AlterNative

Photo of the uncontacted tribe photographed last year in the Brazilian Amazon, near the Peruvian border.
© © GLEISON MIRANDA/FUNAI

Brazil’s Attorney General’s office has warned that uncontacted Indians in the Amazon are at risk of extinction due to a highway that runs through Rondônia state to the Bolivian border.

The Attorney General’s office has condemned the Department of Infrastructure and Transport for breaking environmental licensing laws, and has ordered asphalting work on the BR-429 road to be suspended. It has highlighted that the department did not take into account the impact of upgrading the road on indigenous peoples in the region.

The new highway runs through the municipality of São Miguel do Guaporé, where according to the government’s indigenous affairs department, FUNAI, ‘large groups of Indians are living in the area affected by BR-429.’

Tari, an Amondawa Indian leader, laments: ‘I never imagined that one day São Miguel would be transformed into pasture and that the forest where I have been walking all my life would one day completely disappear.’

The Attorney General’s office is concerned that paving the road will increase the illegal extraction of natural resources from protected areas and will cause confrontations between indigenous peoples and those invading their territory. It warns that uncontacted Indians could die as a result of conflict.

The paving of the highway will directly affect the uncontacted Jurureí Indians, according to federal prosecutor Daniel Fontenele, and may lead to contact between the tribe and outsiders.

The Massacó indigenous territory, inhabited solely by uncontacted Indians, probably of the Sirionó tribe, is another area at risk of invasion.

Crossed spears left by an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon where Perenco is working
© Marek Wolodzko/Survival

More than a thousand people voted for Anglo-French company Perenco in a spoof Friends of the Earth award for human rights.

Perenco was nominated for the award, the ‘Pinocchio Prize 2009’, for its billion dollar project in a part of the Peruvian Amazon inhabited by at least two uncontacted tribes. The company’s work in the area violates the tribes’ rights under international law, and could decimate them if contact is made.

The winner of the award, Bolloré, was announced in a statement by Friends of the Earth (France) yesterday. Perenco came third with 22% of the vote.

The ‘Pinocchio Prize’ is intended to raise awareness of, and condemn, French businesses who ‘perpetrate the most serious human rights violations.’ Perenco’s chairman, Francois Perrodo, met Peru’s president, Alan Garcia, earlier this year while indigenous people in the Amazon were protesting against his company.

Hydropower dams are being built across the Amazon in the name of combating climate change.
© Survival

Measures to stop global warming risk being as harmful to tribal peoples as climate change itself, according to a new report from Survival.

The report, ‘The most inconvenient truth of all: climate change and indigenous people’, sets out four key ‘mitigation measures’ that threaten tribal people:

1. Biofuels: promoted as an alternative, ‘green’ source of energy to fossil fuels, much of the land allocated to grow them is the ancestral land of tribal people. If biofuels expansion continues as planned, millions of indigenous people worldwide stand to lose their land and livelihoods.

2. Hydro-electric power: A new boom in dam construction in the name of combating climate change is driving thousands of tribal people from their homes.

3. Forest conservation: Kenya’s Ogiek hunter-gatherers are being forced from the forests they have lived in for hundreds of years to ‘reverse the ravages’ of global warming.

4. Carbon offsetting: Tribal peoples’ forests now have a monetary value in the booming ‘carbon credits’ market. Indigenous people say this will lead to forced evictions and the ‘theft of our land’.

The report calls for tribal people to be fully involved in decisions that affect them, and for their land ownership rights to be upheld.

Survival Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘This report highlights ‘the most inconvenient truth of all’ – that the world’s tribal people, who have done the least to cause climate change and are most affected by it, are now having their rights violated and land devastated in the name of attempts to stop it. Hiding behind the global push to prevent climate change, governments and companies are mounting a massive land grab. As usual, where money and vast profits are at stake, the world’s indigenous people are being shamefully swept aside.’

Read the report – PDF (3.5MB)

A media kit is available with images and video interviews

Guarani man
© João Ripper/Survival

The body of a Guarani Indian has been found dead and badly bruised in a river close to his ancestral land in Brazil, following an armed attack on the community of Ypo’i on 30 October.

The body of teacher Genivaldo Verá was identified by his relatives on 10 November. Brazilian authorities are examining it to establish the cause of death. The attack happened near the ‘Triunfo’ ranch, built on Guarani land close to the city of Paranhos in Mato Grosso do Sul in south-west Brazil, near the Paraguayan border.

