Posts in South America
Uncontacted Amazon tribes endangered in Peru, Brazil -indigenous group

Reuters

December 8, 2021
Deep in the Amazon rainforest, the world's largest area containing isolated and uncontacted tribes is under increasing threat from illegal logging and gold mining, advancing coca plantations and drug trafficking violence, a new report warns.

An undetermined number of indigenous people that could number several thousand inhabit a vast swathe of forest twice the size of Ireland that overlaps the Brazil-Peru border.

Their longhouses in jungle clearings have been spotted from planes but encounters with outsiders or clashes with invaders are anecdotal.

In the most comprehensive study to date of the so-called Javari-Tapiche corridor, to be published on Thursday in Lima, a Peruvian indigenous organization says the world's largest number of uncontacted people are in danger.

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Amazon, Indigenous lands, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous rights, South AmericaMary PriceBrazil, Peru, South America, development, Indigenous lands, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous rights, Amazon
Brazil’s Bolsonaro vowed to work with Indigenous people. Now he’s investigating them

Mongabay

May 4, 2021
A week since the Climate Leaders Summit, where Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro pledged to work with Indigenous peoples to protect the Amazon, his government is being accused of acting to intimidate them.

At least two prominent Indigenous leaders in the country have recently been summoned for police questioning for criticizing the government, raising concerns from human rights organizations, politicians, celebrities and academics about Bolsonaro’s abuse of power and the undermining of freedom of expression.

Sônia Guajajara, one of the top Brazilian Indigenous activists and head of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) — the country’s main Indigenous association — was called on April 26 to appear before the federal police to testify in a probe for allegedly “slandering” Bolsonaro’s government.

“The persecution by this government is unacceptable and absurd. They will not silence us,” Guajajara said on an April 30 Twitter post.

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Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous Peoples, South America, Indigenous rightsMary PriceIndigenous Peoples, Indigenous rights, human rights, Brazil
The Kayapó Indigenous People in Brazil are Fighting Hard to Protect the Amazon

One Green Planet

March 1, 2021
The government of Brazil is considering a bill that would open Indigenous territories to gold mining and mining by the oil and gas industries. This would threaten both the Amazon rainforest and the people that live there.

Over 6,000 Kayapó from 56 communities recently voiced their opposition to the bill: “We do not agree with individual statements made by Kayapó relatives in favor of gold mining,” their declaration reads. Although some leaders have succumbed to pressure to support the bill, the Kayapó people as a whole stand firmly against it.

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Indigenous lands, Indigenous Peoples, South America, AmazonMary PriceBrazil, Amazon, South America, Mining, Kayapo, Indigenous lands, Indigenous Peoples
Colombian environmental official assassinated in southern Meta department

Mongabay

December 7, 2020
December 3, 2020 was a fateful day for the defense of the environment in Colombia. Javier Francisco Parra Cubillos, an official from regional environmental authority Cormacarena in the department of Meta – was shot several times while traveling through the municipality of La Macarena, in the department’s southern region.

According to information from Cormacarena (La Macarena Regional Corporation for the Sustainable Development of the La Macarena Special Management Area) a couple on a motorcycle ambushed him and left him for dead before fleeing. Gravely injured but still alive, Parra was taken to the municipal hospital. He was going to be transferred in a Colombian Air Force helicopter to Villavicencio, in the capital of Meta, to receive continued specialized care.

However, he died from his before he could be transferred.

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Indigenous Peoples, environment, violence, South AmericaMary PriceIndigenous Peoples, violence, environment, Colombia, South America