The Belo Monte hydroelectric plant on the Xingu River in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. With a capacity of 11,233 megawatts, it began operating in 2016 and caused severe environmental and social damage in the Volta Grande do Xingu, a river curve where most of the water was diverted into a channel for power generation. Credit: Joédson Alves / Agência Brasil

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 25 2025 (IPS)

Indigenous peoples in Brazil have won a new right: a share in the profits of hydroelectric plants that cause them harm when built on or near their lands. 

This was established in a preliminary ruling by Supreme Court Justice Flavio Dino, who on Tuesday, March 11, recognized this right for Indigenous communities living in the Volta Grande do Xingu (VGX), a 100-kilometer stretch of the Amazon’s Xingu River. Most of its water flow was diverted into a channel for electricity generation.

The ruling responds to a petition from seven Indigenous associations in the VGX and still awaits ratification by the other 10 Supreme Court justices by late March. However, approval is virtually certain, as it aligns with Brazil’s 1988 Constitution.

It took 37 years for this constitutional benefit to take effect because the National Congress failed to pass a law regulating compensation for the impacts of energy and mining projects on Indigenous lands, Justice Dino noted in his 115-point, 61-page ruling.

Now, 100% of the royalties that the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant paid to the federal government as compensation for water use will go to the residents of three Indigenous territories affected by the permanent “drought” in the VGX, home to 1,324 people according to the 2022 national census.

Lawyers representing the Indigenous cause estimate this amounts to around 210 million reais per year (approximately US$36 million at current exchange rates).

The funds will be used collectively for community benefit. Justice Dino specified purposes such as expanding the Bolsa Família (a direct income transfer program) in affected villages, sustainable development projects, improving educational and health infrastructure, territorial security, reforestation, and demarcation of additional Indigenous lands.

Wild fruits that feed fish now fall on dry land due to the reduced flow in the Volta Grande do Xingu in the Brazilian Amazon. Its waters were diverted for the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant’s channel. Credit: Mati / VGX

A Right for All

This right extends to other similar cases—though not to mining—as there is still no legislation regulating constitutional provisions ensuring affected communities’ share in profits from hydroelectric and mining activities in “border zones or Indigenous lands.”

Justice Dino also set a 24-month deadline for Congress to finally approve regulations for such cases.

“Royalties are a victory. For the first time, we’ve gained a benefit—all we’ve had so far are losses because of the Belo Monte dam,” said Gilliard Juruna, chief of the Miratu village of the Juruna people (who are reclaiming their original name, Yudjá, meaning “the river’s owners”).

“Since 2019, fish no longer reproduce normally in the Volta Grande do Xingu,” the Indigenous leader told IPS by phone from his village in the municipality of Vitória do Xingu. Like most Brazilian Indigenous groups, the Juruna use their ethnic name as their surname.

The reason is that Belo Monte’s operation “steals” too much water from the VGX, a U-shaped stretch. The original dam project, designed in the 1970s under Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964–1985), planned to flood 1,225 square kilometers of forest in the Volta Grande, including two Indigenous territories along its banks.

Stalled by Indigenous resistance and surplus energy from other large dams, the project was revived this century with a redesign to avoid flooding the VGX by diverting water through a channel.

But diverting enough water for a 11,000-megawatt plant (the world’s fourth-largest, operating at full capacity since 2019) has condemned the VGX to permanent drought, destroying the Indigenous and riverside communities’ way of life, which depended on fishing and river transport.

A constant legal battle pits Norte Energía, Belo Monte’s private operator, against environmental authorities demanding higher water flows in the VGX to ensure fish reproduction and ecosystem survival.

Court rulings have fluctuated, especially after environmental disasters and the expiration of Belo Monte’s operating license in 2021. The Brazilian Institute of the Environment now seeks to tie license renewal to a more ecosystem-friendly water flow schedule (hydrogram).

While awaiting renewal, the plant operates at only 31% capacity. Water releases for the river bend are dictated by power generation targets, ignoring the dehydrated stretch’s ecological needs.

The dehydrated or dried-up Xingu River forms small isolated ponds where trapped fish die. Before being diverted to supply the Belo Monte plant, it was connected to the river’s main flow. Credit: Mati / VGX

The Juruna lead an Independent Territorial Environmental Monitoring (Mati) initiative, tracking fish populations and other indicators based on water flow variations. Other Indigenous groups, riverside communities, and researchers also participate.

Their findings show that higher water levels from December to March (fish spawning season) are essential for life in the VGX. They’ve proposed a new hydrogram that, while not restoring natural flows, would mitigate current damage.

The piracema, the local spawning season for the inhabitants of the Xingu, must have enough water for the females to lay their eggs and for the fry to feed and grow. Without water, this process cannot occur, and sometimes—due to the sudden reduction in water flow caused by Belo Monte—the eggs or fry die on dry land, according to Josiel Juruna, coordinator of Mati.

“We’ll keep fighting for more water in the Volta Grande—for us, it’s life,” said Gilliard Juruna. But his people are adapting, turning to farming after commercial fishing collapsed. They are no longer commercial fishermen, only fishing for their own consumption—which is no longer guaranteed either.

The Juruna leader now grows cacao, whose price is on the rise, but they need technical support, irrigation, and fertilizers.

The compensation programs that Belo Monte is required to implement and fund, as a counterpart to harnessing the river’s energy potential, are not progressing. The company’s initiatives to support Juruna agriculture contribute little.

While schools are improving, and the village will have secondary education starting in 2026, there are no income-generating projects to replace lost fishing livelihoods, Gilliard Juruna lamented.

Though welcomed, royalties may further erode traditional Indigenous life.

One concern is that financial compensation could make it easier to license new hydro and mining projects, harming nature and Indigenous ways of life.

There have long been efforts to open Indigenous lands to destructive activities like mining—now under discussion in the Supreme Court, led by Justice Gilmar Mendes.

Royalties can encourage harmful projects to exploit mining and water resources in indigenous lands, “the most protected areas in Brazil”, agrees biologist Juarez Pezutti, a professor at the Federal University of Pará, who has participated in several environmental research projects in the Vuelta Grande.

Predatory activities in indigenous areas destroy their ecosystem services, cause social disasters, as seen in the Xingu, and lead to obesity, diabetes and other diseases, such as those that occur among Native peoples in the United States and Canada, whose territories are occupied by mining, he told IPS by telephone from Belém, capital of the Amazonian state of Pará, where Belo Monte is located.

Judge Dino is aware of these risks, which is why he insisted several times in his ruling that the decision on Belo Monte’s royalties “does not release any and all exploitation of the energy potential of water resources on indigenous lands.”

Such projects still require state approval and compliance with International Labour Organization Convention 169, which mandates free, prior, and informed consent from affected Indigenous communities.

A protester holding a sign declaring the death of democracy during social protests against the authoritarian policies of Peru's President Dina Boluarte in downtown Lima, July 2024. Credit: Walter Hupiu / IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Feb 10 2025 (IPS)

“We are facing a deeply conservative government that is opening the doors to all kinds of setbacks. We have a failed state with a democracy that is no longer a democracy,” said Gina Vargas, a Peruvian feminist internationally recognized for her contributions to women’s rights.

In an interview with IPS from her home in Lima, Vargas shared her perspective on Peru, a country of 34 million inhabitants, which is undergoing a profound political crisis that is weakening its democratic institutions, ultimately harming the rights of the most vulnerable populations, such as women and the LGBTI+ community.

The female population is just over 17 million, according to the government’s National Institute of Statistics and Computing, while a 2019 study by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights estimated that LGBTI+ adults could reach 1.7 million.“The conservatives are taking away everything they believe goes against their traditional principles, while the reality for Peruvian women is one of discrimination, violence, femicide, sexual abuse of girls, and the denial of therapeutic abortion”: Gina Vargas.

Vargas, one of the founders of the feminist Flora Tristán Peruvian Women’s Center, one of the oldest organizations in Latin American feminism, argued that the conservative forces, which manifest as the far-right in Peru, are seeking to reclaim what they lost in terms of their values over the last three decades.

This period began with the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action, which established norms and mechanisms for the advancement of women.

In September 1995, 30 years ago, the Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Equality, Development, and Peace, convened by the United Nations, was held in Beijing, China. Representatives from 189 countries participated, not only from governments but also from women’s and feminist movements.

A sociologist, Gina Vargas will turn 80 in July. She coordinated the participation of Latin American and Caribbean civil society organizations in the global forum, as well as their contributions to the Platform, which outlines the commitments of states regarding 12 areas of action on the status of women worldwide.

She highlighted that within this framework, mechanisms were established at the highest level to promote equal rights, which in Peru’s case is currently the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations (MIMP). However, this ministry will be diluted in a regressive wave through an upcoming merger with the Ministry of Inclusion and Social Development.

“The conservatives are taking away everything they believe goes against their traditional principles, while the reality for Peruvian women is one of discrimination, violence, femicide, sexual abuse of girls, and the denial of therapeutic abortion,” she lamented.

Peruvian feminist Gina Vargas believes that democracy no longer exists in Peru and that the growing influence of conservative groups is harming the rights of women and sexual diversity. Pictured third from the left during the launch of the 46th anniversary of the non-governmental Flora Tristán Center, of which she is one of the founders, on January 30. Credit: Mariela Jara / IPS

According to official figures, 170 femicides occurred nationwide in 2024. The number for the last three years rises to 450 when including victims from 2022 and 2023. Peru has a law against violence toward women and family members, and it has incorporated the crime of femicide into the Penal Code.

