Grace Livingstone speaks to the two governors of this Emberá Chamí community and the director of the Valle del Cauca land restitution authority to learn more about the case, and analyses the current government’s efforts to tackle displacement and land reform. An Indigenous community has won a significant legal victory in Colombia, giving them the right to return to their lands after being displaced by armed groups. The historic judgement has raised hopes that Colombia’s land restitution programme, which stalled under the presidency of rightwinger Ivan Duque, is finally starting to de ..read more

‘To the new administration, and to businesses, we say: Yes to Escazú!’ Ricardo Andrés Pineda Guzmán, of the Honduran Network for Escazú, reminds us why it’s crucial for Honduras to sign, ratify, and enforce the Escazú Agreement for environmental justice. This piece was originally published by our partner, Contracorriente, and has been translated for LAB’s Environmental Defenders series by Emma Hinde. ‘The deadliest place to defend the planet,’ according to Global Witness [2017] and echoed by the BBC, CNN, and other major news outlets. This is just one of many unfortunate global headlines Hondu ..read more

In 2020, over 40 Kichwa women began to organise themselves in defence of their territory and to expel mining from the Ecuadorian Amazon. This is how Yuturi Warmi, the first Indigenous guard led by women in the region began. This interview with María José Andrade Cerda of Yuturi Warmi was originally published by Mongabay Latam and has been translated for LAB by Rebecca Wilson. Maria Jose Andrade Cerda, one of the leaders of Yuturi Warmi, explains that Indigenous women have an integral vision for territorial defence. Accordingly, Yuturi Warmi’s work doesn’t only include physically guarding and o ..read more

Inspired and motivated by a moment of real-life police harassment, this novel is narrated in the second person by Pedro, who recounts the life of his father, Henrique, who was killed by police in an incident. This review was originally published by our partner, Sounds and Colours, here. A relatively recent interest in Black Brazilian writers has enabled what could be seen as a new wave of Afro-Brazilian writing, books that include The Sun on my Head by Geovani Martins, Ana Maria Gonçalves’ Um Defeito de Cor and Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, all acclaimed ..read more

On a cold Sunday afternoon in February, around 20 activists, journalists, researchers, and community representatives in London gathered in a circle to listen to Mapuche weychafe (warrior) Moira Millán and Tehuelche elder Ñaña Vilma. Moira and Vilma had travelled from southern Patagonia to Europe to spread awareness of the urgent situation for Indigenous peoples in the south of Argentina, and to strengthen bonds of international solidarity.  The Mapuche and Tehuelche people are Indigenous to the southern cone, including parts of Chilean and Argentinian Patagonia. Moira lives in the provinc ..read more

Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa received by Pope Francis at the Vatican. Video: Jornalismo TV Cultura, April 2024. São Paulo. 14 April 2024. A few days ago Yanomami leader and shaman Davi Kopenawa was received by Pope Francis, head of the Catholic church, in Rome, and Ailton Krenak, author, poet and environmentalist was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters in Rio, the first ever indigenous member of  what has until recently been an exclusively white club. During Carnival 2024, Brazil`s greatest expression of popular culture, one of the top Rio samba schools, Salgueiro, chose indigen ..read more

Activists from Indigenous and Afrodescendent organisations from 22 countries across the Americas gathered in the Ecuadorian Amazon last October to attend an urgent meeting in response to the rise in illegal mining. They were invited to the community of Serena by local leader Leo Cerda, the co-founder of the Americas-wide Black and Indigenous Liberation Movement (BILM), to forge a coalition to combat extractivism, structural racism, and the climate crisis. ‘A movement is built by many, not by one. We need to start thinking about local strategies with a global impact,’ Leo told us in an intervi ..read more

This interview was first published (in Portuguese) on Amazônia Latitude, as a podcast and a text. It has been translated and reproduced with kind permission of Marcos Colón and Eliane Brum. The Amazon is the centre of the world, it is one of the most important regions on the planet and must be preserved and protected. This idea has been championed by the most awarded journalist in Brazil, Eliane Brum, also a documentary filmmaker and writer. She is the author of almost a dozen books, some of which have been published in other languages, such as English, Spanish, and Italian. Among her best-kno ..read more

The Paĩ Tavyterã Indigenous people, whose ancestral territory is in the northeast of Paraguay, are taking concrete actions to combat the fierce impacts of climate change felt in their communities. They are adapting their agricultural practices to be more resilient and are learning to combat the wildfires that have devastated the region over recent years, employing traditional knowledge to recover forests lost to the fires and to avoid the incursion of invasive grass species used by neighbouring cattle ranchers, which are highly disruptive to native ecosystems. The final wafts of thick early-mo ..read more

This interview was first published (in Portuguese) on Amazônia Latitude, as both text and podcast. It is reproduced with kind permission of Marcos Colón and Eliane Brum. ‘Literature is body in relationship’, says Eliane Brum How the Amazon reached the woman from Rio Grande do Sul who, today, is the most awarded journalist in Brazil and writes ‘so as not to die and so as not to kill’ The Amazon is the center of the world, it is one of the most important regions on the planet and must be preserved and protected. This idea was created by the most awarded journalist in Brazil, who is also a docume ..read more