lewis Zimmerman, who has worked with Kayapo Indigenous people on protecting 10 million hectares of prime Brazilian logging and mining real estate, her life's work has meant the world to her and the Kayapos.

And now it's earned her an Order of Canada designation.

"I had this crazy, super idealistic idea about conservation," Lewis Zimmerman said from her home near Collingwood.

As a 20-year-old student at the University of Guelph studying biology, she got the opportunity to work in the Amazon rainforest as an undergraduate.

However, it wasn't until she was back in Canada that she heard about the Kayapo's plight.

"My first introduction to the Kayapo was by David Suzuki in Toronto," Lewis Zimmerman said.

"He was invested in this whole idea when they (Kayapo) were fighting against a mega-dam project. I was invited to translate (English to Portuguese) for the chief in his village in the southeastern Amazon in 1991."

With annual visits up to six months at a time, Lewis Zimmerman became immersed in their culture - with one of the largest single groups of Indigenous people protecting 25 million acres of rainforest.

Barbara Lewis Zimmerman, of Collingwood, Ont., has been awarded an Order of Canada designation for her work with the Kayapos in the Amazon rainforest. (Supplied)

"They were pretty uncultured at that time and had not had a lot of contact with the outside world," she said. "Yet they were prescient enough to recognize the frontier of capitalism was reaching their borders to remain unconcerned."

They had the wherewithal to organize and exert pressure on the government, she said.

"They're not shy and retiring. They pressured the government to cede them the rights over their land."

But the land surrounding their enclave is surrounded by a frontier land comprised of logging companies and gold mining outfits.

"They would have lost land without the alliance of the non-governmental organization," she said, now the director of the Kayapo Project at the International Conservation Fund of Canada.

While most of her time is now spent fundraising and finding sponsors, writing reports and giving presentations, she still manages to visit the rainforest annually.

In December, when she was notified of her appointment to the Order of Canada, she initially thought the phone calls were spam and ignored them.

"When I did call back – it was a very unexpected and wonderful surprise," she said.

As with the other Order of Canada appointees, Lewis Zimmerman will be invested by the Governor General of Canada, Mary Simon, in the coming months.