These are serious issues that three decades ago were weakly addressed by the state or absent from its agenda. But Vargas emphasized that the Beijing Platform left a set of commitments to be fulfilled and expanded, as has happened in many countries.

“But in Peru, we are facing brutal resistance in a context where there is no balance of power, and the Legislature passes laws to co-opt democratic institutions in their desire to control the country,” she stressed.

The legislative Congress of the Republic has an approval rate of 5%, and President Dina Boluarte’s administration has 6%, according to recent polls, reflecting one of the most discredited periods for state branches in the country.

Both branches of government are seen as colluding for personal interests, closely linked to corruption, and unable to address citizen insecurity and poverty, two of the most pressing issues in this South American and Andean nation.

Vargas warned: “We are facing a failed state, with the rise of fundamentalism, authoritarianism, and the imposition of the right-wing. What is not good for democracy is definitely not good for us or for sexual diversity.”

A banner featuring victims of femicide in Peru during a demonstration in Lima. Peru suffered 170 femicides in 2024, reflecting the severe violation of women’s human rights. Credit: Mariela Jara / IPS

Fear of Losing Rights

Antonella Martel, a 29-year-old psychologist, grew up in a country that already had a favorable framework for women’s rights and guaranteed gender equality, established in the 1979 Constitution and maintained in the current one from 1993.

She is aware that she has had more opportunities than her mother and grandmothers. “Now, traditional roles for women and men are being questioned; they are no longer normalized as before. There are also laws against gender-based violence, although access to justice is complicated,” she told IPS.

In the current context, she fears that the rights gained could be lost. “There is distrust in institutions that are not allies of women’s struggles and do not play a protective role for their rights,” she said.

One of her biggest concerns is that the setbacks and the disappearance of the Ministry of Women through its merger with another ministry will weaken the state’s action against violence. “We women face this problem every day, and it could get worse,” she warned.

Maria Ysabel Cedano, a lawyer with the Demus organization and the non-governmental Lifs, criticized the lack of protection for the rights of the LGBTI population. “Lesbians are not invisible because we are hidden in the closet, but because no one wants to see you or let you be seen,” she stated. Credit: Mariela Jara / IPS

They Don’t Want to See Us

María Ysabel Cedano, a 59-year-old lawyer from the feminist human rights organization Demus and an associate of the non-governmental Independent Feminist Socialist Lesbians (Lifs), believes that the world is experiencing a new fascist stage, which in Peru has its own version in Fujimorism and its conservative political allies, whether ideologically right-wing or left-wing.

The late Alberto Fujimori ruled autocratically between 1990 and 2000 and established an ultra-conservative movement that now manifests in the Popular Force party, the leading legislative group led by his daughter Keiko Fujimori.

Fujimori was the only head of state to attend the Beijing Conference, where he promoted his new National Population Policy and birth control measures. It was later revealed that this included the  forced, mass, and non-consensual sterilization of poor and indigenous people, especially in rural areas, a practice that victimized around 300,000 women.

“We are witnessing the hijacking of democracy as a political horizon, a system that, despite its flaws, allowed us to expand freedoms and rights such as equality and non-discrimination, access to justice, and those related to women, which have been the result of sustained struggles,” Cedano reflected in an interview with IPS.

She explained that anti-rights groups have not been satisfied with taking over the state as a spoil through corruption but are operating as a regime that attacks everything opposing their beliefs, seeking to impose totalitarian thinking.

In late 2024, the institution Transparencia issued a report on 20 laws passed by this Congress of the Republic that weakened democracy, favored the actions of criminal groups, and undermined human and environmental rights.

“They don’t need typical wars with lethal weapons; they have developed technological mechanisms to appropriate minds and hearts through denialism and disinformation,” she emphasized.

Cedano talked about Argentina, where libertarian President Javier Milei is dismantling progress in rights, and the massive rejection by the population on February 1. Along with her LIFS collective, she joined the solidarity sit-in in front of the Argentine embassy.

“Argentina generates and radiates indignation. It experienced and enjoyed dignity and knows what it has lost, whereas in Peru we don’t know it because we’ve never had anything,” she said regarding rights for the LGBTI+ population.

She adds there are no laws on gender identity or equal marriage. “In reality, we survive without enjoying rights; we live in a so-called democracy without being citizens,” she added.

The lesbian activist also denounced that they have been stigmatized and accused of atrocities such as wanting to homosexualize children, using them to attack comprehensive sexual education in schools.

She noted that the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights study reveals that 71% of the population perceives that lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and trans people suffer discrimination. “We swell the lists of suicides, bullying, school dropouts, and sexual assaults. They want us to live in the ghetto, on the margins,” she asserted.

In a context where democratic institutions are unable to guarantee people’s rights and the Ministry of Women, as the governing body for gender equality, is about to disappear through the merger, the prospects for the rights of non-heterosexual people are at greater risk.

“Lesbians are not invisible because we are hidden in the closet, but because no one wants to see you or let you be seen. They make you feel guilty and responsible for the consequences of living fully in the light… and that results in multiple and terrible acts of violence,” Cedano stressed.

Members of the Masehual Siumaje Mosenyolchicauani women's cooperative, who teach weaving and other crafts of the Nahua people, in Cuetzalan del Progreso, central Mexico. Credit: Courtesy of Taselotzin

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Nov 5 2024 (IPS)

What began as a search for fair prices for indigenous handicrafts in 1985 has evolved into a women’s organisation in Mexico that promotes climate justice while advocating for land and environmental rights.

“We set ourselves the very broad goal of achieving access for women to a more dignified life, and we did that through various activities,” Rufina Villa, an indigenous Nahua woman, told IPS.

“We thought we were only going to make handicrafts, but with the meetings we saw that it was important to do other things,” said the founder of the Masehual Siuamej Mosenyolchicauani (indigenous women who support each other, in the Náhualt language) cooperative.“We are constantly training to improve our services. We started learning about the problems of pollution in our environment, to see places with deforestation, damage caused by mass tourism”: Rufina Villa.

These initiatives include women’s literacy, human rights training, product quality improvement, economic autonomy and environmental protection in Cuetzalan del Progreso, in the central state of Puebla, some 297 kilometres south of Mexico City.

Nestled among mountains in the region known as the Sierra Norte, Cuetzalan is a rural municipality, called a ‘magical town’ because of its location, with cloud forests, waterfalls and caves, among other scenic beauties, and a majority indigenous population.

Founded by 25 women, in its first stage the cooperative focused on protecting the environment by separating waste, making compost for their crops and farming with agro-ecological practices. It has also always protected the springs that supply water to Cuetzalan and encouraged energy transition to less polluting alternatives.

“We were pioneers in supporting community tourism to protect the territory. We are constantly training to improve our services. We began to learn about the problems of pollution in our environment, to see places with deforestation, damage caused by mass tourism,” continued the 69-year-old activist and mother of four daughters and four sons.

Although the cooperative does not explicitly link its activities to the search for climate justice, they aim to solve, at least in their community, the environmental and climate problems that others have created.

Cuetzalan del Progreso, in the central state of Puebla. Credit: Secretary of Tourism

Climate justice revolves around economic equity, security and gender equality and seeks solutions to the inequalities created by the causes and consequences of the climate crisis among individuals and groups of people.

After building a hotel in 1997, whose caretaker is Villa’s husband, the organisation invested some USD 20,000 in 2022 in the installation of solar panels, an amount already recouped, in a push for energy transition in an area where hydroelectric and fossil plants supply most of the electricity.

To cut gas and electricity costs, they also installed solar water heaters the following year.

The Taselotzin (Nahuatl for ‘offshoot’) Hotel, set in a nurturing environment, offers private rooms, cabins and dormitories, as well as ecotourism services, highlighting the value of the forest and water sources. On the premises, members of the cooperative also teach how to make and appreciate Nahua weavings and other handicrafts.

It belongs to the Huitziki Tijit (Náhualth for ‘hummingbird’s path’) Tourism Network, which operates in five Puebla municipalities with a majority Nahua population and great ecological value, among them Cuetzelan.

In 1997, a cooperative of Nahua women founded the Taselotzin ecotourism hotel, in the indigenous municipality of Cuetzalan del Progreso, in the state of Puebla. Credit: Courtesy of Taselotzin

Growing risks

Like other regions of Mexico, a country vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis, Cuetzalan, with some 50,000 people in 2020, is suffering from climate impacts.

Between March and June this year, the municipality experienced severe, extreme and exceptional droughts, which had not happened so far this century, according to the governmental National Meteorological System’s Drought Monitor.

In addition, it lost 1,000 hectares of tree cover from 2001 to 2023, equivalent to a 12 percent decrease since 2000, according to data from the international platform Global Forest Watch. In 2023, it lost 86 hectares, the highest figure since 2019 (108).

“The land is bountiful. We have been through a lot and we are still standing,” said Doña Rufi, as she is affectionately known in the area, which cultivates milpa, an ancestral system that combines the planting of corn, beans, squash and chili peppers, as well as coffee, bananas and medicinal plants.

This century, the communities of Cuetzalan have faced threats to water, such as mass tourism, mining and hydroelectric initiatives, as well as electricity and oil projects of the state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos and Federal Electricity Commission.

