Joenia Wapichana

Joenia Wapichana, a Brazilian lawyer and politician, is from the Truarú da Cabeceira indigenous community in Roraima and belongs to the Wapichana indigenous people. With a career marked by the defense of indigenous peoples, she was the first indigenous woman to practice law in Brazil and the first to act before the Supreme Court, in the case that guaranteed the territorial delimitation of the indigenous reserve Raposa Serra do Sol. Joênia was also the country’s first indigenous federal representative, from 2019 to 2022. She is currently the president of the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI), becoming the first indigenous woman to lead this organization. In December 2018, she won the UN Human Rights Prize, one of the most important in the world. For her parliamentary work, she received the Congress in Focus award in the Climate and Sustainability category in all the years she has been in office (2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022).