Chapter 5 - Indigenous peoples and the rights of nature

Brazil’s indigenous peoples face the most serious threats since the military dictatorship: a government determined to eliminate their rights, abolish their culture and ‘integrate’ them into an ultra-neoliberal economy; and a pandemic to which they are particularly vulnerable and which threatens their very existence. This first of three articles examines the history of 'pandemonium'

Covid 19 will affect Brazil’s indigenous groups for many years, not only because of the number of lives it has taken but also because among those dead are many important indigenous leaders. LAB briefly profiles one important leader who recently succumbed to the disease.

Extraordinary history of groups of former slaves, indigenous and others in the Cerrado who have forged a sustainable lifestyle from gathering sought-after sempre-vivas flowers and selling them, with enormous care to preserve the environment. Now rewarded by the UN's FAO, they face encroachments from mining and a national park

Scarred by a brutal massacre which took place in December of 1997 and left 45 dead, the residents of Acteal, in the highlands of Chiapas, continue to remind the world never to forget. One woman is at the forefront.

This video essay from LAB partner Ojos Ilegales Red, Venezuela, tells the story of Leonardo Milian Ruiz, a member of the Pumé community. Milian left his territory Boca Tronador, on Riecito in Apure State, near the the Venezuelan border with Colombia, after cattle ranchers continually invaded their territory.

The short film El Silencio del Rio, ‘The Silence of the River’, by Peruvian director Francesca Canepa, won the Grand Jury Award at the Oscar-qualifying Calgary International Film Festival and is currently longlisted in the Best Short Film category for the 2021 Academy Awards. Mathilde Aupetit considers the film’s blurring of dream and reality in order to present an Amazonian perspective, and its representation of the narrative power of nature.

British businessman and football club owner, Joe Lewis, has created resistance from the indigenous community by purchasing and developing their ancestral lands in Rio Negro, Argentina. Lewis blocks access to the land, where he has hosted Israeli soldiers and former right-wing President Mauricio Macri.

Residents of traditional communities in the Brazilian Amazon municipality of Barcarena, near the mouth of the Amazon River, say that their subsistence and commercial livelihoods, and their health, have been destroyed by an invasion of mining companies which began in the mid-1980’s. This story is the fifth in a series.

This is a condensed version of a longer article written in July 2020. It was edited for LAB by Emily Gregg. Indigenous territories in Latin...

There’s still time to catch a number of short films from indigenous Latin American filmmakers at Native Spirit Festival: the UK’s first and only annual independent festival to promote indigenous filmmakers, media and artists.