A woman weaves on a loom in the indigenous municipality of Cuetzalan del Progreso, central Mexico. Credit: Government of Puebla

The Cuetzalan Ecological Territorial Planning Program, created in 2010, regulates land use in the municipality.

Most of Cuetzalan’s water supply relies on springs. More than 80 community water committees operate and are responsible for water transfer infrastructure and maintenance, but the drought is affecting these sources.

“The drought has been hard, although now it is raining. We protect the springs and that is why we have opposed projects of death”, as the Nahua villagers call works that destroy the environment, said Villa.

The cooperative is made up of 100 Nahua women from six of the municipality’s communities. It is one of some 100 women’s cooperatives, out of a total of 8,000 operating in the country.

Two farmers check the flow of water coming from the springs, the main source of supply for the indigenous municipality of Cuetzalan del Progreso in the Mexican state of Puebla. Credit: Cupreder

Absent

Mexico’s public policies lack a climate justice perspective, which is reflected in the territory.

The latest update of Mexico’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), the set of voluntary climate policies that each country adopts as part of the Paris Agreement, mentions climate justice only once and does not link any of the measures to it.

The same is true of Puebla’s 2021-2030 State Climate Change Strategy.

Hilda Salazar, founder of the non-governmental organisation Mujer y Ambiente, believes the ‘powerful’ concept of climate justice has permeated little in Mexico’s municipalities and communities.

“There has been no vision of climate justice. In recent years, because of the severe impacts, they have begun to introduce the concept, but without much clarity about what we are talking about,” she told IPS in an interview in Mexico City.

“The state and municipal governments have a great lack of knowledge. When it comes to implementation, it is seen as an environmental issue, not as development, and it is divorced from the climate agenda”, she adds.

A banner rejecting megaprojects in the indigenous municipality of Cuetzalan del Progreso, in the central Mexican state of Puebla. Credit: Cupreder

In Mexico, the courts have received at least 23 lawsuits related to climate issues, a far cry from Brazil’s 89 cases. Few have been successful and fewer still were linked to climate justice.

In this scenario, processes such as those of the Cuetzalan cooperative could motivate more local communities to undertake their own.

Villa appreciated several lessons learned from the cooperative’s longstanding work.

“We know how to organize, which one person cannot achieve alone—to continue establishing networks, to know what is happening in other regions, it is important to take care of our environment and our culture, defend our collective rights, our autonomy as women, as people, as indigenous people,” she stressed.

And she believes it is important to pass this on to younger women. “Women used to work at home, but now they go out to sell their products, such as coffee, cinnamon, honey, or work in tourism,” she said.

According to Salazar, who is also a member of the non-governmental Gender and Environment Network, there is a lack of legislation, programmes and land policies.

“It is a structural problem. It does not reach the dimension it should have because of the impacts, and policies divorce economic, technological, social and cultural aspects. There are disadvantages (for women) from access to information to participation and implementation,” she said.

In her opinion, the gender approach has the virtue, in environmental and climate issues, of putting asymmetries and inequalities at the centre. “It strikes at the heart,” she said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

This feature piece is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.

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Young Guarani indigenous people studying for a technical degree in indigenous community tourism in Yriapu, in the extreme northeast of Argentina. Credit: Daniel Gutman / IPS

By Daniel Gutman
IGUAZU, Argentina, Oct 11 2024 (IPS)

A few years ago, Bernardo Olivera moved to Posadas, the capital of the Argentinean province of Misiones, to study mathematics at the public university. Interested in numbers and keen to progress, he felt, however, that the education system put a barrier in his way because of his indigenous origin.

“I did an entire four-month term and couldn’t pass a single subject. Studying was very difficult for me because of the language; I couldn’t adapt,” Olivera, now 27 and the father of an eight-year-old daughter, told IPS.

Like all young people who grew up in the more than 100 indigenous Guarani communities in this province, in the far northeast of Argentina, he is a native Guarani speaker and only learned Spanish at school.“When young indigenous people enter a university or a conventional higher education institution, it does not take into account their mother tongue nor their different pace. Teachers and authorities end up seeing them as a problem”: Viviana Bacigalupo.

Now Olivera has another opportunity, and it suits him better. He is studying again, thanks to the launching in 2023 of the first higher education course in the province of Misiones aimed especially at young indigenous secondary school graduates and designed from the cultural identity and worldview of the Guarani people.

It is a higher technical course in indigenous community tourism and operates in Iguazu, on the triple border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. It is bilingual – in Guarani and Spanish – and has both indigenous and non-indigenous teachers.

“Today my dream is to create an agency for tourists to visit our communities and learn about our culture. That way I will be able to help my people,” he says.

Classes take place every morning in Provincial Secondary School 117, a bright, single-storey building in the midst of dozens of wooden or mud-brick houses with tin roofs that are scattered throughout the forest and make up the Yriapu indigenous community.

Yriapu is home to some 140 families, who have achieved recognition of the communal ownership of 265 hectares of land that they occupy ancestrally.

With Yriapu’s struggle, the Guarani have managed to rescue a portion of the encroaching tourist development associated with Iguazu Falls, a natural wonder that attracts visitors from all over the world and which this year is on the verge of reaching one million tickets sold, according to data from the National Parks Administration (APN).

The falls, located just 15 minutes by road from Yriapu, are in the so-called Paranaense rainforest, an ecosystem of exuberant vegetation and great biodiversity, which Argentina shares with Brazil and Paraguay.

None of the resources left behind by tourism, however, are felt in Yriapu, where well water is consumed due to the lack of a public water network and people walk the trails carrying large quantities of firewood on their backs, the only fuel available for cooking and heating water.

Argentina as a whole is home to 1,306,730 people who recognised themselves as indigenous in the 2022 census, almost 3% of the total population. Of the 46 million inhabitants of this South American country, 52% live in poverty – according to official statistics made public in late September – and discrimination against indigenous peoples aggravates their situation.

View of one of the dwellings of the Guarani community in Yriapu, on the Argentinean side of the triple border with Brazil and Paraguay. Credit: Daniel Gutman / IPS

Intercultural educational course

“When young indigenous people enter a university or a conventional higher education institution, it does not take into account their mother tongue nor their different pace. Teachers and authorities end up seeing them as a problem,” Viviana Bacigalupo, principal of the Raul Karai Correa Indigenous Higher Institute, which offers the technical course, told IPS.

“What tends to happen is that they start with great enthusiasm and then drop out, which increases their exclusion from the world of labour and their vulnerability. The aim here is to generate an educational offer with the culture, rhythms and worldview of the Guarani people,” she adds.

Bacigalupo, and most of the intercultural team she is part of, come from the so-called Mate Project, created in 2005 to promote the self-management of tourism and cultural resources by the Guarani people of the Iguazu area, which began with short training sessions aimed at improving the labour skills of the communities.

In addition to Argentina, the Guarani people are present in Paraguay, southern Brazil and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia. In fact, students from each of these countries are studying remotely in the technical course.

The strength of its language, which is official in Paraguay, is the biggest Guarani cultural legacy. According to the Mercosur Parliament, it is spoken by 85% of the Paraguayan population, and another 15 million people use it in Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia.

Oscar Benitez, professor of culture and worldview of the Guarani people; Claudio Salvador, academic coordinator; and Viviana Bacigalupo, principal of the Raul Karai Correa Indigenous Higher Institute. Credit: Daniel Gutman / IPS

The technical course currently has 26 students, seven of whom are from communities far from Iguazu, who stay in hostels in Yriapu during the week.

The Institute, run by the government of Misiones, was internationally recognised by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) and the World Indigenous Tourism Alliance (Winta) as a unique model of Intercultural Indigenous Education.

“Indigenous tourism is carried out according to the principles of the people and is attached to their spirituality. It is not a main activity for the communities, but complementary to traditional life,” Claudio Salvador, the institute’s academic coordinator, told IPS.

“Today, for example, when tourists who come to Misiones visit the ruins of the Jesuit missions created by the Catholic Church to evangelise the Guarani, they don’t hear the indigenous story. We want it to be present,” he adds.

Abdon Ojeda, from the Yriapu community, shows one of the traditional traps designed by the Guarani to hunt animals in the forest. Credit: Daniel Gutman / IPS

Loss of biodiversity

The Yriapu community has been receiving tourists for years, attracted by signs on the side of the road linking the hotel zone in Iguazu with the entrance to the falls. The visitors are taken on a tour of the jungle trails and told about Guarani culture.

“We see an opportunity in tourism if we reinforce our knowledge,” Abdon Ojeda tells IPS, as he shows a tree called guaporaity (Plinia cauliflora), whose bark, he says, is used by the indigenous people to make a tea that relieves stomach pain.

In addition to medicinal plants, visitors can see traps made of wood for hunting animals. The Guarani people were hunters, but today the traps are made only to show tourists, because much of the jungle biodiversity has been lost in Misiones.

Communication, tourist services, IT, English, theatre and Guarani culture and worldview are some of the subjects that form part of the technical course. The aim is for them to be taught by teaching pairs made up of an indigenous and a non-indigenous teacher, who work side by side with teaching strategies that alternate equally between the two languages.

“What we are doing has never existed in our province and I am very proud of it,” Oscar Benitez, an indigenous teacher of the Guarani people’s worldview culture, told IPS.

