A Mongabay feature on Indigenous-led reforestation efforts in southeastern Brazil’s Atlantic Forest has been longlisted for the environmental reporting category of the 2025 One World Media Awards, a leading journalism prize.
Mongabay senior editor Xavier Bartaburu reported the story from Maxakali Indigenous land in Minas Gerais state, where the Maxakali, who also refer to themselves as the Tikmũ’ũn people, are restoring the Atlantic Forest on long-degraded land guided by their spiritual traditions.
According to Maxakali cosmology, the forest’s health is directly related to the well-being of forest spirits known as yãmĩyxop, who in turn help them hunt, spurring the community to bring native trees back to parts of their ancestral territory cleared decades ago for cattle.
“The forest is gone; there’s only grass now. Yãmĩyxop are starving,” Marquinhos Maxakali, a Maxakali artist and teacher, told Bartaburu in “Why the Maxakali people are calling on their spirits to recover the Atlantic Forest.”
Only a small fraction of the Atlantic Forest survived colonialization on the land the Maxacali/ Tikmũ’ũn once inhabited, and now they live on just four small, disconnected reserves surrounded by pastures.
“Tihik [a Tikmũ’ũn person] likes to walk. It’s our culture. But today we have no way to leave here. We are trapped,” Isael Maxakali, a shaman and one of his people’s main leaders, told Bartaburu. “This is not a land of freedom; it’s all fenced in. We are like cattle. Everything is confined.”
Most of the forest has been replaced by invasive Guinea grass (Panicum maximum) whose roots kill the soil and make cultivation unfeasible.
In 2023, the Opaoká Institute, which brings together Indigenous communities and researchers, launched the Hãmhi Terra Viva project to train 30 Indigenous men as agroforestry agents to plant crops and native trees on the land in line with agroecological principles. Another15 women manage a plant nursery of up to 72,000 seedlings. In its first year, the project restored 55 hectares (135 acres) of forest and planted 35 hectares (86 acres) of food crops.
During planting, the Maxakali sing to bless the seedlings and ensure their growth. The songs, ethnomusicologist Rosângela de Tugny said, are memories of the Atlantic Forest.
“Land is like a dog when it gets mange: you have to give it medicine for it to be cured,” said Sueli Maxakali, one of the most important women leaders of the Tikmũ’ũn people. “Now the birds are coming back. They are happy because they see the forest returning.”
Since Mongabay’s feature was published, the project responsible for creating the Maxakali agroforestry agents got its first funding renewal from environmental compensation fines from Brazil’s biggest mining company, mediated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Minas Gerais.
“When I was there, the project’s first year was about to end, and funding was still uncertain,” Bartaburu said. “The story helped them get visibility and, consequently, their much-needed renewal.”
Banner image: Sueli Maxakali in front of a reforested hill. Image by Xavier Bartaburu/Mongabay.
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