Genivaldo’s cousin and fellow teacher Rolindo Verá disappeared after the attack and is still missing. The Guarani are urging the Brazilian and Paraguayan authorities to carry out an urgent investigation, as they fear he might also have been killed.

Genivaldo and Rolindo Verá had joined other Guarani on 29 October in reoccupying part of their ancestral land or tekohá. Their land had been stolen and occupied by ranchers, and they had been living with 3,000 other Guarani squeezed onto just 2,118 hectares of land.

For years the Guarani have longed to return Ypo’i. FUNAI, the Brazilian government’s Indian affairs department, has failed to demarcate their land despite its mandate to do so.

The day after they returned to Ypo’i, the Guarani were attacked by a group of armed men who arrived in a truck and began shooting at them, beating them, harassing them and forcing them out of the area. Several Guarani were injured and Genivaldo and Rolindo went missing.

Guarani chief Verá said, ‘When we arrived at our tekohá, we were very happy. We began to build some huts so we could begin living on our land again. But it wasn’t long before a gang of gunmen arrived and beat us up and shot at us. We started to run away. Much more than the pain of the bullets and the beatings, we felt the pain of being forced away from what is ours.’

The attack is the most recent in a series of violent events in Mato Grosso do Sul. A week prior to this attack, Terena Indians who had occupied a part of their traditional land in the municipality of Sidrolândia were also expelled by force.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has just visited Brazil and described the situation of indigenous people as ‘astonishingly invisible.’ She said, ‘they are being held back by discrimination and indifference, chased out of their lands and into forced labour.’

The Guarani of Mato Grosso do Sul face one of the most difficult situations of all the indigenous peoples of Brazil. Having once occupied a homeland of forests and plains totaling some 350,000 square kilometers, they now live in severely overcrowded settlements.

Some Guarani have no land at all, and live camped by roadsides. They face unemployment, poverty, illness, malnutrition, violence, exploitation in the sugarcane fields, and a suicide rate unequalled in South America.

Survival International has opened a fund to support the Guarani, in association with the film ‘Birdwatchers’, which stars Guarani-Kaiowá Indians. All donations will go towards helping them defend their rights, lands and futures.

Perenco is exploring for oil inside uncontacted Indians' land.
© Survival

An Anglo-French company has been nominated for a spoof Friends of the Earth (FoE) award for its billion dollar project in a part of the Amazon inhabited by two of the world’s last uncontacted tribes.

The company, Perenco, is one of four nominees in the human rights category for Friends of the Earth France’s ‘Pinocchio Prize 2009’. The prize is intended to raise awareness of, and condemn, French businesses who ‘perpetrate the most serious human rights violations.’

Perenco has been nominated for its project in the Peruvian Amazon where it plans to drill for millions of barrels of oil on land belonging to uncontacted tribes, according to FoE. In doing so, Perenco is contravening a recent recommendation from the UN to Peru’s government, and is being sued by Peru’s national indigenous peoples’ organisation, AIDESEP. Perenco denies the tribes exist.

FoE says that in June there was a ‘massacre’ following indigenous protests against government plans to open up their land to oil companies without their consent. ‘Peru’s president, Alan Garcia, has recognised publicly that the government failed to consult adequately with indigenous people about oil concessions. But Perenco doesn’t seem ready to learn from this, and is aggravating what is an extremely tense situation following the massacre,’ says FoE.

Perenco’s chairman, Francois Perrodo, met Alan Garcia earlier this year and promised to invest two billion dollars in the project. At the same time, indigenous people in the Amazon were protesting against the company and preventing their boats from traveling on a major Amazon tributary.

Survival Director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘This is a major embarrassment for Perenco. One way of guaranteeing they don’t win the Pinocchio prize would be to abandon this project tomorrow.’

Voting for the Pinocchio prize can be done on-line: http://www.prix-pinocchio.org/nomines.php. The winner will be announced on 24 November.

Botswana's persecution of the Bushmen has continued under President Khama.
© Survival

A South African woman who said Botswana’s president ‘looks like a Bushman’ was arrested, detained for two days and fined for ‘insulting Botswana’.

Dorsey Dube was arrested after commenting on a portrait of President Khama at a control post on the Botswana-South Africa border. She said the President looked like her friend’s father, who has Bushman features.

