Indigenous Peoples

A Facebook advert for an Amazon farm led Subsolo journalist Ruan Martins to Ivanildo Canuto Soares, a convicted murderer with a history of drug trafficking who faked his own death. Mining records showed gold sales attributed to a permit area where satellite images revealed no visible signs of extraction. Martins follows the buyers and refiners into the supply chains reported by major international companies.

Subsolo journalist Ruan Martins spent six months tracking online adverts offering millions of hectares of forest in Brazil’s Amazon. He spoke to more than 100 brokers and checked property maps, identifying listings that overlapped Indigenous territories and protected areas, including Tenharim land. At the time of publication, Facebook was still hosting the kind of advert it had promised to block in 2021.

The editors hope that the collection of essays Unmaking to Make will be ‘a starting point and place of encounter’ for artistic responses to colonial legacy. Reviewer Harriet Gilbert Savage says, 'I hope that it elicits responses of agreement and resistance that are both practical and creative. I hope that they are unique and diverse and abundant.'

In July 2026, Honduran police evicted the Garifuna community of San Juan, Tela, from land protected by rulings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. It was the first eviction under a new law promoting agribusiness.

A new law of June 2026, known as the AgroIndustrial Decree, threatens Indigenous people, especially the Garifuna. Tourism, extractive industries and various forms of intensive agriculture will be given special protection, while the rights of local communities and Indigenous peoples can be ignored or set aside. Garifuna communities in San Andres and at Cayos Cochinos are already feeling the effects and are determined to defend their rights and their land.

Join us to discuss the Rights of Nature in Latin America with Jan Schulz, author of LAB's new book 'Disputed Territories', and "Barrister for...

A  Canadian-owned mining company is moving on Maya Chorti communities in Western Honduras. The community is resisting, and courts have intervened, but the future of Cerro Los Hornillos remains unclear. This is the first of two linked articles by Anna Ortiz on indigenous communities in Honduras defending their rights.

Competition for critical minerals and trade routes is drawing the Amazon deeper into global struggles over resources and military power. Writing in March 2026, Bruno Malheiro examines how US imperial ambitions, trade with China, and Brazil’s political choices put Amazonian territories under pressure. He argues that defending the region requires both national sovereignty and the right of Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities to determine the future of their territories.

Babassu nut breakers in Brazil’s Amazon call the palm ‘mother’: it sustains their food, livelihoods, and cultural traditions. Drawing on published research, agronomist Bernardo Tomchinsky examines the knowledge and practices of women in Pará, and their struggle for access to babassu groves, territorial protection, and recognition of their rights.

LAB author and film-maker Marcos Colón travelled to Temuco to speak about listening to Indigenous knowledge. The conference listened. But Wallmapu asked whether listening...