BRASÍLIA — Célia Xakriabá recalls how, during her campaign last year for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, Brazil’s lower house of Congress, she was always asked how non-Indigenous…
Je’chu, a god, first created bees so that their wax would cure the world. So goes the spiritual testament of the Yucuna Indigenous peoples of Colombia. “He is our god…
Throughout 2022, Colombian authorities identified the presence of 40 dredgers on the Colombian side of the Puré River, with another 200 operating on the Brazilian side, where it is known…
BRASÍLIA, Brazil — “I want to see the Yanomami and Raposa Serra do Sol territories free of invasions,” Joenia Wapichana, the first Indigenous woman named president of Brazil’s national Indigenous…
PUERTO NATALES/PUNTA ARENAS, Chile — Pristine waters, partially covered in sea ice, reflect the early morning light while a flock of flamingos basks in the warmth of the sun near…
“They bought new land and they are cutting wood where our ancestors were,” says a source in Meta, Colombia. “Us Mbya live from the forest, but here there’s barely anything…
BRASÍLIA, Brazil — Hell, tragic and terror. These are the main key words used by Minister of Indigenous Peoples Sonia Guajajara to describe to Mongabay what the four years of…
VANCOUVER, Canada — Alongside the millions of Atlantic Salmon clustered in the open net pens that dot the waterways around Broughton Archipelago’s over 200 islands, sea lice, a tadpole-shaped parasite,…
ST ANDREWS, Scotland — This autumn, Mongabay had the opportunity to interview Nelly Marubo, friend and colleague of Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, who was brutally murdered in the Brazilian Amazon…
The escalation of violence in Brazil’s northeastern region with the murders of two young Pataxó Indigenous leaders this week triggered the newly created Ministry of Indigenous Peoples to set up…
BRASÍLIA — Since Jan. 8, the whole world has watched as Brazil gets to grips with a violent attack led by supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro on key government…
BRASÍLIA, Brazil — "We, civil servants, are reopening Funai to Indigenous peoples," anthropologist Janete Carvalho announced in a recent act at the headquarters of Brazil's federal agency for Indigenous affairs. Under former…
BRASÍLIA, Brazil — In the first day of his third mandate as Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, issued measures to protect the Amazon and Indigenous people, acts highly celebrated…
Large hydropower dams that obstruct the Amazon basin have long come under fire for their environmental and cultural impact — Belo Monte being the most prominent example. Yet a bigger…
This year ended with a big bang for many Indigenous leaders, communities and activists around the world. During the U.N. biodiversity conference, known as COP15, Indigenous traditional lands and rights…
Six months ago, more than 100 Indigenous people from five different ethnic groups entered the Itaquaí River, close to the city of Atalaia do Norte, in the Javari Valley, in…
On an iron grill, six catfish are almost ready to eat. Hilda Rodríguez crouches to move the firewood and stoke the fire. She flips over the inguiris — green bananas…
“My son was covered in burns, poor boy – he just died,” says María Grefa, a Kichwa from Sinchiurco, a community in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon. The tragedy took place…
This story was published in partnership with Grist. As nearly 200 countries struggle to negotiate a new plan for nature conservation at the United Nations’ Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, Canada,…
Update Dec. 5, 2023: A subsequent analysis in 2023 by the Forest Tenure Funders Group found that 2.9%, not 7%, of the pledged funding delivered in 2021 went directly to…
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 caught Costa Rica’s Cabécar Indigenous communities at a precarious time. Amid the species-rich forests of the Talamanca Cabécar Indigenous territory, climate change had already begun…
In a country often ignored internationally except when it comes to its bustling tourism industry and oceans, Costa Rica and its Indigenous rights record is receiving careful attention by the…
After five months of waiting, the Indigenous pygmy peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have secured a major victory. Earlier today, the president of the DRC, Felix…
As a Black Amazonian woman, former environment minister and just-elected congresswoman, Marina Silva is one of the most complex and fascinating figures in current Brazilian politics. As the daughter of…
For 26 years, the last member of the Tanaru people resisted contact and lived alone in his protected land in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. Ranchers and miners had massacred…
ORLEANS, California—An elemental smell wafts through the Klamath mountains in early autumn—woodsmoke. Despite the U.S. Forest Service’s intermittent bans on lighting fires in the forest, the Karuk Tribe is maintaining…
The world’s healthiest tropical forests are located in protected Indigenous areas (PIAs), according to a new study. “After accounting for location biases […], protected-Indigenous areas had the highest protective effect…
Update Dec. 5, 2023: A subsequent analysis in 2023 by the Forest Tenure Funders Group found that 2.9%, not 7%, of the pledged funding delivered in 2021 went directly to…
A radical change to how Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency functions has prompted alarm among activists, who say it effectively threatens to end the demarcation of Indigenous territories and set back…
The second Monday of October marks Indigenous Peoples’ Day in multiple cities and states across the U.S. Originally juxtaposed against Columbus Day, celebrated at the same time, the day is…