“We want to help the younger generations to have a professional qualification and to be able to integrate, by strengthening our own culture, into a world that is now overtaking us with the power of its communication. And we know that only education is the path to equal opportunities,” he concludes.

Salvador, the academic coordinator, an experienced teacher who became involved with the Yriapu community in 2003, when he joined the struggle for recognition of community ownership of the lands they occupy ancestrally, explains that the plan is for the institute to grow by 2025.

“We see that there is a lot of interest for next year and the idea is to open up to other audiences, other groups, objectives and goals.  Aiming at farmers, other provinces and other cultures. If we do well, we will be fully intercultural from next year onwards,” he argues about the future of the Indigenous Higher Institute of Yriapu.

Indigenous people gathered in Brasilia during the Free Land Camp, which is held every April in the capital, demonstrate against the time frame law, with the National Congress building in the background. Credit: Gustavo Bezerra / IndiBSB

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 20 2024 (IPS)

A never-ending battle threatens the indigenous rights that seemed clear and secure in Brazil, until the extreme right emerged in 2018 with a force challenging the civilisational advances set out in the Constitution.

After three decades of progress in the demarcation of their territories and other victories, Brazil’s indigenous peoples have suffered setbacks since the administration of former president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022). Now that the government is friendly to their demands, they face an insidious enemy: the time frame.

“I see no prospects for a favourable solution,” admits Mauricio Terena, a lawyer and coordinator of the legal department of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib), formed by the country’s seven main indigenous organisations.“The rights of the indigenous minority are the negotiable part within a larger negotiation to calm the alleged democratic crisis. But granting a snack to mitigate the crisis feeds the monster that the STF wants to devour”: Juliana Batista

“We are worried, our expectations are not good”, agreed Juliana Batista, a lawyer at the Instituto Socioambiental, an indigenous and environmental non-governmental organisation.

Both are referring to the conciliation process convened by the president of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), Gilmar Mendes, in search of an agreement on the indigenous lands, between the indigenous peoples themselves and the legislators who passed a law in the National Congress imposing a time frame.

This time frame, a rule limiting indigenous peoples’ rights only to the lands they had occupied up to 5 October 1988, the day the Constitution was enacted, is the weapon of a far-right offensive that has sown uncertainty and setbacks among indigenous peoples.

On 21 September 2023, the STF deemed this framework unconstitutional, after years in which this notion, embraced by some judges, prevented several demarcations. The Constitution assures indigenous people “original rights over the lands they have traditionally occupied”, which is the opposite of a date.

But Congress rebelled against this ruling and six days later passed a law setting the time frame and amendments that weaken indigenous autonomy and the protection of their territories.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva vetoed most of the measures, including the time frame. But three months later Congress overrode the veto, in an open challenge to the president, the STF and the Constitution.

The makeshift camp where indigenous Guarani-Kaiwoá people live in Douradina, a municipality in the central-western state of Mato Grosso do Sul, awaiting the final demarcation of their territory. In July and early August they were attacked by landowners’ gunmen, who wounded 10 people. Credit: Bruno Peres / Agência Brasil

The risks for indigenous peoples

“Conciliation has no sense on a thesis that the Supreme Court has already deemed unconstitutional. It looks like a move of self-preservation by the Supreme Court in its disputes with Congress,” Terena told IPS, referring to the worsening conflicts between the two branches of government that have been roiling Brazilian politics for the past five years.

The STF’s battles, previously more frequent with the executive branch due to Bolsonaro’s abuses of power and lies, including in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic, are now common with the legislative branch, where the extreme right has grown stronger, despite Bolsonaro being defeated in his 2022 bid for re-election.

Judge Mendes is reportedly trying to flexibilise the dispute, mainly with the “ruralistas”, the agribusiness caucus, the largest in Congress and upset by the STF ruling, which considers it hostile to rural property and a factor of legal uncertainty for the powerful rural sector.

To this end, it has set up a Conciliation Commission, a series of STF hearings when a matter under its consideration is particularly controversial and could become conflictive. In this case, it is made up of 24 members, mostly legislators and government representatives.

Apib has only six members and feels it has been left with a dramatic choice.

Terena belongs to this indigenous group that feels at a disadvantage and has threatened to withdraw from the negotiations at the first hearing, on 5 August, given the adverse rules for indigenous peoples dictated by Mendes, as rapporteur of the time frame processes in the STF.

The judge decided after that hearing to consult the indigenous communities before deciding. The second hearing will be on 28 August.

Indigenous people protest in front of the Supreme Federal Court in Brasilia on 3 March 2024 against the law that reinstated a time frame for the demarcation of indigenous peoples’ lands, which was deemed unconstitutional by the same court but remains in force, fuelling conflict. Credit: Rafa Neddermeyer / Agência Brasil

Contradictions weaken the Supreme Court’s role

Among the proposed rules, one states that if a party walks out from the negotiations these will not be interrupted. Another says that resolutions may be adopted by a majority vote. No conciliation is possible without one of the interested parties, nor is it imposed by a vote, Terena argued in his interview with IPS by telephone from Brasilia.

The decision must be delayed because there are many leaders to be heard and “many risks in withdrawing from or remaining in the commission,” said the member of the Terena people, one of the most numerous in Brazil, who live in the central-western state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

“I think the risks are greater in being present, because it would mean accepting these rules and legitimising a meaningless conciliation process,” the lawyer said.

Moreover, the indigenous people, the most affected party in this issue, are a minority in a commission that can vote on resolutions, Batista added.

The damage to indigenous rights is prolonged and accumulating.

The STF took two years to conclude the trial on the time frame and did not suspend the law’s validity, even though its main precept is unconstitutional according to the country’s highest court, the ISA lawyer pointed out.

“This contradiction weakens the authority of the STF. Mendes adopted a position that was more political than legal, so as not to confront the economic interests of a strong sector”, that of agribusiness, she also said by telephone from Brasilia.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva received in Brasilia on 10 August leaders of the Guaraní-Kaiwoá people, who live in territories that are too small or are fighting for the demarcation of their lands, sometimes under armed attack by large landowners. Credit: Ricardo Stuckert / PR

To the detriment of the minority

Batista warned that “the rights of the indigenous minority are the negotiable part, in a larger negotiation to calm the alleged democratic crisis. But granting a snack to mitigate the crisis feeds the monster that the STF wants to devour.”

Terena stressed that since it seems unfeasible to defend the constitutionality of the time frame, “the object of the negotiation” by the ruralists is the compensation to landowners for the land in their possession that they may lose when indigenous rights are restored, and the economic exploitation, be it mining, agricultural or other, of the demarcated territory.

So far, those occupying land recognised as indigenous are only entitled to compensation for the improvements and works they have contributed to the territory, where economic activities are restricted and subject to indigenous acceptance.

Anti-indigenous forces may also benefit by putting obstacles to the demarcation of reserves, to delay the process. Compensation for those with legitimate land titles, a measure already approved by the STF, could make many demarcations unfeasible for a government with severe fiscal constraints, Batista said.

“What happens to indigenous people who do not get the land they need and are entitled to? Forced assimilation by the surrounding society, but also many deaths, including in conflicts over land, suicides of those who are not assimilated,” he warned.

The intended conciliation should prioritise obtaining “land to compensate and resettle occupants of territories under demarcation”, and for the growing indigenous population, said Marcio Santilli, a founding partner of ISA, in an article published by the organisation.

Genocide

The indigenous population, estimated at three to eight million when the Portuguese arrived in Brazil in 1500, fell to 294,131 in the official 1991 census, which for the first time counted those who declared themselves indigenous. Previously they were considered to be mestizos.

Historical genocide flared up during the military dictatorship (1964-1985). But it was precisely during this period that resistance manifested itself in the reaffirmation of indigenous identity and the struggle for rights, recognised in the 1988 Constitution, at least in relation to their land.

Three decades of democracy and constitutional rights prompted a renaissance of indigenous peoples that was reflected in the 2022 census: a total of 1,693,535 declared themselves indigenous, 5.7 times the 1991 population.

The Constitution encouraged the demarcation of 451 indigenous territories, 84.6% of Brazil’s total, in the three decades following the military dictatorship, according to data from ISA, which accumulates an extensive database on indigenous peoples.

But that progress was interrupted during the Bolsonaro government, a representative of the same forces that backed the military. The current administration has resumed demarcations and other indigenist policies, but with the limitations imposed by the power of the far right in Congress and in agricultural and religious sectors.

President Lula promised to ratify the 14 indigenous lands that were already demarcated and ready for final approval at the start of his government in January 2023, but four have yet to be ratified. Brazil has 533 of these territories already formalised, while another 263 are in various stages of demarcation.

Solar panels with a capacity to generate 30 kilowatts no longer work in the Darora Community of the Macuxi people, an indigenous group from Roraima, a state in the far north of Brazil. The batteries only worked for a month before they were damaged because they could not withstand the charge. CREDIT: Boa Vista City Hall

By Mario Osava
BOA VISTA, Brazil, Jan 25 2023 (IPS)

“Our electric power is of bad quality, it ruins electrical appliances,” complained Jesus Mota, 63. “In other places it works well, not here. Just because we are indigenous,” protested his wife, Adélia Augusto da Silva, of the same age.

“The solar panels were left here, useless. We want to reactivate them, it would be really good. We need more powerful batteries, like the ones they put in the bus terminal in Boa Vista.” -- Lindomar da Silva Homero
The Darora Community of the Macuxi indigenous people illustrates the struggle for electricity by towns and isolated villages in the Amazon rainforest. Most get it from generators that run on diesel, a fuel that is polluting and expensive since it is transported from far away, by boats that travel on rivers for days.

