The successful surveillance of Kayapo’s indigenous land

Posted on July 21, 2022July 21, 2022 by Aleks Evtimov

The Kayapo Project is pleased to report that during 2021 most of the 2200km border of Kayapo’s indigenous land remained unbreached by goldminers, loggers and poachers.

The tale of the Kayapo is one of the most inspiring and hopeful conservation stories of our time. It provides us with a successful model for the large-scale conservation of rainforests and ancient indigenous cultures. Kayapo’s pristine land is situated in the midst of industrial development, and yet they have halted the advance of deforestation across most of their land.

A hostile environment

The success of the Kayapo and their allies is made even more impressive by the fact that they carry on their fight in a lawless region where criminal activity against indigenous peoples and nature is unhindered or even encouraged. As one Brazilian journalist puts it, the south of Para, where most Kayapo land is located, “eats, drinks and breathes environmental crime”.

*Goldmining has spread through Kayapo territory which is not part of the NGO alliance Photo : AFP*

Organized crime relentlessly seeks Kayapo gold and timber, while the government works to weaken indigenous rights and tries to convince the public that indigenous peoples no longer wish to pursue their traditional lives on their ancestral lands. Add to this context the allure of the modern world pressed against Kayapo borders and one starts to see the level of threat to survival faced by the Kayapo.

Kayapo territory is as large as a small country roughly equal in size to South Korea or Iceland. The Kayapo manage to monitor and control their borders with infinitely less money, people, roads, machines or weapons than a state. Their power today arises from alliances they forged over 20 years ago with the conservation movement. The alliance is empowering the Kayapo with tools and capacity for territorial surveillance, sustainable economic autonomy, and a voice in national society (kayapo.org).

To meet the increasing threat to their survival as Kayapo on Kayapo land, the Kayapo need the capacity to monitor and control their vast territory; as well as sustainable sources of income tied to the forest that sustains them and that fit with the traditional culture protecting their borders. Conservation NGOs support the Kayapo to organize and manage a series of border guard posts and surveillance expeditions and to develop sustainable non-timber product enterprises such as Brazil nut harvest and sale, and eco-tourism.

The guard posts

“We had many problems and difficulties; vehicles breaking down, teams having to move location at night, boats sinking, loggers threatening guards, trees falling on post living quarters, scorpion stings, and various other difficulties that happened on a daily basis -but we held strong -determined to fulfil our commitment to protect Kayapo territory against illegal predators” (Director of Kayapo surveillance, December 2021)

Presently, there are 13 Kayapo guard posts located strategically at vulnerable entry points along the Kayapo border. The two most logistically challenging guard posts, Kenpoty and Iriri illustrate some of the challenges involved in defending Kayapo territory.

The Kenpoti guard post was established to facilitate Kayapo’s presence in the vast interior region of their Mekragnoti territory. Supplying the Kenpoti post begins in the town of Novo Progresso where the NGO of the northwestern Kayapo Instituto Kabu- is located; then 150 km south on the BR 163 highway to the entry point of an unmaintained dirt road 230 km through the forest. Finally, there is one day’s travel by boat with a portage to reach the post.

Supplying the Iriri guard post requires 4X4 travel over 300 km of particularly bad dirt road from the nearest supply town of São Felix do Xingu; followed by an eight-hour boat trip upriver to the base which becomes a two-day boat trip during the dry season of low water.

Kayapo men undertook 10 expeditions through the rainforest wilderness in 2021. Their goal was to maintain presence and reinforce territorial surveillance in regions beyond the reach of guard posts, locate official government geodesic markers that demarcate the border of an indigenous territory and, in general, deter invasion and encroachment on their land. Expeditions also serve as important venues for the transmission of traditional territorial and cultural knowledge from elder to youth and reinforcement of Kayapo pride.

A social and economic battle

Guard post duty generates income that is distributed equitably within Kayapo communities. Teams rotate through a post on a weekly or bi-weekly basis with teams drawn from communities in a frequency proportional to population size such that every adult, male and female, has an opportunity to make a week’s salary working as a guard.

This equitable distribution of income consolidates communities against illegal activity and thwarts the bribing of individuals by loggers and goldminers to gain entry. In 2021 guard posts generated a total of US$ 300,000 income for Kayapo communities of the NGO alliance. This amount is less than the total amounts offered by loggers and goldminers, but conservation investment is more powerful than bribes because everyone benefits rather than only a few and community members are then able to organize against illegal activity.

Guard post duty is a source of pride for the Kayapo who want nothing more than to continue living on their territory as Kayapo.

