ILLEGAL MINING
Indigenous communities seek lasting alternatives to illegal mining
Munduruku demonstrators in 2018, demanding the demarcation of their Sawré Muybu territory in Pará. Photo: Marcelo Camargo/EBC
In June this year, another federal operation to evict illegal miners from Brazil’s indigenous territories made national headlines. In the Kayabi indigenous land in the northern Amazonian portion of Mato Grosso state, law-enforcement agents dismantled 23 dredging rafts, 15 boats and numerous riverside shacks. It was the second such operation in Kayabi lands this year, bringing the total number of destroyed vessels there to 50.
Speaking about the toll these mining operations take on indigenous livelihoods, Eliane Xunakalo, president of the Federation of Indigenous Peoples of Mato Grosso, underscored a reality now common across Brazil: “[Mining] is destroying the river, it is destroying our source of food.”
In an interview with The Brazilian Report, indigenous leader Alessandra Korap Munduruku added that…
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