Deep in Ecuador’s northern Amazon rainforest live the Tagaeri and Taromenane Indigenous nations, the last two communities in the country who have never set foot outside of the jungle. They…
After a 19-year process, uncontacted and recently contacted Indigenous peoples living in the Napo-Tigre region of the Peruvian Amazon have had their existence officially recognized. With an extensive anthropological study…
CUARIRENDA, Bolivia — In October 2020, residents of a Mennonite colony began clearing a road through the forest in the Cordillera province of the Bolivian department of Santa Cruz. By…
AGUA BONITA CAMP, Colombia – Walking all day through the jungle to visit the encampments of friends and relatives is what Tumni Abtukaru misses the most about life before his…
Brazil’s federal agency for Indigenous affairs snubbed new evidence of uncontacted Indigenous groups found by two expeditions in the Amazon last year, heightening concerns about political interference in the government…
To date, 2021 has proved to be one of the most consequential years for Indigenous rights and participation in global climate and conservation efforts. As biodiversity loss mounted and urgency…
Yasuní National Park in Ecuador’s northern Amazon rainforest has long been famed for being one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, home to thousands of species of plants, birds,…
Roads, trucks, fences, cow barns, cattle herds, and vast pasturelands. Overflight images from advocacy groups have revealed all this inside what’s supposed to be the protected territory of the Piripkura…
Mining interests in the Brazilian Amazon pose an imminent threat to Indigenous groups, a new study shows, causing “incalculable damage” for 43 isolated groups if a bill legalizing mining on…
This story is the result of a reporting collaboration between Mongabay Latam and Rutas del Conflicto. In 2000, in the midst of Colombia’s vast Amazon rainforest, two elder members from…
After nearly twenty years of discussion, the Peruvian government has moved to establish a new Indigenous reserve for "uncontacted peoples" deep in the Amazon rainforest. Yavarí Tapiche Indigenous Reserve, which…
Amazon fires are burning this year within the protected lands inhabited by isolated uncontacted Indigenous peoples. The fires, largely illegal and intentionally set by land grabbers, ranchers and farmers, are…
Earlier this month Rieli Franciscato of the Brazilian government’s Indigenous affairs agency FUNAI was killed on the edge of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous territory in Rondônia, Brazil. Franciscato, a sertanista or…
Rieli Franciscato, one of the most experienced field men of the National Indian Foundation of Brazil (FUNAI, a federal agency to protect Indigenous peoples), died a few days ago with…
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.
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.
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.
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.
I used my Brazilian name above, but in my community, I am known as Wino Këyashëni. I belong to the Marubo people, one of the seven ethnic groups that inhabit…
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.
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.
Christian fundamentalist Andrew Tonkin is allegedly planning to contact and convert isolated Brazilian Amazon indigenous people, according to Marubo and Mayoruna indigenous leaders.
A supposed COVID-19 test for a possibly infected Marubo indigenous man in Atalaia do Norte — gateway to the vast Javari Valley Indigenous Territory — was never analyzed; so results remain unknown.
Indigenous activists have blasted Jair Bolsonaro’s ineffectual coronavirus response, as leaders cancel annual mass indigenous protest in Brasília; fear grows of virus spread to reserves.
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.
Legislation would open indigenous reserves in Amazon and across Brazil to commercial mining, oil and gas exploration, ranching, agribusiness, new dams and tourism.
All that is left of the lush forest that once covered this patch of land in the Terra Indígena Ituna/Itatá in northern Brazil are a few dried branches and the…
This story originally appeared on Mongabay Latam as part of a special series on threats facing isolated indigenous peoples in Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. Other stories in the series…