*Kayapo captured goldminers and wait for law enforcement.*

The rapid spread and consolidation of roads, ranches and towns along almost all of their border immerses the Kayapo in an outside society about which they understand little to nothing. Guard posts augment the work of their NGOs by serving as centers for learning and awareness-raising, where Kayapo NGOs and their partners help the Kayapo understand the political and economic reality in which they exist. Without insight into the boom-bust economy, the concept of law, and the anti-indigenous agenda of the government, the Kayapo would be unable to make informed choices about their future. Guard posts provide an infrastructure where information critical to the Kayapo’s future and the forest they protect can be transmitted to a large proportion of adults.

The war is far from over

The success of Kayapo’s surveillance program should not give us the impression that the future of the Kayapo people and their land is secure. Pressure on the remaining pockets of Earth’s wilderness increases as the global economy continues to grow. Rising prices for gold and timber will continue to incentivize the invasion of indigenous lands. The same is true for beef and soy which drives agriculture ever deeper into the Amazon rainforest.

Ideally, governments and international institutions would provide legal, logistical and financial support to indigenous peoples, but these institutions are unreliable. In Brazil, the government has set out to weaken protections of the environment and indigenous people to open more space for industry. The work of protecting indigenous peoples and their lands in the Amazon now falls almost solely to charity (NGOs).

The Kayapo Project proves that philanthropic investment in rainforest conservation can be successful even in a hostile political climate.

Brazilian amazon indigenous peoples threatened by mining bill (Study)

Posted on February 12, 2021February 15, 2021 by projectadmin

“The Brazilian Amazon has the highest concentration of indigenous peoples in the world. Recently, the Brazilian government sent a bill to Congress to regulate commercial mining in indigenous lands.”

“This work analyzes the risks of the proposed mining bill to Amazonian indigenous peoples and their lands. To evaluate the possible impact of the new mining bill, we consider all mining license requests registered in Brazil’s National Mining Agency that overlap indigenous lands as potential mining areas in the future. The existing mining requests cover 176 000 km² of indigenous lands, a factor 3000 more than the area of current illegal mining. Considering only these existing requests, about 15% of the total area of ILs in the region could be directly affected by mining if the bill is approved. Ethnic groups like Yudjá, Kayapó, Apalaí, Wayana, and Katuena may have between 47% and 87% of their lands impacted. Gold mining, which has previously shown to cause mercury contamination, death of indigenous people due to diseases, and biodiversity degradation, accounts for 64% of the requested areas. We conclude that the proposed bill is a significant threat to Amazonian indigenous peoples, further exposing indigenous peoples to rural violence, contamination by toxic pollutants, and contagious diseases. The obligation of the government is to enforce existing laws and regulations that put indigenous rights and livelihoods above economic consideration and not to reduce such protections.”

This abstract comes from a study out of the Environmental Research Letters Journal published on October 9th, 2020. We encourage you to read the full article by clicking below.

FULL STUDY HERE

Global Wildlife Conservation – The Spirit of Survival

Posted on January 15, 2021 by projectadmin

GLobal wildlife conservation: guest blog

The Spirit of Survival – Written by: LINDSAY RENICK MAYER from Global Wildlife Conservation Original Blog

Kayapo Indigenous People Call on World to Help Protect Amazonia Against Extractive Industry, Brazilian Government

Silent.

That was how the Kayapo Indigenous people approached the illegal goldmining camp that had, for months, been destroying part of the Amazon rainforest, home to countless animals and plants, and polluting the nearby river in the Kayapo’s ratified territory of Bau.

As 17 Kayapo came upon the camp in mid-October, after traveling for two days by boat and then by foot, any noise would have been drowned out anyhow by the goldminers’ hydraulic machines. Their actions resulted in the peaceful removal of the trespassers from the land, which was accessible to these outsiders only by plane, and the complete dismantling of the camp.

“The area the goldminers destroyed is very large and the streams are badly damaged,” said Bepmoro-I, from the village of Bau located in Bau Indigenous Territory. “It’s awful there. But we blocked off the airstrip and so now the streams and forest will begin to recover. If goldminers come back, we will go and remove them again.”

Kayapo wait with goldminers from the illegal “Novo Horizonte” illegal gold mine in the Kayapo Bau territory. The air strip supplied their camp and here the goldminers wait to be picked up by their employer.

This is not the first time the Kayapo have had to remove invaders from 23 million acres of their rainforest and savanna territory in the southeastern region of the Brazilian Amazon, an area the size of the state of Virginia. For more than 40 years, the Kayapo have fought off many outsiders looking to exploit their natural resources. They have done so with the partnership of multiple NGOs, including Conservation International, Environmental Defense Fund, and GWC partner, the International Conservation Fund of Canada.

The removal of the goldmining camp came against the backdrop of a Brazilian Federal Government that has been considering a bill this year that would effectively legalize goldmining and other extractive industries in Indigenous territories across Brazil. This marks the latest in an onslaught of threats to Brazil’s Indigenous People’s cultures, lives and land, and to the wildlife and ecosystems that they protect.