Located 88 kilometers from the city of Boa Vista, capital of the state of Roraima, in the far north of Brazil, Darora celebrated the inauguration of its solar power plant, installed by the municipal government, in March 2017. It represented modernity in the form of a clean, stable source of energy.

A 600-meter network of poles and cables made it possible to light up the “center” of the community and to distribute electricity to its 48 families.

But “it only lasted a month, the batteries broke down,” Tuxaua (chief) Lindomar da Silva Homero, 43, a school bus driver, told IPS during a visit to the community. The village had to go back to the noisy and unreliable diesel generator, which only supplies a few hours of electricity a day.

Fortunately, about four months later, the Boa Vista electricity distribution company laid its cables to Darora, making it part of its grid.

“The solar panels were left here, useless. We want to reactivate them, it would be really good. We need more powerful batteries, like the ones they put in the bus terminal in Boa Vista,” said Homero, referring to one of the many solar plants that the city government installed in the capital.

Tuxaua (chief) Lindomar Homero of the Darora Community is calling for new adequate batteries to reactivate the solar power plant, because the electricity they receive from the national grid is too expensive for the local indigenous people. Behind him stands his predecessor, former tuxaua Jesus Mota. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Expensive energy

But indigenous people can’t afford the electricity from the distributor Roraima Energía, he said. On average, each family pays between 100 and 150 reais (20 to 30 dollars) a month, he estimated.

Besides, there are unpleasant surprises. “My November bill climbed to 649 reais” (130 dollars), without any explanation,” Homero complained. The solar energy was free.

“If you don’t pay, they cut off your power,” said Mota, who was tuxaua from 1990 to 2020.”In addition, the electricity from the grid fails a lot,” which is why the equipment is damaged.

Apart from the unreliable supply and frequent blackouts, there is not enough energy for the irrigation of agriculture, the community’s main source of income. “We can do it with diesel pumps, but it’s expensive; selling watermelons at the current price does not cover the cost,” he said.

“In 2022, it rained a lot, but there are dry summers that require irrigation for our corn, bean, squash, potato, and cassava crops. The energy we receive is not enough to operate the pump,” said Mota.

A photo of the three water tanks in the village of Darora, one of which holds water that is made potable by chemical treatment. The largest and longest building is the secondary school that serves the Macuxi indigenous community that lives in Roraima, in northern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Achilles’ heel

Batteries still apparently limit the efficiency of solar energy in isolated or autonomous off-grid systems, with which the government and various private initiatives are attempting to make the supply of electricity universal and replace diesel generators.

Homero said that some of the Darora families who live outside the “center” of the village and have solar panels also had problems with the batteries.

Besides the 48 families in the village “center” there are 18 rural families, bringing the community’s total population to 265.

A solar plant was also installed in another community made up of 22 indigenous families of the Warao people, immigrants from Venezuela, called Warao a Janoko, 30 kilometers from Boa Vista.

But of the plant’s eight batteries, two have already stopped working after only a few months of use. And electricity is only guaranteed until 8:00 p.m.

“Batteries have gotten a lot better in the last decade, but they are still the weak link in solar power,” Aurelio Souza, a consultant who specializes in this question, told IPS from the city of São Paulo. “Poor sizing and the low quality of electronic charging control equipment aggravate this situation and reduce the useful life of the batteries.”

The low quality of the electricity supplied to Darora is due to the discrimination suffered by indigenous people, according to Adélia Augusto da Silva. The water they used to drink was also dirty and caused illnesses, especially in children, until the indigenous health service began to chemically treat their drinking water. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

In Brazil’s Amazon jungle, close to a million people live without electricity, according to the Institute of Energy and the Environment, a non-governmental organization based in São Paulo. More precisely, its 2019 study identified 990,103 people in that situation.

Another three million inhabitants of the region, including the 650,000 people in Roraima, are outside the National Interconnected Electricity System. Their energy therefore depends mostly on diesel fuel transported from other regions, at a cost that affects all Brazilians.

The government decided to subsidize this fossil fuel so that the cost of electricity is not prohibitive in the Amazon region.

This subsidy is paid by other consumers, which contributes to making Brazilian electricity one of the most expensive in the world, despite the low cost of its main source, hydropower, which accounts for about 60 of the country’s electricity.

Solar energy became a viable alternative as the parts became cheaper. Initiatives to bring electricity to remote communities and reduce diesel consumption mushroomed.

But in remote plants outside the reach of the grid, good batteries are needed to store energy for the nighttime hours.

Part of the so-called “downtown” in Darora, which has lamp posts, houses, a soccer field and a shed where the community meets. A larger community center is needed, says
the leader of the Macuxi village located near Boa Vista, the capital of the northern Brazilian state of Roraima. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

A unique case

Darora is not a typical case. It is part of the municipality of Boa Vista, which has a population of 437,000 inhabitants and good resources, it is close to a paved road and is within a savannah ecosystem called “lavrado”.

It is at the southern end of the São Marcos indigenous territory, where many Macuxi indigenous people live but fewer than in Raposa Serra do Sol, Roraima’s other large native reserve. According to the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (Sesai), there were 33,603 Macuxi Indians living in Roraima in 2014.

The Macuxi people also live in the neighboring country of Guyana, where there are a similar number to that of Roraima. Their language is part of the Karib family.

Although there are no large forests in the surrounding area, Darora takes its name from a tree, which offers “very resistant wood that is good for building houses,” Homero explained.

The community emerged in 1944, founded by a patriarch who lived to be 93 years old and attracted other Macuxi people to the area.

The progress they have made especially stands out in the secondary school in the village “center”, which currently has 89 students and 32 employees, “all from Darora, except for three teachers from outside,” Homero said proudly.

A new, larger elementary and middle school for students in the first to ninth grades was built a few years ago about 500 meters from the community.

Water used to be a serious problem. “We drank dirty, red water, children died of diarrhea. But now we have good, treated water,” said Adélia da Silva.

“We dug three artesian wells, but the water was useless, it was salty. The solution was brought by a Sesai technician, who used a chemical substance to make the water from the lagoon drinkable,” Homero said.

The community has three elevated water tanks, two for water used for bathing and cleaning and one for drinking water. There are no more health problems caused by water, the tuxaua said.

His current concern is to find new sources of income for the community. Tourism is one alternative. “We have the Tacutu river beach 300 meters away, great fruit production, handicrafts and typical local gastronomy based on corn and cassava,” he said, listing attractions for visitors.

Mapuche activist Maria Hueichaqeo stands in front of the ruca (traditional Mapuche circular house) built on the Antu Mapu campus, which serves as the headquarters for the work of the Tain Adkimn Mapuche Indigenous Association, aimed at raising awareness in Chilean society of the situation of indigenous peoples and of how the Chilean state has mistreated them up to now. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Jan 24 2023 (IPS)

Mapuche indigenous leaders were hit hard by what they see as a collective defeat: the rejection in a September referendum of a plurinational, intercultural constitution proposed to Chile by an unprecedented constituent assembly with gender parity and indigenous representatives.

“We felt devastated, some leaders cried. This defeat never crossed our minds because we thought this was going to change,” Nelly Hueichan, president of the Mapuche Trepeiñ Community, a women’s collective in the Lo Hermida municipality on the southside of Santiago, told IPS.

“For our people there has never been an easy solution…This is not the first time that we have been defeated,” added the 64-year-old activist.

“It was a tremendous challenge and an opportunity to change this society that has discriminated against us so much,” she said. “Now we have to stand up and resume the fight. We continue to organize and get ourselves ready.”

Hueichan came to Santiago when she was 17, from San Juan de la Costa, in the province of Osorno, 930 kilometers to the south. Her first job was as a domestic worker.

More than 13 million of Chile’s 19.5 million people voted in the Sept. 4 referendum, when 61.86 percent of voters (7,882,238) cast their ballot against the draft constitution and only 38.14 percent (4,859,039) voted to approve it.

Thus, voters rejected the proposal approved by more than two-thirds of the 154 elected members of the constituent assembly that sought to turn Chile into a plurinational and intercultural state.

According to the last census, 1.8 million Chileans belong to an indigenous group. The Mapuches make up the largest native community (80 percent of the total). They come from the south of the country, but half have moved away from there, mainly to Santiago. The next biggest communities are the Aymaras (7.1 percent) and the Diaguitas (4 percent), followed by the Atacameño, Quechua, Rapa Nui, Colla, Chango, Kawésqar and Yagán peoples.

The rejected constitution contained “the dreams of those who were not and have not been in power; it proposed a new path for Chileans that the citizens did not want to take,” said Mapuche linguist and professor Elisa Loncón, who presided over the first period of the constituent assembly.

Salvador Millaleo, a Mapuche professor at the University of Chile Law School, told IPS that “without a doubt indigenous peoples were harmed and damaged the most, because the proposal that was rejected had the most comprehensive framework of rights that has ever been put forth.”

The campaign for the “no” vote ahead of the referendum argued that excessive rights would be given to indigenous people, giving them a privileged position over other Chileans. The fearmongering played on long-standing racism embedded in Chilean society.