The deeply-entrenched racist attitudes of many people in authority in Botswana towards the Bushmen were starkly revealed, however, when the authorities assumed it was meant as an insult. Survival International is sending a report on the incident to the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Ms Dube says she was held at the police station and not allowed to call anyone in South Africa for assistance, though her friends did eventually reach help. She was released after spending a night in a prison cell and a further full day in custody.

President Khama (who is himself half-British) has referred to the Bushmen’s way of life as an ‘archaic fantasy’. The government has banned them from hunting for food or accessing water on their land, in a bid to force the Bushmen to abandon their land and lifestyle.

President Ian Khama, who was returned to office after elections in October, is a board member of Conservation International.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘You couldn’t have clearer evidence of the racism towards Bushmen in Botswana than this incident. A South African person thought resembling a Bushman was complimentary, but Botswana officials took it as an insult. It’s doubly tragic when you consider that President Khama’s father, the country’s first President, himself endured a great deal of racist abuse from the colonial authorities for marrying a British woman, and that he promised the country’s Bushmen that their rights would always be protected.’

A spokesman for the Ogiek has condemned the Peruvian government's attempt to disband AIDESEP.
© Survival

A spokesman from a tribe in Kenya has condemned the Peruvian government’s attempt to destroy Peru’s Amazon indigenous movement.

The condemnation comes from Kiplangat Cheruyot from the Ogiek tribe in response to the revelation that Peru’s government plans to disband Peru’s national organisation for indigenous people in the Amazon, known by its Spanish acronym AIDESEP.

‘We, the Ogiek Indigenous people of Kenya, condemn in the strongest possible terms the Peruvian Government for its human rights abuses, including arrest, prosecution and harassment of indigenous and tribal people.

‘We understand that Peru is a signatory to several United Nations conventions that seek to promote and protect its citizens. It’s sad to note that the same government violates its own national laws by not respecting or recognising indigenous peoples’ rights as contained in the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights.

‘We call upon the international community, including the UN secretary-general, to send its Special Rapporteur for an immediate fact-finding mission on human rights situations in Peru. We cannot just sit by and watch what is happening. We must take all necessary avenues to make the government change its ill motives and intentions.’

Cheruyot is a spokesman for the Ogiek People’s Development Program. The Ogiek face becoming the world’s latest ‘conservation refugees’ after the Kenyan government recently announced plans to evict them from their land in a bid to stop climate change.

AIDESEP was founded in 1980 and represents 350,000 indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon.

Peru's Amazon Indians have been protesting against the exploitation of their lands by oil and gas companies
© David Dudenhoefer

The Peruvian government’s unprecedented attempt to destroy Peru’s Amazon Indian movement has been condemned by indigenous leaders around the world.

The wave of condemnation comes after it was revealed that the government plans to disband Peru’s national organisation for Amazon Indians, known by its Spanish acronym AIDESEP.

‘We Bushmen of Botswana support the Indians of Peru and think that the government of Peru and the oil companies should not forget the indigenous peoples. If you destroy their land, you destroy the Indians themselves,’ said Jumanda Gakelebone, from First People of the Kalahari, a Bushman organization in southern Africa.

‘Peru’s government should sit down and talk respectfully to AIDESEP as the legitimate representatives of the country’s Amazonian Indians, not try to attack them through the courts,’ said Armand MacKenzie, from the Innu Council of Nitassinan in Canada.

‘It is outrageous. I condemn Peru’s government for trying to destroy the voice of Peru’s Amazon population,’ said Lal Amlai, a Jumma man from Bangladesh.

‘If you target AIDESEP you’re targeting all indigenous people – not just those in the Amazon or Peru but all over the world,’ said CAOI, an organization representing indigenous people in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. CAOI called the attempt to disband AIDESEP ‘absurd’ and further evidence of the government’s ‘racist’ policies.

AIDESEP has been vigorously opposing the government’s attempts to open the Peruvian Amazon to oil, gas and mining companies. The proposal to disband it was made by Peru’s Ministry of Justice just three days after armed Peruvian police attacked a peaceful indigenous protest in northern Peru, which was part of Amazon-wide protests coordinated by AIDESEP. The attack led to more than thirty deaths and two hundred people injured.

