• Brazil: “If we don’t die from the virus, Bolsonaro’s anti-indigenous policies will kill us”

    FROM THE EDITORS: The Bolsonaro government has shown an open violation of indigenous peoples’ rights either by omission or by undermining laws and institutions set to promote these rights. After all, Bolsonaro reached the presidency with ample support from agroindustry, and his anti-indigenous speeches were already apparent during his campaign. On June 22 and 23,…

  • Brazilian Court Calls for $1 Million Daily Fine to End Illegal Mining in Indigenous Lands

    A federal court in Brazil has ruled that unless illegal miners or garimpeiros are removed from Yanomami lands in the next 10 days, government institutions in Brazil will be fined $1 million reais (close to $182K in US dollars) until they comply with this order. This story has significant consequences on how Amazon forests are…

  • Brazil Honors the Memory of Payakan, Continues the Struggle

    FROM THE EDITORS: The indigenous leader of the Kayapó people, “Paulinho” Bepkororoti Payakan, who led the fight against the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant, fell victim to COVID yesterday. At just 67 years of age, he died in a hospital in the State of Pará, after a tireless struggle was able to include the right of…

  • #ForaGarimpoForaCovid: Amazon Tribes Launch Call for Solidarity

    From the Editors: The Yanomani and Ye’kwana are indigenous people living in the Roraima e Amazonas states, in the northeastern region of the Amazon under control of the Brazilian government. Under the umbrella of the Fórum de Lideranças Yanomami e Ye’kwana [Yanomami and Ye’kwana Leadership Forum], they have launched a campaign #ForaGarimpoForaCovid and are asking…

  • Oglala Sioux Tribe. Picture: Anna Halverson

    The Right to Voluntary Self-Isolation

    Voluntary self-isolation has been practiced for millennia by uncontacted peoples, so as not to be victims of the devastating consequences of Western ​​civilization and progress. Several intergovernmental organizations have recognized this legal right and survival strategy of peoples to protect their land and territory, as a way of protecting themselves against genocide, colonization, and the…

  • #WasipiSakiri. Foto: RadioIluman

    Decolonizing Health II: Community Efforts in Abya Yala

    Slowly we perceive―like the rising of the river when it comes down from the mountain―that the rain at the top of the summit hasn’t ceded, and that we must prepare for the sudden flow. After the initial storm, like the soft roots that creep between the stones until they are broken, ideas, actions, and the…

  • Organic oil produced communally in the village, pequi oil, or Hwĩn Mbê (in the indigenous language) is essential in the culture and diet of the Kĩsêdjê. It is also planted to reforest deforested areas of the Amazon. Photo: Associação Indígena Kisedje

    Pequi, A Medicinal Tree, Promoted by the Indigenous Communities of Brazil Against Monocultures

    In the Alto Xingu area, 16 indigenous communties of Mato Grosso, the most deforested state by the soja monoculture agroindustry, are struggling to preserve the rainforest and their way of life, as well as protect water, land and their territories. Among the species of endemic trees with which they have been reforesting the land is…