The Trepeiñ Community, presided over by Nelly Hueichan, brings together 35 Mapuche members who live in the municipality of Lo Hermida, mainly women with a similar background of labor and social discrimination. Their activities and meetings are carried out in a ruca (traditional Mapuche dwelling) that they also lend to other local residents to hold activities for social benefit. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Racism and repression

This racism was nourished by the repressive policies imposed on indigenous people by successive governments, especially the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

Back then, the conflict over ownership of land claimed by indigenous groups but now in private hands, especially of forestry companies, was declared non-existent. In addition, Mapuche activists were tried and sentenced as terrorists, when they carried out actions demanding the return of their ancestral lands.

Indigenous leaders are demanding reparations for the violation of the human rights of the Mapuche people during crackdowns by the authorities and argue that priority must be given to the issue of usurped lands.

The poor handling of the Mapuche question means that the southern regions where most of them live are the poorest in Chile, plagued by precarious jobs and high unemployment, as well as serious deficiencies in education, infrastructure and healthcare.

“A fairly generalized climate has been generated among the political elites that are opposed to or do not prioritize the rights of indigenous peoples,” said Millaleo.

This environment contrasts with the one prevailing during the 2019 protests under the government of rightwing president Sebastián Piñera (2018-2022), when Mapuche flags were raised in the massive demonstrations.

“Back then we were all very happy, but the leaders had little awareness that they had to consolidate this support, adopt strategies, seek broader backing in the indigenous world and among non-governmental organizations, and keep people in the territories informed,” said Millaleo.

The triumph of the “no” vote was the other side of the coin from the majority election of independent constituents in May 2021, which culminated in the installation two months later of a constituent assembly presided over by Loncón.

The Ceremonial Center of Indigenous Peoples, located on José Arrieta avenue in the municipality of Peñalolén, was inaugurated in May 2022. Sitting on 4.2 hectares of land it represents expressions and promotes traditions and customs of the Mapuche, Aymara and Rapa Nui cultures present in the municipality. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

False threat

María Hueichaqueo chairs one of the 130 Mapuche organizations in Santiago: the Tain Adkimn Mapuche Indigenous Association in the working-class municipality of La Pintana, where the population is 16 percent indigenous.

At the same time, rightwing politicians convinced many voters that indigenous people would take over the Chilean territory if the new constitution was approved.

“Nowhere in the world have indigenous peoples seized land that was ancestrally ours,” said Hueichaqueo. “In some cases mechanisms, treaties or agreements have been created to solve conflicts over land.”

Hueichaqueo, 57, moved to Santiago from Chol Chol, a municipality in the Araucanía region, 700 kilometers south of the capital.

“I was born in a ruca (traditional Mapuche house) and at the age of seven months I came here with my mother. My father is a cacique (chief) and lives in the Lonko José Poulef Community in Chol Chol,” she told IPS at the Antu Mapu (Land of the Sun) campus, the largest University of Chile campus, where the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine is located.

According to Hueichaqueo, “what is happening is that the powers that be do not want to lose power. They feel that if the indigenous peoples have rights, their power will decline.”

The activist acknowledged that “we were unable to make a deeper analysis of the situation we were experiencing, in order to better understand what kind of representatives we needed in the constituent assembly.”

Indigenous errors

“Unfortunately not all of our indigenous brothers and sisters handled themselves well in the assembly,” she said. “Some took very extreme positions not in line with the real situation in the country. We are aware of the land claims and the violations of human rights. But that has to do with the State and we were talking about a new constitution, about everyone living together in the same territories.”

According to Hueichaqueo, the indigenous constituents distanced themselves from the organizations. To illustrate, she pointed out that some were elected with a large number of votes but then, in their own territories, a majority voted against the draft constitution.

Millaleo said that another mistake made by the indigenous representatives was “not daring to ask the radicalized groups that did not support the constituent assembly process to put down their weapons, and to clearly differentiate themselves from these groups.”

Hueichaqueo said that now the Mapuche people “are in a state of reflection. But we’re not sitting with our arms crossed, because indigenous peoples have a history of more than 500 years of mobilization and demands, and they are not going to stop us because of a constituent assembly that failed.”

“If it is not us, it will be our children, and if it is not our children it will be our grandchildren, but our demands will continue to be voiced as long as the Chilean State does not listen to the peoples and does not recognize the rights that it needs to recognize,” she said.

María Hueichaqueo stands surrounded by figures that represent men and women on the Antu Mapu university campus (“land of the sun” in Mapuche), in Santiago. They welcome students who attend an elective course to learn Mapudungun (Mapuche or Araucanian language) and to study indigenous inclusion in the history of Chile. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

New attempt to rewrite the constitution

Hueichaqueo said she was “pessimistic regarding how much progress can be made in any new constitution that could be drafted because neither the State nor the government nor the political class are delivering democratic, participatory and governance guarantees” in this new process.

The Chilean Congress approved a new process with a committee of 24 experts elected by an equal number of votes from the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, which will draft a new constitution. It will start working on Mar. 6, the same day that another technical-administrative commission of 14 experts also appointed by Congress will be installed.

On May 7, 50 members of a joint Constitutional Council will be elected by Chile’s voters, with a gender balance and a minimum number of indigenous representatives. It will have five months to set forth a new constitution drawn up based on the preliminary draft created by the experts.

On Dec. 17, the new draft constitution will be submitted to a referendum.

But according to Loncón, this strategy is aimed at continuing to exclude indigenous people.

“Today they intend to write the new constitution with a discredited political elite, which will never speak the language of the peoples because they are not the peoples, and we can suspect that they only seek to maintain their positions of power and their benefits,” she said.

The poet’s view

For 50-year-old poet Elicura Chihuailaf, the first Mapuche to win the National Literature Prize, in 2020, it is difficult to understand the defeat “after it seemed that the majority of the population of Chile began to recognize it also has native heritage.”

Speaking to IPS from Cunco, 736 kilometers south of Santiago, he said that he sees ignorance among Chileans about the world view of native peoples.

“Everything that happened had to do to a great extent with the media, because of that superficial and alienated group that owns the media,” he asserted.

In his opinion, “history has been handled in a manner biased by the vested interests of a small group that I have called the superficial or alienated Chile, which has written its own version of history.”

“It ignores what was and continues to be the occupation of a territory, of a country, which was called and continues to be called ‘wal mapu’, the meeting of all the lands”, in the Mapuche language, Chihuailaf said.

“When you talk about development, it is said that the native peoples do not want it, but our peoples say we want development, but with nature and not against it,” he argued.

The award-winning poet said “the first step to recover the dignity of this country is for the popular classes to recognize their identity, and acknowledge that it comes from native peoples and that all cultures are important.”

“That the most beautiful blackness, the most beautiful yellowness, the most beautiful whiteness and the most beautiful brownness are neither more nor less than others,” he said.

A family from Sachac, a Quechua farming community in the Andes highlands region of Cuzco in southeastern Peru, where Quechua is still the predominant language and where ancestral customs are preserved. When members of these native families move to the cities, they face different forms of racism, despite the fact that 60 percent of the Peruvian population identifies as ‘mestizo’ or mixed-race and 25 percent as a member of an indigenous people. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Sep 1 2022 (IPS)

Banning the use of the same bathroom, insults and calling people animals are just a few of the daily forms of racism experienced by people in Peru, a multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual country where various forms of discrimination are intertwined.

“In the houses where I have worked, they have always told me: ‘Teresa, this is the service bathroom, the one you have to use,’ as if they were disgusted that I might use their toilets,” Teresa Mestanza, 56, who has worked as a domestic in Lima since she was a teenager, told IPS.

She was born in a coastal town in the northern department of Lambayeque, where her parents moved from the impoverished neighboring region of Cajamarca, the homeland of current President Pedro Castillo, a rural teacher and trade unionist with indigenous features.

With Quechua indigenous roots, she considers herself to be “mestiza” or mixed-race and believes that her employers treat her differently, making her feel inferior because of the color of her skin.

Sixty percent of the population of this South American country of 33 million people describe themselves as “mestizo”, according to the 2017 National Census, the last one carried out in Peru.

For the first time, the census included questions on ethnic self-identification to provide official data on the indigenous and Afro-Peruvian population in order to develop public policies aimed at closing the inequality gap that affects their rights.

A study by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) ranks Peru as the country with the third largest indigenous population in the region, after Bolivia and Guatemala.

Teresa Mestanza has experienced discriminatory, if not outright humiliating, treatment because of the color of her skin, as a domestic worker in Lima since she arrived as a teenager from a Quechua community in northern coastal Peru. She defines herself as ‘mestiza’ or mixed-race and believes that this is the reason why some of her employers try to “make me feel less of a person.” CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Before the invasion by the Spaniards, several native peoples lived in what is now Peru, where the Tahuantinsuyo, the great Inca empire, emerged. At present, there are officially 55 different indigenous peoples, 51 from the Amazon rainforest region and four from the Andes highlands, which preserve their own languages, identities, customs and forms of social organization.

According to the census, a quarter of the population self-identified as indigenous: 22 percent Quechua, two percent Aymara and one percent Amazonian indigenous, while four percent self-identified as Afro-descendant or black.

During the Spanish colonial period, slaves were brought from Africa to do hard labor or work in domestic service. It was not until three decades after independence was declared that the country abolished slavery, in 1854.