A Message to the World

The Kayapo are anything but silent against the congressional bill, Proposed Law 191/2020, that could significantly weaken protection of Amazonia, and they want the world to know what is going on.

More than 6,000 Kayapo from 56 communities of the Bau, Capoto/Jarina, Kayapo, Las Casas and Mekragnoti Indigenous Territory, the Indigenous organizations Associação Floresta Protegida, Instituto Kabu and Instituto Raoni recently published a declaration expressing their opposition to the bill.

“How could we be in favor of such an activity that profoundly negatively impacts our environment, society and communities?” the letter asks. “How could we deprive our children and grandchildren of a vital territory that supports our livelihoods, autonomy, customs and traditions, as guaranteed by the federal constitution? We appeal to all Brazilians and international society to support our struggle to protect our forest and demand that the government respect the federal constitution and our right to use our territories according to our customs; as well as the right of all people to an ecologically balanced environment.” [READ THE FULL STATEMENT FROM THE KAYAPO]

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro introduced the proposed law in February of 2020 to open up demarcated territories to the extractive industries of mining, oil and natural gas. Two other proposed laws would have similar devastating effects: one aimed at the establishment of a general environmental licensing law, which would essentially allow industry to easily obtain licenses for environmentally damaging extractive activities easily—even through self-declaration (PL3729/2004); and another that would grant amnesty to invaders and in essence encourage deforestation and land-grabbing (PL 2633/2020).

“I have long admired the great courage of the Kayapo and their undying commitment to protecting their traditional lands, ever since I first visited them in 1991 with Barbara Zimmerman to help her establish her long-running program to work with these amazing people,” said Russ Mittermeier, GWC Chief Conservation Officer, who has visited the Kayapo lands and other parts of the Xingu region a number of times over the past three decades. “If the Brazilian government opens indigenous territories such as those of the Kayapo and their neighbors to legal goldmining and logging, this could signal a death knell for the magnificent forests of Amazonia and the great and wonderfully diverse Indigenous Peoples who call it home. The vast forests of Amazonia are critical to the health of our planet, and the Kayapo and their fellow indigenous peoples are its most important guardians.”

We Won’t Give Up’

The Kayapo protect more than 2,000 kilometers of heavily threatened borders around their territory. Kayapo land represents the last large block of forest in the southeastern Amazon and stores an estimated 1.3 billion metric tons of carbon. It is hard to understate the critical importance of the Amazon rainforest—one of the world’s five designated High Biodiversity Wilderness Areas and home to one-quarter of Earth’s terrestrial biodiversity—to the health of the planet, and the critical role that the Kayapo and other Indigenous communities play in protecting it. An estimated 20 million Indigenous people from more than 350 Indigenous groups call the forests of Amazonia home and depend on their natural habitats and resources for their livelihoods and culture.

(Photo by Antonio Briceno)

Yet the forests of Amazonia continues to come under serious threats. Deforestation in 2019 and 2020 was the highest it has been since 2008 and represents a doubling in forest loss over 2012. Amazonia has experienced some of its worst fire seasons in the last two years, a result of previous deforestation, primarily for the expansion cattle ranching and cattle feed crops (soybeans), leaving a drier local microclimate. The fires themselves are often purposely started to clear land for agriculture, mostly cattle and cattle feed for export to the United States, EU, China and other countries.

“The Kayapo face today face what Native America Tribes faced in the mid-1800s: an infinitely more numerous and better armed capitalist society building along their borders and slavering to devour their land no matter the law,” said Barbara Zimmerman, director of the Kayapo Project for the International Conservation Fund of Canada and the U.S.-based Environmental Defense Fund. “The difference is timing: in the 21st century there exist indigenous rights, international media, the internet and NGO Indigenous allies. We are about to see whether these factors help the Kayapo to save themselves and a vast tract of Amazonia forest upon which their culture and livelihoods are based. If the Kayapo can win, if they can hold out, then I think that anything can be achieved in the conservation of our planet.”

For the Kayapo, beating these bills, which the Brazilian Congress could vote on as early as February, and continuing to protect the forests of Amazonia is going to depend on the willingness of the rest of the world to help safeguard this irreplaceable place. But no matter what, the Kayapo say that they are not going to give up.

Photo by Cristina Mittermeier

“We won’t stop doing this work. We won’t give up. We are going to keep fighting,” Bepmoro-I said. “We would like the entire world to see our effort, the work of the Kayapo people to protect our land and our culture—and help us with the resources we need to continue protecting our land and rivers.”

You can help. Make a donation to the Kayapo Fund today at Kayapo.org