The Xikrin Peoples face severe humanitarian and environmental crises as Vale’s nickel and other metal mining contaminates their rivers, harms their health, and destroys their ancestral territory, endangering their cultural survival and the environmental integrity of the region. The negative impacts on the health of the Xikrin people are so severe that some studies show that 98% of the communities in the Cateté lands are seriously contaminated.
"As manifestações Indígenas na COP30 não são violações de segurança. Os Povos Indígenas estão exercendo seus direitos humanos fundamentais e expressando frustração pela falta de acesso aos espaços onde são tomadas decisões que os impactam de forma desproporcional." -- Aimee Roberson (Choctaw e Chickasaw), Diretora Executiva da Cultural Survival
“The Indigenous demonstrations at COP30 are not security breaches. Indigenous Peoples are exercising their fundamental human rights, and expressing frustration due to a lack of access to spaces where decisions are made that disproportionately impact them.” --Aimee Roberson (Choctaw and Chickasaw), Cultural Survival Executive Director
By Polina Shulbaeva (Selkup, CS Consultant)
A'uwẽ-Xavante, Jequitinhonha Valley communities, and Cultural Survival document how Brazil finances mining without Indigenous consent using climate funds
A'uwẽ-Xavante, comunidades do Vale do Jequitinhonha e a Cultural Survival documentam como o Brasil financia a mineração sem consentimento Indígena, utilizando fundos climáticos.
By Djalma Ramalho Goncalves (Aranã Caboclo, CS Consultant)
Por Lygia Zamali Fernandes (pesquisadora e membro/a de uma comunidade da Floresta) com colaboração de Edson Krenak, CS Staff
By Lygia Zamali Fernandes with Edson Krenak (Krenak, CS Staff)
Why are Indigenous Peoples occupying Fazenda Cristal?
To protect their last water sources from lithium mining, after companies and governments had ignored their pleas for years.
Water = Life, Lithium = Destruction
Mining in the Jequitinhonha Valley dries up rivers and poisons the land, violating the rights of the Pankararu and Pataxó Peoples, whose survival depends on these waters.
They stand on the frontlines!
Several political sectors from the center and right—primarily aligned with agribusiness, and mining interests—pushed through the approval of Bill 2.159/2021 in the Brazilian Federal Congress during the early hours of Thursday, July 17, 2025. The bill passed by a vote of 267 to 116 and is being condemned by more than 350 Indigenous and civil society organizations as the most significant environmental setback in Brazil since at least the 1980s.
Cultural Survival expresses our solidarity and support to the Indigenous leader of the Xakriabá Peoples, Célia Xakriabá, who, while serving as a congresswoman in Brazil, was racially attacked by other representatives in the Brazilian Congress, without a proper response from the Speaker.
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.
