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Murder in the Amazon and What It Means for the Climate Emergency, the Food You Eat and Your Family
This week dozens of miners dressed in military fatigues and carrying assault weapons swarmed an indigenous village in the heart of the Amazon rainforest in northern Brazil and murdered one of the most important tribal leaders in the region.
The invasion of the village came with the encouragement of Brazil’s ultra-right wing President who has encouraged miners and loggers to move into indigenous territories in defiance of Brazil’s constitution which designated protected areas for indigenous people in 1996 as part of the process established by Brazil’s 1988 Constitution.
The Amazon is home to half of the world’s remaining rainforests, and one third of this land is inhabited by the tribes who are now under attack.
Three football fields’ worth of rainforest every single minute are being lost primarily due to logging, mining, and farming — most of which is illegal under Brazilian law.
In the month of July alone the Amazon has lost 519 square miles of rainforest.
