Chapter 5 - Indigenous peoples and the rights of nature

Indigenous leader Auricélia Arapiun describes the occupation of the Cargill terminal, in Pará, which forced the government to concede after 33 days, repealing the controversial decree 12.600, which provided concessions to developers hoping to turn the Tapajós, Madeira and Tocantins tributaries of the Amazon into waterways for the export of soya and the other fruits of extraction.

Brazil's National Museum of Indigenous Peoples is struggling. Its funding has been cut to below 2015 levels; it is dependent on FUNAI; and institutional wrangling has left it unable to fulfill its mission. The crumbling museum building is closed to the public and important exhibits are left in limbo. Who will come to its rescue?

Chile’s Mapuche people hoped for better things after the election of Gabriel Boric in 2021. The extension of the Estado de Excepción has signalled a return ‘to the old discourse of the internal enemy’.

Amid industrial pressure and legal rollbacks, a grassroots women's network fights for ancestral marine rights and cultural survival in Chile. ‘If they take the sea...

In the Peruvian Amazon, the roar of bulldozers is intruding on the ancestral lands of one of the world’s last isolated tribes. The Mashco...

How to Save The Amazon: This testimony book by the assassinated journalist lays bare the tragedy of Amazônia – of which he himself came to be one of the most painful examples – but also its uniquely marvelous nature.

Rangers of all ages come together in Ricaurte, Nariño, to protect their living territory amidst armed conflict, loss of culture, and deforestation. In the Magüí...

Under the guise of national security and economic growth, governments and corporations worldwide are escalating legal strategies to suppress Indigenous activists and organizers. According...

What do deep divisions within Pachakutik, Correísmo’s troubled history with the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and of Nature, and the ongoing demonization of Fernando...

In this interview with LAB contributor Maozya Murray, Túpac Amaru activist Marisol discusses Kichwa resistance to the Cordillera Azul National Park and what it...