Indigenous Reserves News

As the world heads towards 2021 with COVID-19 still raging overhead, it might be easy to forget about the other global crises. But a new app, debuted today, aims to…

674 major Amazon fires were detected between May 28 and September 2, with the Brazilian government failing to control most blazes. Remote Indigenous communities are especially threatened.

On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we take a look at how women are leading the charge to protect the Amazon rainforest, the largest rainforest in the world. Listen…

SOUTH COTABATO, Philippines — Officials in the southern Philippines have canceled a $5.9 billion project to exploit Southeast Asia’s largest known undeveloped copper and gold reserves, but have left open…

The Kayapó Mekrãgnoti Indigenous people have launched a blockade of the BR-163 highway, a key Brazilian commodities shipment route, mostly in protest over lost funding to prevent reserve invasions.

A group of more than 100 Peruvian and international non-profit organizations has written a letter to Peruvian President Martín Vizcarra, asking him to deliver emergency support to the Indigenous communities…

The historical record shows that Indigenous reserves are only safe from invasion by illegal deforesters once fully protected by government — protections rapidly eroding in Bolsonaro’s Brazil.

Wary of Western medicine and of the prejudice and neglect they say they suffer at hospitals, Amazon's Kokama people decided to turn to traditional healing practices, administered by shamans. The Kokama were the first Indigenous group in Brazil to be infected with COVID-19, and to date there have been more than a thousand confirmed cases and 60 deaths within the community.

A new indigenous geo-storytelling platform, Tribal Stories, launched on Aug. 9, the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples. The new platform, by Netherlands-based nonprofit People’s Planet Project (PPP), features…

In a remote slice of Triunfo do Xingu, deep in Brazil’s northern Pará state, swaths of lush forest have been engulfed by flames in recent days. In another stretch to…

This is the 100th episode of the Mongabay Newscast! We revisit Mongabay’s groundbreaking Conservation Effectiveness reporting project in order to see what developments there have been since we did the…

Brazilian NGO flyovers show that indigenous reserves — including Munduruku lands in the Tapajós basin — are being illegally invaded and deforested by miners likely funded and directed by elite land speculators.

MANILA — Forty-three land and environmental defenders were killed in the Philippines in 2019, according to a new report from the watchdog group Global Witness. The tally marks out the…

Niobium is an important element used as a steel additive in the making of cars, planes, nuclear weapons, and even piercings. Jair Bolsonaro would like to see it actively mined, even in indigenous reserves.

JBS, a Brazilian company repeatedly accused of “laundering cattle” in the past, has again allegedly been caught purchasing livestock illegally reared in an Amazonian indigenous reserve in Rondônia state, Brazil.

MANILA — A Philippine court has thrown out an appeal by a mining company seeking to continue operations despite its permit having expired last year. The decision by the Philippine…

“Based on the high probability of failure of the proposed tailings dam, the Volta Grande Gold Project should be rejected by the Brazilian regulatory authorities without further consideration.”

QUITO — As COVID-19 sweeps across communities in the Amazon rainforest, the Indigenous Waorani in Ecuador are celebrating a bittersweet victory after a provincial court ruled in their favor in…

An exclusive study shows that 114 properties have been certified inside indigenous territories awaiting demarcation in the Brazilian Amazon, spurred in large part by a recent statute that leaves these reserves unprotected from such illegal land grabs.

Scientists have discovered a new insect-eating pitcher plant, Nepenthes cabanae, in the Philippines’ southern Mindanao region. Thriving in a small area within a known conflict zone, the pitcher plant has…

Land grabbers, landed estate owners and even oil companies stand to benefit from a new guideline released by FUNAI, the federal indigenous affairs agency, which opens up 237 indigenous territories in Brazil for sale, subdivision and speculation.

A series of measures by the Bolsonaro government that attack the environment are putting indigenous peoples at risk, say the authors.

IBAMA officials, while trying to halt deforestation in Cachoeira Seca Indigenous Reserve, were threatened and assaulted by illegal loggers. The Bolsonaro administration is largely unresponsive.

Ricardo Lopes Dias, an anthropologist and Christian Evangelical pastor, appointed to head Brazil’s isolated indigenous tribes department, has been removed due to a “conflict of interest”

38 indigenous groups in Brazil are reporting 537 COVID-19 cases. In Mato Grosso state, a new map tracks the virus, while officials push measures that put indigenous land rights at risk.

A sweeping policy change by the Bolsonaro government opens unregistered ancestral indigenous lands to landgrabbers, loggers, ranchers, and soy growers, with huge risk for the Amazon.

PUTA-O, Myanmar — In late 2018, following a series of demonstrations and confrontations, indigenous communities primarily from the Rawang ethnic minority expelled the Myanmar Forest Department and its international partner,…

Environmental degradation has already triggered disease outbreaks in Brazil. The risk of a new emergent zoonotic disease arising there, like COVID-19, is intensified by Bolsonaro’s forest policies.

Exclusive data shows that the mining company has 11 survey petitions filed with the National Mining Agency (NMA) that would directly affect the Arara da Volta Grande do Xingu and Trincheira Bacajá Indigenous Reserves in the state of Pará. The project was planned to be the largest open-air gold mine in Latin America.

MANILA — Facing armed conflict in their hometowns in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, dozens of indigenous students moved to Manila to continue their education. But with the new…