The COVID-19 pandemic and the arrival of fire season in two of the world’s major rainforests are on a collision course, scientists and public health researchers say, and the results…
As a young boy living on South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation, Wizipan Little Elk remembers the first time he saw a buffalo herd. The experience ignited a passion, and at…
In January, indigenous leaders from 47 tribes participated in a historic event in a Kayapó village in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Chief Raoni Metuktire called the meeting to articulate a response to the Bolsonaro administration’s incendiary rhetoric and aggressive actions against the country’s indigenous population.
For more than 50 years, the Xavante indigenous group has been fighting to regain sovereignty of the Marãiwatsédé Indigenous Reserve in Mato Grosso state. The most recent obstacle is the federal government's plan to pave BR-158, the interstate highway that cuts through the middle of the reserve.
Joenia Wapichana is the first indigenous woman to be elected a federal representative in Brazil. Last year, she submitted a bill to Congress proposing that funds collected from fines for environmental infractions committed on indigenous lands be returned to native peoples.
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…
New research bolsters the case for indigenous-led land management as a crucial conservation solution. The study, published in the journal Environmental Science & Policy last month, focused on land and…
How we use the planet’s land, including forests, will make a huge difference in determining the path of climate change in the future, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate…
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…
Over the past decade, First Nations have created a robust conservation economy in Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, one of the largest old-growth temperate rainforests left in the world, through investments…
Scientists call it flood-retreat agriculture. As a swollen river blankets a dry plain and then recedes, it replenishes the thin soil with enough nutrients to sprout grass for cattle and…
“I once asked a Matapí elder if he could spare an hour or two to tell me about what palms he knew, and how he used them,” says Rodrigo Cámara-Leret,…
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…
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…
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…
A group of 20 men, women, and children, mostly members of the Achuar and Shuar indigenous communities, move through dense jungle near a military base in the town of Shell…
This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. DARIÉN GAP, Panama — There is a land at the center of the Americas that is said to remain in…
On the night of March 18, Sergio Rojas Ortiz, leader of the Bribri indigenous people, was murdered at his home in the indigenous territory of Salitre in Costa Rica. Rojas,…
LIMA, Peru — In February, Peruvian authorities evicted thousands of illegal gold miners from Amazon lands they were deforesting and poisoning with mercury. The government announced plans to set up military…
LA GLORIA, Guatemala — The sun was still rising when Ovidio Yat Sacul set out, machete in hand, in search of a waterfall near the top of the mountain overlooking…
Ecologists know that when we humans start tugging at the threads of a food web, the unraveling that results is often catastrophic to the connected species, paving the way for…
OLKIRIMATIAN, Kenya — As night falls on the Olkirimatian Group Ranch, in south-central Kenya, a cacophony of whistles and cowbells fills the air. Herders are hurrying cattle, sheep and goats…
TSUMKWE, Namibia — Just south of Tsumkwe, an isolated San settlement in northeastern Namibia, a sun-shredded sign indicated the Nyae Nyae cultural activity center was 10 kilometers (6 miles) away…
Wearing nothing more than leaves hanging from belts of woven vegetation, the three scientists stand in the rain with little idea of what to expect. They’ve lived and worked with…
ANNAI, Guyana — It’s 8:30 a.m. and the main school building of the Bina Hill Institute’s Youth Learning Centre is strangely quiet. The classrooms are deserted, the newly built dormitories…
Links to other stories in this three-part profile of the Concepción Chiquirichapa community’s stewardship of its sacred cloud forest will appear here once they are published: How a Mayan town restored…
In January 2018, the Cofán indigenous people of Sinangoe, Ecuador, discovered several machines mining the Aguarico riverbed near Cayambe Coca National Park. This came as a surprise to them because…
KILIFI COUNTY, Kenya — If 51-year-old Hillary Thoya were to choose a lucky number, it would surely be 5,000. That’s the amount, in Kenyan shillings, the logger and carpenter turned…
Links to other stories in this three-part profile of the Concepción Chiquirichapa community’s stewardship of its sacred cloud forest will appear here once they are published: How a Mayan town restored…
Links to other stories in this three-part profile of the Concepción Chiquirichapa community’s stewardship of its sacred cloud forest will appear here once they are published: Ancient spirituality guides a Maya…