Loggers are lighting fires inside the territory of uncontacted Amazon tribes

[Judi Lynn]

By Zoë Schlanger & Daniel Wolfe August 30, 2019



Contacted Awá people—and their uncontacted neighbors, not pictured—grapple with illegal fires in their territory.


Deep in the eastern Amazon rainforest, loggers armed with guns are lighting fires inside the territory of an uncontacted tribe with roughly 100 members left.

This has happened during every dry season in recent years, fragmenting the tribe’s reserved land piece by piece, according to Survival International, an organization dedicated to protecting forest people. Loggers enter the Awá’s territory and light fires to burn the underbrush, so they can more easily access and fell the large, old-growth hardwood trees.



Awá territory seen from Sentinel-2 in Aug. 16. Fires were reported within the territory on Aug. 27
Quartz | qz.com
Data: NASA VIIRS/FIRMS, World Database on Protected Areas

Across the Amazon, fires set mostly by cattle ranchers, miners, and loggers are burning swaths of rainforest where indigenous people live. The Amazon is home to some 306,000 indigenous people, who have legal rights to 422 reserves, or nearly a quarter of the land area of the Amazon basin. In many cases, tribes already struggle to defend their land from invasion by illegal loggers and miners. But in light of the current Brazilian government’s open disdain for the reserve system, indigenous people are even more vulnerable.

Perhaps most vulnerable are the estimated 100 uncontacted groups living in the Brazilian Amazon, of which the Awá are one.

The news that the loggers have arrived this year was relayed on Wednesday (Aug. 28) to Survival International by way of members of the nearby Guajajara tribe, which has formed firefighting patrols to keep watch for the illegal loggers who threaten the Awá’s remaining scraps of intact rainforest.

More:
https://qz.com/1698802/uncontacted-awa-tribe-threatened-by-amazon-fires-set-by-loggers/?fbclid=IwAR0W0dWYzQ2x7fQwm0-v_AeEwnE7zChLokN2qwM1TnII6QGsJ1xPozgiaMs


~ ~ ~

I absolutely HAVE to emphasize this paragraph from the article above. I hope everyone of good faith somehow will have a chance to see it, and remember it, and who said it:

Bolsonaro has likened indigenous reserves in the Amazon to “chickenpox” on the land, and promised prior to his election that “there won’t be a square centimeter demarcated as an indigenous reserve” under his leadership. In 1998, in a speech on the floor of congress, he praised how well Americans had slaughtered their indigenous population. “The Brazilian was very incompetent,” he said. “Competent, yes, was the American cavalry that decimated its Indians in the past and nowadays does not have this problem in their country.”

[Karadeniz]

1. Mustard seed souls.

[roody]

2. Thank you for posting this.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Thank you for taking the time to read it. n/t

[Duppers]

4. Genocide.

😭