A Brazilian congressional commission has recommended dismantling the government’s indigenous rights agency, a move critics warn would threaten the lives of indigenous tribes struggling to maintain control of their native lands.
The Brazilian government has sacked the head of its aboriginal rights agency amid a rise in violent assaults against the country’s indigenous groups. Antonio Fernandes Toninho Costa was ousted just a few months after becoming head of the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), which works to establish and oversee policies concerning the country’s indigenous population.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has won an undesirable award for “greenwashing” after partnering with companies that destroy forests in the Congo without the consent of the tribes that live there.
Members of indigenous groups clashed with police in the Brazilian capital on Tuesday amid a protest over land rights in the Amazon, which activists say is in jeopardy under the current government.
Indigenous rights leaders from a Catholic Church network traveled to Washington, D.C., to highlight human rights violations against people in the Amazon and to call for prior consultation with extractive industries pursing projects on their lands.
After Pope Francis publicly supported indigenous land rights last week, various mainstream media outlets assumed he was referencing the high-profile Dakota Access Pipeline in the United States. The Vatican said the pontiff was commenting on indigenous struggles happening daily worldwide, which activists say are woefully underreported.
An indigenous group in northeast Ecuador said it has detained 11 government soldiers who were traveling through its territory in a canoe amid an ongoing dispute with the government over land rights.
While the high-profile controversy over the Dakota Access pipeline has incited support for indigenous land rights in the U.S., the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s experience is one of many similar fights around the world.