Ethnos360 missionaries have purchased a helicopter as part of a plan to contact and convert isolated Amazon indigenous groups, putting them at grave risk of deadly infectious disease.
At a UN event, Brazil was accused of Amazon deforestation policies leading toward “ethnocide” against indigenous peoples, and “genocide” against uncontacted indigenous groups.
Attacks on indigenous Kaiowá communities in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul at the start of the year have highlighted a long-running campaign of persecution and growing violence against the group.
One year after a tailings dam collapsed in Brazil’s southwestern state of Minas Gerais, killing 259 people and unleashing a tsunami of toxic mud, affected indigenous inhabitants are still struggling to relocate away from the polluted waters of the Paraopeba River.
Indigenous group entered Brazilian museum and retrieved sacred funeral urns that courts said were rightly theirs, but which dam construction firm and authorities kept from them.
Three indigenous Guajajara were killed in the last six days in the Amazonian state of Maranhão, making 2019 the country’s deadliest years for indigenous leaders in two decades. In total, 10 indigenous people were murdered so far this year; seven of them were leaders.
SANTARÉM, Brazil, and BERLIN — I got off the mototaxi, a means of transportation that is part of everyday life in several cities in the Amazon, took off the helmet…
This post is part of Saving Life on Earth: Words on the Wild, a monthly column by Jeremy Hance, one of Mongabay’s original staff writers. At the end of…
Documentary offers a glimpse of the uncontacted Awá Guajá indigenous group, who live in the highly threatened Araribóia reserve in Brazil’s Maranhão state.
Don Lizardo was sitting in his hammock, rocking gently back and forth, as he told us heartbreaking stories about working in haciendas when he was younger. We were sitting in…
NAPO, Ecuador — Gloria Ushigua, president of the Sápara women’s association, stops by a large, thin, spindly tree that looks almost dead, and breaks off a thin branch. Running her…
Eight past environmental ministers assail policies. Amazon Fund and 334 Brazilian parks at risk; sweeping illegal deforestation amnesties head to approval.
The Sateré people practice Waumat — an excruciatingly painful rite involving bullet ants — as a way of unifying and gaining strength against Brazilian land grabbers.
As Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro pushes for indigenous assimilation, the Amazon’s Sateré-Mawé people asserts its indigenous identity and land rights.
On today’s episode, we talk to primatologist Cleve Hicks, who recently led a research team that discovered a new tool-using chimp culture in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Listen here:…
Until about 1,000 years ago, Madagascar was home to fantastical creatures like elephant birds, giant fossas and large-bodied lemurs. Unlike their present-day cousins, they were enormous — bigger than the average…
An upcoming Amazon Synod at which Catholic clergy from nine Amazon nations will discuss ecological, indigenous and climate issues is seen by Brazil as international interference.
Federal litigators warn of “imminent genocide” for the Karipuna people, while at least 14 indigenous reserves have been threatened or invaded. Bolsonaro government slow to act, say critics.
QUITO, Ecuador – Tucked away in Quito’s historical center, along the narrow sidewalks and colonial architecture, is Jorge Rivadeneira Granda’s workshop. It is the only storefront on the street with…
FUNAI moved rapidly before Christmas to safeguard the isolated Kawahiva indigenous group from intruders into their territory – two weeks before Pres. Bolsonaro took office.
From 2016 to 2017, Mongabay contributors Sue Branford and Maurício Torres traveled to the Tapajós River Basin, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, to report on the controversial plan…
A massive fire ravaged Brazil’s National Museum (Museu Nacional) in Rio de Janeiro on the night of Sept. 2. The losses to the country’s oldest scientific institution and its approximately…
“We used to go into the forest to tap copaiba oil but we had no good way of selling it. The regatão [traveling river trader] paid us whatever he liked…
“What’s going to drive you off this land is hunger,” an official from ICMBio, the Chico Mendes Institute of Biodiversity Conservation, cautioned fishing families and settlers living along the mid-reaches…
Indigenous and traditional groups united in a protest last week in Brazil’s capitol seeking territory demarcation, consultation on infrastructure projects, and an end to violence.
Thirty-eight environmental and social groups are demanding an end to indigenous intimidation by a dam building consortium on the Teles Pires River that includes Chinese and Portuguese firms.
The city of Luís Eduardo Magalhães in Brazil’s Bahia state is built on soy profits, but it has grown randomly, with some parts poor, others wealthy, and all facing an uncertain future.
The government of Chad has enlisted the aid of a conservation NGO to run a massive national park in the country’s northeast that is home to signs of human habitation…
Operational in 2016, the Belo Monte mega-dam has done lasting damage to forests, fisheries, livelihoods, and indigenous and traditional communities (photo story).
In 2016, President Maduro declared the Arco Minero; today thousands of indigenous people are being impacted by a mining boom that endangers their lives and culture.