The extractivist growth model for transition minerals has emerged in Latin America in recent years, fueled by a sharp spike in demand for batteries and other technologies for the transition to the so-called “green economy” by industrialized countries and rising superpowers alike.

Washington Kiriri (Kiriri) is an Anthropology student at the Federal University of Southern Bahia in Brazil. He aspires to end the objectification of Indigenous people as anthropological case studies and to create new opportunities for Indigenous people to tell their stories. He is also part of the United Movement of Peoples and Organizations of Bahia, which seeks to guarantee Indigenous territorial rights, women's rights, 2SLGBTQ+ rights, and climate justice. Kiriri offers a reflection on his experience as a bisexual person in Brazil. 

For Indigenous Peoples, gender has always been transcendent and fluid, interconnected to our lands, languages, cultures, spiritualities, and worldviews. The separation occurred during colonization and acts of genocide that regulated sexuality with the aim of eliminating gender diversity in Indigenous communities.

“After many years of paralysis of Indigenous land demarcation and rights violations (by former governments), we are now back to having our rights recognized, our lives valued, and our territories defined,” said Brazil’s first Indigenous State Minister, Sonia Guajajara, in a social media post. 

Cultural Survival congratulates Alessandra Korap Munduruku (Munduruku) and her community on winning the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2023 for her tireless efforts to defend her community and territory against extractive industries.  

Shocking images have been released over the past few days showing the suffering of Yanomami Peoples in the Brazilian and Venezuelan Amazon. In the third week of January 2023, Yanomami people in Roraima, northern Brazil, were found with severe malnutrition, especially in children. According to the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, nearly 100 children between the ages of 1 and 4 died in 2022 from malnutrition, malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea.

The participation of Indigenous Peoples from Brazil and their representatives at 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP27), was visible in almost every space. It was encouraging to see a majority of women and youth participating as leaders and representatives. All of them would repeatedly mention one word: “demarcação,” demarcation of Indigenous Lands, bringing international attention to the grave need to demarcate Indigenous lands in Brazil.

In 2022, a Brazilian Indigenous activist joined the list of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world when she received an award in the Pioneers category. Her name is Sonia Bone de Souza Silva Santos (Guajajara), also known as Sonia Guajajara. Guajajara was born March 6, 1974, in the Arariboia Indigenous land Maranhão in northeastern Brazil. She is the mother of three children: Yaponã, 22, Mahkai, 20, and Ywara, 16.

November 25 is the International Day to Eliminate Violence against Women. Violence in all of its forms, whether physical, psychological, sexual, or economic, against women and girls, are violations of human rights. Indigenous women are particularly vulnerable for two factors: ethnicity and gender. In response, more and more Indigenous women are organizing around the world to fight against violence.

The defeat of Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro by President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s October 30, 2022 presidential election is a victory for democracy. Democracy for Indigenous Peoples is a democracy of all species and living beings: a democracy that brings hope to biomes, trees, rivers, and animals, big and small,