On November 11th, international and Brazilian human rights organizations filed a formal petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to stop the construction of Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River in the Brazilian Amazon. The petition urgently calls on the commission to adopt "precautionary measures" that would put pressure on the Brazilian government to halt plans to build the dam, planned to be the world's third largest.
Cultural Survival congratulates new Right Livelihood Award winners Nnimmo Bassey and Erwin Krautler, both lifelong champions for Indigenous Peoples’ rights and environmental protection. Bassey, a Nigerian poet/environmentalist, and Krautler, a Brazilian Catholic bishop, are two of four recipients of this year’s award, which is widely known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.” The Right Livelihood Award honors and supports those "offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today." There are now 141 Laureates from 59 countries.
After decades of protests and battles, the proposed hydroelectric Belo Monte Dam was given written approval by Brazil’s president President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The dam is to surpass the Three Gorges Dam in China in size and volume. The hydroelectric project on the mouth of the Xingu River will devastate vast regions and ecosystems in the Amazonian state of Para and displace more than 50,000 Indigenous people.
Between August 9th and 12th of 2010, over 400 Indigenous and riverine people, victims of dams, and farmers from the Amazon region gathered at the port of the city of Altamira, Pará, Brazil at the riverside of the Xingu river, to discuss the impacts of major infrastructure projects in the Amazon region, with emphasis on the Belo Monte dam.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.