Indigenous and Afro-Peruvian populations are historically discriminated against in Peru, in a country with traditionally highly segmented classes. Their needs and demands have not been met by the State despite legal frameworks that seek to guarantee equality and non-discrimination and specific rights for indigenous peoples.

This situation is reflected on a daily level in routine racism, a problem recognized by more than half of the population (52 percent) but assumed as such by only eight percent, according to a national survey conducted by the Ministry of Culture in 2018.

Sofia Carrillo is a journalist, activist and anti-racist feminist and Afro-Peruvian proud of her roots, who has faced racism since childhood and despite this made Forbes Peru’s list of the most influential women in the country this year. CREDIT: Amnesty International

“Racism is hushed up because it hurts less”

A journalist, activist, and radio and television host who was chosen by Forbes Peru magazine as one of the 50 most powerful women in the country this year, Sofia Carrillo is an Afro-Peruvian proud of her roots who has faced many obstacles and “no’s” since childhood.

“It was not seen as possible, for example, for me to be a studious girl because I was of African descent, and black people were not seen as intelligent. And that was represented on television and generated a great sense of rebellion in me,” she told IPS in Lima.

Faced with these messages she had only two options. “Either you believe it or you confront the situation and use it as a possibility to show that it is not true. I shouldn’t have to prove myself more than other people, but in a country as racist and as sexist as this one, that was the challenge I took on and what motivated me throughout all the stages of my life,” she said.

In her home racism was not a taboo subject, and was discussed. But this was not the case in the extended family of cousins and aunts and uncles “because it’s better not to be aware of the situation, so it hurts less; it’s a way to protect yourself,” Carrillo said.

“It is not uncommon for people of African descent to even say that they do not feel affected by racism or discrimination, because we have also been taught this in our families: that it will affect you if you identify it, but if you pretend it does not happen, then it is much easier to deal with,” she said.

Her experience as a black woman has included receiving insults since she was a child and sexual harassment in public spaces, in transportation, on the street, “to be looked at as a sexual object, to be dehumanized,” she said.

She has also had to deal with prejudices about her abilities in the workplace. And although she has never stopped raising her voice in protest, it has affected her.

“Now I can admit that it affected my mental health, it led to periods of deep depression. I did not understand why, what the reasons were, because you also try to hide it, you try to bury it deep inside. But I understood that one way to heal was to talk about my own experiences,” Carrillo said.

Enrique Anpay is 24 years old and finished his university studies in Lima last year, where he experienced episodes of racism that still hurt him to remember. In the picture he is seen carrying one of his grandmother’s lambs in the Quechua farming community of Pomacocha, where he is from, in the central Andean region of Peru. CREDIT: Courtesy of Enrique Anpay

Racism to the point of calling people animals

Enrique Anpay Laupa, 24, studied psychology at a university in Lima, thanks to the government scholarship program Beca 18, which helps high-achieving students living in poverty or extreme poverty.

Originally from the rural community of Pomacocha, made up of some 90 native Quechua families in the central Andes highlands region of Apurimac, he still finds it difficult to talk about the racism he endured during his time in Lima, until he graduated last year.

He spoke to IPS from the town of Andahuaylas, in Apurímac, where he now lives and practices as a psychologist. “In 2017 we were 200 scholarship holders entering the university, more than other years, and we noticed discomfort among the students from Lima,” he said.

“They said that since we arrived the bathrooms were dirtier, things were getting lost, like laptops…I was quite shocked, it was a question of skin color,” he said.

During a group project, a student from the capital even told him “shut up, llama” when he made a comment. (The llama is a domesticated South American camelid native to the Andes region of Peru.)

“I kept silent and no one else said anything either,” Anpay said. Although he preferred not to go into more details, the experience of what he went through kept him from encouraging his younger brother to apply for Beca 18 and to push him to study instead at the public university in Andahuaylas.

Afro-Peruvian women participate in a festive demonstration demanding respect for their rights, on the streets of Lima on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2022. CREDIT: Courtesy of Lupita Sanchez

Racism affects the whole country

Racism is felt as a personal experience but affects whole communities and the entire country.

Carrillo said: “We can see this in the levels of impoverishment: the last census, from 2017, indicates that 16 percent of people who self-identify as ‘white’ and ‘mestizo’ live in poverty as opposed to the Afro-Peruvian population, where poverty stands at around 30 percent, the Amazonian indigenous population (40 percent) and the Andean indigenous population (30 percent).”

A study by the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics on the evolution of poverty between 2010 and 2021 showed that it affected to the greatest extent the population who spoke a native mother tongue, i.e. indigenous people.

The percentage of this segment of the population living in poverty and extreme poverty was 32 percent – eight percentage points higher than the 24 percent recorded for the population whose mother tongue is Spanish.

Carrillo considered it essential to recognize the existence of institutional racism, to understand it as a public problem that affects individuals and peoples who have been historically discriminated against and excluded, who have the right to share all spaces and to fully realize themselves, based on the principles of equality and non-discrimination.

She criticized the authorities for thinking about racism only in terms of punitive actions instead of considering a comprehensive policy based on prevention to stop it from being reproduced and handed down from generation to generation, which would include an anti-racist education that values the contribution made by each of the different peoples in the construction of Peru.

During one of the hearings in Buenos Aires, the court trying a 1924 indigenous massacre in the Chaco heard the testimony of historian Nicolás Iñigo Carrera, from the University of Buenos Aires, who has been studying indigenous history in Argentina for decades. The expert witness described in detail the conditions in the Napalpí indigenous “reducción” or camp where the massacre took place. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, May 13 2022 (IPS)

It’s a strange trial, with no defendants. The purpose is not to hand down a conviction, but to bring visibility to an atrocious event that occurred almost a hundred years ago in northern Argentina and was concealed by the State for decades with singular success: the massacre by security forces of hundreds of indigenous people who were protesting labor mistreatment and discrimination.

“We are seeking to heal the wounds and vindicate the memory of the (indigenous) peoples,” explained federal judge Zunilda Niremperger, as she opened the first hearing in Buenos Aires on May 10 in the trial for the truth of the so-called Napalpí Massacre, in which an undetermined number of indigenous people were shot to death on the morning of Jul. 19, 1924.

The trial began on Apr. 19 in the northern province of Chaco, one of the country’s poorest, near the border with Paraguay. But it was moved momentarily to the capital, home to approximately one third of the 45 million inhabitants of this South American country, to give it greater visibility.

In a highly symbolic decision, the venue chosen in Buenos Aires was the Space for Memory and Human Rights, created in the former Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), where the most notorious clandestine torture and extermination center operated during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, which kidnapped and murdered as many as 30,000 people for political reasons."What we hope is that the sentence will bring out the truth about an event that needs to be understood so that racism and xenophobia do not take hold in Argentina. People need to know about all the blood that has flowed because of contempt for indigenous people." -- Duilio Ramírez

The hearings in Buenos Aires ended Thursday May 12, and the court will reconvene in Resistencia, the capital of Chaco, on May 19, when the prosecutor’s office and the plaintiffs are to present their arguments before the sentence is handed down at an unspecified date.

“This trial is aimed at bringing out the truth that we need, and that I come to support, in the place where they brought my daughter when they kidnapped her. This shows that genocides are repeated in history,” Vera Vigevani de Jarach, seated in the front row of the courtroom, her head covered by the white scarf that identifies the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo human rights group, told IPS.

Vera, 94, is Jewish and emigrated with her family to Argentina when she was 11 years old from Italy, due to the racial persecution unleashed by fascist leader Benito Mussolini in 1939. In 1976 her only daughter, Franca Jarach, then 18 years old, was forcibly disappeared.

“Truth trials” are not a novelty in Argentina. The term was used to refer to investigations of the crimes committed by the dictatorship, carried out after 1999, when amnesty laws passed after the conviction of the military regime’s top leaders blocked the prosecution of the rest of the perpetrators.

A petition filed by a member of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (made up of mothers of victims of forced disappearance) before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) led later to an agreement with the Argentine State, which recognized the woman’s right to have the judiciary investigate the fate of her disappeared daughter, even though the amnesty laws made it impossible to punish those responsible.

Eventually, the amnesty laws were repealed, the trials resumed, and defendants were convicted and sent to prison.

Indigenous communities and human rights organizations held an Apr. 19, 2022 demonstration in Resistencia, capital of the Argentine province of Chaco, at the beginning of the trial for the truth about the Napalpí massacre. CREDIT: Chaco Secretariat of Human Rights and Gender

Historic reparations

“My grandmother was a survivor of the massacre and I grew up listening to the stories of labor exploitation in Napalpí and about what happened that day. For us this trial is a historic reparation,” Miguel Iya Gómez, a bilingual multicultural teacher who today presides over the Chaco Aboriginal Institute, a provincial agency whose mission is to improve the living conditions of native communities, told IPS.

The trial is built on the basis of official documents and journalistic coverage of the time and the videotaped testimonies of survivors of the massacre and their descendants, and of researchers of indigenous history in the Chaco.

The Argentine province of Chaco forms part of the ecoregion from which it takes its name: a vast, hot, dry, sparsely forested plain that was largely unsettled during the Spanish Conquest. Only at the end of the 19th century did the modern Argentine State launch military campaigns to subdue the indigenous people in the Chaco and impose its authority there.

Once the Chaco was conquered, many indigenous families were forced to settle in camps called “reducciones”, where they had to carry out agricultural work.

