Right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is angry that 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is speaking out for indigenous rights. On Sunday, Thunberg tweeted a response to the killing of two indigenous leaders in Northeast Brazil Saturday. “Indigenous people are literally being murdered for trying to protect the forest from illegal deforestation,” she wrote. “Over […]
Despite confirmation this week that the deforestation rate in the Amazon rainforest is at its highest in more than a decade, far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro refuses to take the problem seriously. When confronted with findings from Brazil‘s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) that deforestation between August 2018 and July 2019 was at its […]
By Alison Cagle Rising above the Arizona desert, the Santa Rita Mountains cradle 10,000 years of Indigenous history. The Tohono O’odham Nation, Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and Hopi Tribe, among numerous other tribes, have worshipped, foraged, hunted and laid their ancestors to rest in the mountains for generations. Mining corporation Hudbay Minerals proposed to dig a […]
By Jeremy Hance VIETNAM, July 2019 – I’m chasing a ghost, I think not for the first time, as night falls and I gather up my gear in a hotel in a village in southern Vietnam. I pack my camera, a bottle of water, and a poncho; outside the window I can see a light […]
Illegal loggers shot and killed an indigenous defender of Brazil‘s Amazon rainforest, the Guajajara tribe announced Saturday, as Reuters reported. Paulo Paulino Guajajara, in his 20s, was a member of the Guajajara group Guardians of the Forest, which was formed in 2012 to protect the Araribóia reservation in Brazil’s Maranhão state. In an interview with […]
By Vincent J. Miller The Catholic Church “hears the cry” of the Amazon and its peoples. That’s the message Pope Francis hopes to send at the Synod of the Amazon, a three-week meeting at the Vatican that ends Oct. 27. Images from Rome show tribal leaders in traditional feather headdresses alongside Vatican officials in their […]
The Trump administration has moved one step closer to opening Earth’s largest intact temperate rainforest to logging. On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service announced it would draft an environmental impact statement exempting Alaska’s Tongass National Forest from the 2001 Roadless Rule, which prohibits road construction and timber harvesting on 58.5 million acres […]
The night before Indigenous Peoples’ Day, an Indigenous-led movement in Ecuador won a major victory. On Sunday, Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno agreed to repeal an austerity package that ignited 11 days of protests led by an indigenous movement that also wants to end mining and oil extraction, Amazon Watch explained. “I’m so happy I don’t […]
This second Monday in October, the nation’s capital won’t celebrate Columbus Day. Instead, it will join at least eight states and more than 100 other cities in celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day, ABC News reported. The change was passed by the DC Council Tuesday after a supermajority voted in support of Councilmember David Grosso’s “Indigenous Peoples’ […]