Tribal Groups News

Belo Monte protest: around 300 people dug a channel though an earthen dam blocking the Xingu River last month. Photo credit: Atossa Soltani/ Amazon Watch / Spectral Q. As of…

Bakun dam during construction. Photo by: Mohamad Shoox. Indigenous people from the Malaysian state of Sarawak have sent a letter to the German company, Fichtner GmbH & Co. KG, demanding…

José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva speaking at a TEDx Amazon in 2010, just a few months before he and his wife were assassinated for their activism. On May 24th, 2011,…

Children in Dani village in West Papua, Indonesia. The Indonesian constitution gives the government ownership over all land and natural resources. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In the last twenty…

UPDATE: (June 1, 2012) Radio Free Sarawak is reporting that Jaban is not in custody in Sarawak. The outlet issued the following clarification: "there has been some news that [Jaban]…

Aerial view of jungle and delta in Indonesian Papua. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. A palm oil company has paid indigenous Moi landowners in Indonesian Papua a paltry $0.65 per…

Young Guarani girl in Misiones. Photo by: World Land Trust. Last month, three Guarani communities, the local Argentine government of Misiones, and the UK-based NGO World Land Trust forged an…

Illegal charcoal kilns in the municipality of Tucuruí. Photo by: Marizilda Cruppe/Greenpeace. According to a new report by Greenpeace, top U.S. car companies such as Ford, General Motors, and Nissan…

Sawmill in Indonesia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Last year researchers took the first ever publicly-released video of an African golden cat (Profelis aurata) in a Gabon rainforest. This beautiful,…

Abandoned by conservationists and the global community, Virachey National Park in Cambodia remains a wildernesses of surprises. An interview with Greg McCann. Haling-Halang and the barrier mountains separating Cambodia and…

A Perenco boat in the Amazon. Photo courtesy of David Hill. The company hoping to exploit the oil deposits slated to transform Peru’s economy has been declared to be endangering…

The past ten years have seen unprecedented progress in fighting deforestation in the Amazon. Indigenous rights, payments for ecosystem services, government enforcement, satellite imagery, and a spirit of cooperation amongst…

Observations of planet Earth from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on July 11, 2005. Photo by: NASA. Seventeen top scientists and four acclaimed conservation organizations have called for radical…

Overflights of remote Colombian rainforest yield first photographic evidence of two uncontacted tribes. Aerial surveys of a remote area of rainforest along the Colombia-Brazil border have produced the first photographic…

A view of Puerto Esperanza. Photo by: David Hill. A grassroots indigenous organization in Peru is calling for the removal of an Italian Catholic priest from the remote Amazon in…

Aerial photo of the construction of a canal for the Belo Monte Dam project, near Altamira. Photo by © Greenpeace/Daniel Beltra. The Xingu River will never be the same. Construction…

Right of left: Evgenia Chirikova, Edwin Gariguez, Ma Jun, Ikal Angelei, Caroline Cannon, and Sofia Gatica. Photo courtesy of Goldman Environmental Prize. A controversial dam, a massive mine, poisonous pesticides,…

A bulldozer rumbles over a recently deforested area in Pomio District, East New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Photo by: Paul Hilton/Greenpeace. Locals protesting the destruction of their forest in Papua…

An Amazon tribe has become the first indigenous group in the world's largest rainforest to win certification of a forest carbon conservation project, potentially setting a precedent for other forest-dependent…

Logged wood off the Ucayali River in Peru. Photo by Toby Smith/EIA. The next time you buy wood, you may want to make sure it's not from Peru. According to…

View Larger Map A federal judge has suspended the construction of a 1,820 megawatt dam on the Teles Pires River in the Amazon. The judge found that indigenous communities were…

An apparent carbon deal between an Irish carbon trading company and an indigenous tribe that sparked outrage in Brazil is "invalid" according to the president of FUNAI, Brazil's indigenous affairs…

Bakun dam during construction. Photo by: Mohamad Shoox. The world's third largest mining company, Rio Tinto, and a local financial and construction firm, Cahya Mata Sarawak (CMS), have cancelled plans…

Muara Tae Diaries from EIA on Vimeo. Forests are falling across Borneo. A new videoblog by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Telepak have documented the loss of one such…

Amazon community on the Rio Corrientes. Photo by: Patrick le Flufy. "Shh, wait here," Wilson told me. I ducked down behind the buttress of a large tree to wait. We…

Fever Trailer (English Subtitles) from LifeMosaic on Vimeo. Four short films have been produced highlighting the challenges of climate change for indigenous people in the tropics. Produced by LifeMosaic, the…

Illegal gold mining boat in Peru. Photo courtesy of Katy Ashe. On the back of a partially functioning motorcycle I fly down miles of winding footpath at high-speed through the…

The world may soon benefit from a plant long-used by indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon for toothaches, eliminating the need for local injections in some cases. Researchers have created…

Africa Wildlife Foundation (AWF), the conservation nonprofit based in Washington, DC, is facing a lawsuit by Kenya’s Samburu tribe over alleged unlawful evictions. The hearing, originally scheduled for January 23,…

The UN's International Labor Organization (ILO) has released a report stating that the Brazilian government violated the rights of indigenous people by moving forward on the massive Belo Monte dam…