Indigenous Brazilian Activists Challenge Academia to Act
In June 2022, Dom Phillips, a British journalist working for The Guardian, and Bruno Pereira, a Brazilian indigenist and employee of Brazil’s National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI), were assassinated in the forests of the Javari Valley in northwestern Brazil.
Phillips was writing about the myriad crimes being committed in the Javari while traveling with Pereira, who was mobilizing indigenous communities to patrol and protect their land from the criminals who illegally log, fish, and hunt in their territory. Two men have confessed to the murders and several more have been charged in the broader conspiracy, yet two years later, no date has been set for the trial, and indigenous environmental activists continue to be killed for resisting the destruction of their lands.
On May 10, 2024, Yale’s Council on Latin American & Iberian Studies at the MacMillan Center, Yale School of the Environment, and Yale School of Public Health held a conference in honor of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira: “Climate Change Crisis and Environmental Justice in the Amazon: Voices from Indigenous Peoples and Activists.” Co-organized by professors Claudia Valeggia, Albert Ko, and Gerald Torres, the event brought together academics working on indigenous rights and environmental justice, and environmental and indigenous activists, lawyers, and journalists—many of them friends of the slain men—with the purpose of identifying a path forward.
“Environmental justice in the Amazon is crucial because it addresses the disproportionate impacts of environmental degradation on marginalized communities living in and around the rainforest,” said Claudia Valeggia, professor of anthropology and chair of the Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies at Yale. “By bringing indigenous leaders and activists to Yale, we hope that this conference helps amplify their voices and raise awareness of their struggles to ensure fairness in resource allocation, land rights, and access to clean air and water.”
Albert Ko, Raj and Indra Nooyi Professor of Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health, became friends with Dom Phillips in 2019 while Phillips was reporting on the response by the Brazilian Ministry of Health and Yale to the Zika epidemic. “We wanted to honor Bruno and Dom, who embodied the humanism and commitment to justice that is needed to correct the injustices occurring among the indigenous peoples in the Amazon,” said Ko, who is also a collaborating researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation of the Brazilian Ministry of Health.
“Environmental justice is also deeply connected to the concept of One Health, which recognizes the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health,” Valeggia added. “Let’s go beyond the buzzword and start listening to and joining the indigenous experts in action, like Bruno and Dom had been doing.”
The Amazon rainforest, also known as Amazonia, comprises about half of the planet’s remaining tropical forests and contains 20% of the world’s liquid freshwater. Spanning nine countries and territories of South America, Amazonia is home to more than 400 indigenous people groups, as well as nearly 20% of the world’s vascular plant species, 14% of all bird species, 9% of all mammals, 8% amphibians, and 18% of all known fish species.
The Amazon sequesters between 150 and 200 billion tons of carbon in its soil and vegetation each year, making it a critical stabilizing element in Earth’s climate system.
According to João Biehl, professor of anthropology at Princeton University and director of its Brazil LAB, current climate models by his colleagues predict that without the Amazon rainforest, regional temperatures would rise to levels that would dramatically alter rainfall patterns and render the area uninhabitable, wreaking economic havoc—especially for agriculture and energy production—that would far outstrip the immediate monetary returns that drive deforestation. Not only that: average temperatures worldwide would rise approximately 0.25 degrees Celsius, making it impossible to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Protecting the Amazon rainforest, he explained, is key to maintaining climate stability for all of South America and to mitigating the impacts of climate change for the entire planet.
The Amazon has been under threat for decades—from illegal logging, burning, and ranching, poaching, oil drilling, gold and copper mining and accompanying poisoning of waterways—but in the past 15 years alone, 20% of Brazil’s rainforests have been destroyed. And it is alleged, Biehl explained, that violence toward the forest and its indigenous peoples rose precipitously in Brazil under the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro from 2019-2023.
“About 30% of the Amazonian territory has not been legally designated and has become a haven for deforestation and land grabbing,” Biehl said. “Environmental crime and illicit economies are intertwined. The region where Dom and Bruno were ambushed is well known to be controlled by organized crime.”
One of the Brazilian journalists on the front lines, Eliane Brum of SUMAÚMA, emphasized the role of corruption in the demise of the Amazon. “Maybe very soon, the Amazon forest will turn into a place where the state cannot get in, [because it is] completely dominated by organized crime groups. It is [because of this] that Bruno and Dom lost their lives, because Bruno was one of the barriers to the advancement of organized crime,” she said through a translator. “Resistance is being killed in the forest and in the Brazilian Congress.”
In their presentations, the activists recounted the work they are doing in grassroots organizing, in the press, in the courts, and in the Brazilian government’s newly-created Ministry of Indigenous Peoples.
Several panelists also widened the perspective beyond Brazil. They presented on atrocities happening in the Amazon rainforest in Colombia and Ecuador—including environmental degradation and the forced displacement, land dispossession, and the genocide of indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation, such as the Tagaeri and Taromenani of Ecuador.
One of the most unifying themes of the conference was the call to center indigenous voices in the fight to save the Amazon—the very work that Dom and Bruno believed in and died for. “Western science has a history of the appropriation and suppression of indigenous knowledge. Only recently have indigenous contributions been recognized as fundamental in tackling the challenges brought on by the current climate crisis,” Biehl said. “Our goal is to develop a collaborative framework for new modes of conceptualizing sustainability in the Amazon.”