“The ‘reducciones’ operated in the Chaco between 1911 and 1956 and were concentration camps for indigenous people, who were disciplined through work,” said sociologist Marcelo Musante, a member of the Network of Researchers on Genocide and Indigenous Policies in Argentina, which brings together academics from different disciplines, at the hearing.

“When indigenous people entered the ‘reducción’, they were given clothes and farming tools, and this generated a debt that put them under great pressure. And they were not allowed to make purchases outside the stores of the ‘reducción’,” he explained.

David García, a member of the Napalpí Foundation, created in 2006 to gather information about and bring visibility to the 1924 massacre, took part in the trial in Buenos Aires. His organization was one of the driving forces behind the historic trial in Argentina. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Invaded by cotton

Historian Nicolás Iñigo Carrera said it was common for indigenous people in the Chaco to go to work temporarily in sugar mills in the neighboring provinces of Salta and Jujuy, but the scenario changed in the 1920s, when the Argentine government introduced cotton in the Chaco, to tap into the textile industry’s growing global demand.

“Then the criollo (white) settlers, who often had no laborers, demanded the guaranteed availability of indigenous labor to harvest the cotton crop, and in 1924 the government prohibited indigenous people, who refused to work on the cotton plantations, from leaving the Chaco, declaring any who left subversives,” Carrera said.

Anthropologist Lena Dávila Da Rosa said the Jul. 19, 1924 protest involved between 800 and 1000 indigenous people from Napalpí, and some 130 police officers who opened fired on them, with the support of an airplane that dropped candy so the children would go out to look for it and thus reveal the location of the protesters they were tracking down.

“It’s impossible to know exactly how many indigenous people were killed, but there were several hundred victims,” Alejandro Jasinski, a researcher with the Truth and Justice Program of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, told IPS.

“The official report mentioned four people killed in confrontations among themselves, and there was a judicial investigation that was quickly closed. All that was left were the buried memories of the communities,” he added.

The memories were revived and made public in recent years thanks in large part to the efforts of Juan Chico, an indigenous writer and researcher from the Chaco who died of COVID-19 in 2021.

“Juan started collecting oral accounts almost 20 years ago,” David García, a translator and interpreter of the language of the Qom, one of the main indigenous nations of the Chaco, told IPS. “I worked alongside him to bring the indigenous genocide to light, and in 2006 we founded an NGO that today is the Napalpí Foundation. It was a long struggle to reach this trial.”

Vera Vigevani de Jarach, a member of the human rights group Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, attended the hearing in Buenos Aires for the Napalpí indigenous massacre, held in the most notorious clandestine detention and torture center used by the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in Argentina. CREDIT: National Secretariat of Human Rights

Indigenous people in the Chaco today

Of the population of Chaco province, 3.9 percent, or 41,304 people, identified as indigenous in the last national census conducted in Argentina in 2010, which is higher than the national average of 2.4 percent.

Census data reflects the harsh living conditions of indigenous people in the Chaco and the disadvantages they face in relation to the rest of the population. More than 80 percent live in deficient housing while more than 25 percent live in critically overcrowded conditions, with more than three people per room. In addition, more than half of the households cook with firewood or charcoal.

Today, the site of the Napalpí massacre is called Colonia Aborigen Chaco and is a 20,000-hectare plot of land owned by the indigenous community where, according to official data, some 1,300 indigenous people live, from the Qom and Moqoit communities, the most numerous native groups in the Chaco along with the Wichi.

In 2019, mass graves were found there by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, a prestigious organization that emerged in 1984 to identify remains of victims of the military dictatorship and that has worked all over the world.

“What we hope is that the sentence will bring out the truth about an event that needs to be understood so that racism and xenophobia do not take hold in Argentina,” Duilio Ramírez, a lawyer with the Chaco government’s Human Rights Secretariat, which is acting as plaintiff, told IPS. “People need to know about all the blood that has flowed because of contempt for indigenous people.”

“We hope that with the ruling, the Argentine State will take responsibility for what happened and that this will translate into public policies of reparations for the indigenous communities,” he said.

Protest against the 30X30 conservation plan at IUCN World Conservation Congress, Marseille, France. Credit: Survival International

By Manipadma Jena
MARSEILLE, France, Sep 15 2021 (IPS)

One of the most hotly debated issues at the recently concluded IUCN Congress in Marseilles was about designating 30 percent of the planet’s land and water surface as protected areas by 2030.

This so-called ‘30X30’ debate is expected to escalate at the UN biodiversity conference in China next April. Indigenous People groups say the conservation has to recognise their rights to land, territories, coastal seas, and natural resources. Some activists argue that ‘fortress conservation’ was nothing but colonialism in another guise.

The world’s failure to achieve any of the global goals to protect, conserve and restore nature by 2020 has been sobering. In Kunming, China, 190 governments will gather in April 2022 after a virtual format in October this year, to finalise the UN Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

Ensuring legal land ownership of indigenous people is key to successful conservation. An indigenous community woman in eastern India happily holds out her land title.
Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

The draft Framework released this July aims to establish a ‘world living in harmony with nature’ by 2050 by protecting at least 30 percent of the planet and placing at least 20 percent under restoration by 2030.

The Marseille Manifesto, the outcome statement from the World Conservation Congress in Marseille from September 4 -10, 2021, gives higher visibility to indigenous people by “committing to an ambitious, interconnected and effective, site-based conservation network that represents all areas of importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services is crucial. Such a network must recognise the roles and custodianship of indigenous people and local communities.”

“The Congress implores governments to set ambitious protected areas and other area-based conservation measure targets by calling at least 30% of the planet to be protected by 2030. The targets must be based on the latest science and include rights – including Free Prior Informed Consent – as set out in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. IUCN must boost the agency of indigenous people and local communities,” the manifesto further urges. 

IUCN’s membership currently stands at 1 500 and includes 91 States, 212 governmental agencies, 1 213 NGOs, 23 Indigenous Peoples’ organisations and 52 affiliate members.

The indigenous people (IP) demand foremost of all “the secure recognition and respect for collective indigenous rights and governance of lands, territories, waters, coastal seas and natural resources.”

Strong demand for this came from IUCN’s indigenous people’s organisation members spanning six continents who banded together, developed the ‘global indigenous agenda’ and presented at their own summit – the first-ever event of its kind at any IUCN World Conservation Congress.

They aimed to unite the voices of indigenous peoples from around the world to raise awareness that ‘enhanced measures’ are required to protect the rights of indigenous peoples and their roles as stewards of nature.

Other activists take a more hard-line stand.

“The 30×30 plan is nothing but a massive land grab,” Sophie Grig, senior research and advocacy officer Survival International told IPS over the phone from the non-profit’s London headquarters.

“It’s no more than a sound bite, green lies. History has shown that promises are made but gradually, living for forest dwellers is made impossible till they are finally evicted from their generational homes of centuries. They are evicted for what? For animals and tourists. We see no real signs that this is going to change.”

Survival International and other activist entities organised the “Our Land Our Nature” congress a day before the IUCN congress began. They called for conservation to be ‘decolonised’.

“Fortress conservation violates human rights and fails to protect nature. The devastating impacts of fortress conservation on Indigenous Peoples, local communities, peasants, rural women, and rural youth has generated limited gains for nature,” said David R Boyd, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, in an August policy brief just before the IUCN Congress.

Ending the current biodiversity crisis will require a “transformative approach” to what conservation entails, who qualifies as a conservationist, and how conservation efforts are designed and implemented,” Boyd further said.

Studies have shown that indigenous peoples, who comprise just 5% of the world’s population, contribute significantly to its environmental diversity as more than 80 % of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found within their lands.

The debate on the issue was going global. In an online forum coinciding but separate from the IUCN indigenous people’s summit, indigenous women, many from Southeast Asia, emphasised that it is “not enough for outsiders to merely observe indigenous practices and then attempt to reapply them in other contexts.”

Native voices need to be at the “centre of the conversation, not consigned to the margins.”

Traditional ecological knowledge is not just a theoretical concept. It is a “native science”, an applied knowledge amassed by indigenous people over thousands of years and most effective to address climate change and biodiversity challenges because it is based on the acceptance that “all living organisms are interdependent,” they said.

The indigenous people’s Agenda at Marseille also calls upon the global community – from states to the private sector, NGO conservation community, conservation finance and academia – to engage in specific joint efforts with them, such as “co-designing initiatives and collaborating on investment opportunities.”

“Our global goals to protect the earth and conserve biodiversity cannot succeed without the leadership, support and partnership of Indigenous Peoples,” said Bruno Oberle, IUCN Director General at the start of the Congress.

“So will the investment in this doubling of conservation areas, or at least some of the monies, go directly to indigenous people?” asked protestors at the ‘decolonise conservation’ Congress.

“Not likely,” Survival’s Grig said, “Fortress conservation is the racist and colonial model of conservation promoted by governments, corporations and big conservation NGOs.”

“The 30X30 plan sounds like a simple and painless process, but it is not so for indigenous communities. It’s simply a plan that enables you in the global north to continue burning fossil fuel and consuming unsustainably,” Grig added.

The indigenous people were clear in their demands. Their Agenda and Action Plan demands: “As Indigenous Peoples around the world, we call for an equitable environment for the recognition of Indigenous Peoples to thrive as leaders, innovators and key contributors to nature conservation.”

It remains to be seen to what extent words and promises of international policy and funding bodies translate into action on this contentious and critical issue in 2022.

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