Among the champions of indigenous rights who spoke was Joênia Wapichana, President of Brazil’s National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI) and the first indigenous woman in that role. She also holds the distinction of being both the first indigenous lawyer in Brazil and the first indigenous woman elected to the legislature. She has received numerous awards, including the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights.
As a lawyer and now as President of FUNAI, she spoke of the importance of protecting indigenous lands, of following indigenous land stewardship practices, and of the fight to win legal demarcation, regularization, and certification of unrecognized indigenous lands.
“Indigenous lands are among the main barriers against the advancement of deforestation in Brazil,” Wapichana said through a translator. “There is no other way to stop global warming but to implement indigenous values, and legislation.” Indigenous peoples depend on territorial protections in order to protect the natural resources that the whole world depends upon, Wapichana said. The challenge ahead of her as the President of FUNAI is to continue to fulfil the government’s obligation to warranty the rights of indigenous peoples enshrined in its constitution, and to seek to increase the amount of protected indigenous land, while also advocating for the repeal of recent legislative decisions that seem to violate the constitution.
Olimpio Guajajara, a member of the Guajajara people who live alongside other indigenous groups in the Araribóia Indigenous Territory, leads a group of guardians of the rainforest through his KA’AIWAR Indigenous Association. In Araribóia, which is located on the eastern edge of the Amazon rainforest, Guajajara and his fellow volunteers defend their land from illegal incursions by loggers at its 72 points of entry, sometimes at the cost of their lives.
“Araribóia has the forest that may be able to cure human beings,” Guajajara said through a translator. “This is why we are fighting for that territory. That territory is not only a part of myself or my people; it is also part of all humankind. Because without the forest, we will not be able to exist. There will be no rain… My people—my children, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren—will want to drink some water, they will need to eat.”
Speaking of his mission at KA’AIWAR, he said, “We are doing voluntary work for all of humankind, and we will continue to do so. There is no other way to go.” His call to action: The whole planet needs to wake up.
“Is it that we are only using our intelligence to destroy our planet?” Guajajara asked. “Is that the education that we want? … With our intelligence we can change the destination of our pathway, for a better future, so that the people coming after us may continue to have life on our planet.”
Beto Marubo is a member of the Javari people and the indigenous organization UNIVAJA, which patrols the Javari Valley in order to report illegal activity. Marubo was a close friend of Pereira; they worked together for 12 years. Although Bruno was not indigenous, Marubo said, he believed that indigenous peoples had to be empowered to protect their own land.
“My late friend [Bruno] once told me something: ‘The future of your lands and yourselves actually—There is no perfect way for that, Beto. This is why we have to empower yourselves, and I am going to do it even if I have to give my life for this, because I do believe in it,’” Marubo said through tears.
“He trained us to read GPS and do tasks that nobody would teach us to do. I heard this university has the best minds for the future. I don’t want you to be only that. I want you to be with me like Bruno Pereira and Dom… The call I have for you: Help us to explain and pass to you what we know.”
Against the backdrop of ongoing legal battles in Brazil’s Supreme Court where indigenous land rights hang in the balance, Marubo said he and his fellow guardians of the forest have come to a decision: “We respect FUNAI. We respect the government and its laws, but we are going to do whatever it takes, in the memory of [Bruno], who convinced us that we can have a unique process to protect not only ourselves and our land but also… the isolated indigenous peoples in our land.”
In his remarks, Gerald Torres, Professor of Environmental Justice at the Yale School of the Environment, and Professor of Law at Yale Law School, thanked all of the participants for the hope that was at the core of all of their messages. “One of the lessons I took from listening to this today is [that] it reinforced the mistake that the opponents make,” he said. “Because they think that if they silence the voices, they will stop the movement. And that’s wrong. It has always been wrong.”
Alessandra Sampaio, Dom Phillips’ widow, has come to know and work closely with many of the activists through their shared tragedy. At the conference, Sampaio explained that she is furthering Dom’s legacy through education. She and a team have founded the Dom Phillips Institute “with the aim of sharing what the Amazon is, and its complexities, through the peoples of the forest, and seeking ways to ensure its protection.” The first step is a digital platform the team is building in collaboration with indigenous leaders to gather and share the knowledge of the Amazon’s peoples.
Dom’s journalist friends—including panelist Tom Phillips, a fellow Guardian reporter—have continued to shine an international spotlight on the unfolding horrors in the Amazon, and they are finishing the book he was writing, How to Save the Amazon.
The conference was a call for attendees to break out of their “academic bubbles” and step into action. “We have to talk beyond the university in order to have some impact,” declared Beto Marubo. “Please help us. We need to have more Doms and Brunos to be acting!”
“We are living in a climate crisis. We have to ask ourselves if we are living according to the emergency. And I think we are not,” said Brum. “Today, listening is ACTING.… Our words need to have action, because time is running out.”
This conference was also co-sponsored by the Yale MacMillan Center’s Program on Peace and Development, the Yale Center for Environmental Justice, and the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund at Yale Law School.
View photos from the conference.
This article was updated on May 29, 2024.