AIDESEP was founded in 1980 and represents 350,000 indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon.

Survival director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘To many people worldwide the first thing that comes to mind when they think of Peru is Machu Picchu, South America’s top tourist attraction. Peru now risks being better known for a repressive government determined to destroy the country’s indigenous movement.’

The Ayoreo's home is being rapidly destroyed for beef production.
© GAT/Survival

The only uncontacted tribe in South America outside the Amazon is having its forest rapidly and illegally bulldozed by ranchers who want their land to graze cattle for beef.

The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode is the only uncontacted tribe in the world currently losing its land to beef production.

The ranchers’ operations were exposed by satellite photos taken on 1 November. Since 2 November, an ad by Survival publicising the deforestation has been playing on a major Paraguayan radio station, Radio Nanduti.

The ranchers, from Brazilian company Yaguarete Pora S.A., are operating on the tribe’s land in Paraguay despite having their licence suspended by the Environment Ministry in August for previous illegal clearance.

They are clearing the forest, the home of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode tribe, using bulldozers alleged to belong to Jacobo Kauenhowen, owner of a large bulldozer business in a nearby Mennonite colony.

‘This is a serious threat to the Totobiegosode. The illegal deforestation carried out by Yaguarete in Paraguay is continuing without any control whatsoever,’ said the Paraguayan NGO GAT, which is working to protect the Ayoreo’s lands.

Last year Yaguarete, together with another Brazilian company, River Plate S.A., destroyed thousands of hectares of the tribe’s land.

Some of the Totobiegosode have already been contacted and have relatives among those who remain uncontacted.

Survival director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘The Totobiegosode are the most vulnerable uncontacted tribe in the world. A tragedy is unfolding right before our eyes – and the satellite camera’s lens. President Lugo must not sit back and watch as Paraguay’s most vulnerable people see their homes and livelihoods annihilated.’

The Yanomami are the largest relatively isolated tribe in the Amazon
© 1980 Victor Englebert/Survival

Seven Yanomami Indians in Venezuela have died from an outbreak of suspected swine flu in the last two weeks. Another 1,000 Yanomami are reported to have caught the virulent strain of flu.

The Venezuelan government has sealed off the area, and sent in medical teams to treat the Yanomami. The regional office of the World Health Organization has confirmed the presence of swine flu.

There are fears that the epidemic could sweep through the Yanomami territory and kill many more Indians.

The Yanomami are the largest relatively isolated tribe in the Amazon rainforest, with a population of about 32,000 that straddle the Venezuela-Brazil border. Due to this isolation they have very little resistance to introduced diseases such as flu.

In the 1980-90s, when goldminers invaded their land, one fifth of the Yanomami in Brazil died from diseases such as flu and malaria introduced by the miners. Their future was only secured after a major international campaign led by the Yanomami themselves, Survival and the Pro Yanomami Commission.

Health care is already extremely precarious on both sides of the border. Many Yanomami communities have no access at all to health care and this mountainous, forested region presents many challenges in the provision of emergency medical aid.

The Yanomami territory lies on the border of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela and is the largest indigenous territory in tropical rainforest in the world.

Last month Survival published a report highlighting the special threat that swine flu presents to indigenous people around the world.

Stephen Corry, director of Survival said, ‘The situation is critical. Both governments must take immediate action to halt the epidemic and radically improve the health care to the Yanomami. If they do not, we could once more see hundreds of Yanomami dying of treatable diseases. This would be utterly devastating for this isolated tribe, whose population has only just recovered from the epidemics which decimated their population 20 years ago.’

Oil palms planted on recently-deforested land, Sarawak
© M Ross/ Survival

– Penan tribe in Borneo welcomes ban

An advert for Malaysian palm oil has been banned in the UK, dealing a major blow to the credibility of Malaysia’s palm oil industry. Members of the hunter-gatherer Penan tribe in Borneo have welcomed the ban, saying, ‘Oil palm plantations have not benefited us at all; they have only robbed us of our resources and land.’

The Penan live in Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of Borneo, and are fighting to stop the forests they rely on being cut down to make way for oil palm plantations. Survival is calling on the Malaysian government to halt plantations and logging on their land without their consent.

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority banned the magazine advert, placed by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council. The advert claimed that Malaysian palm oil was ‘sustainable’ and contributed to ‘the alleviation of poverty, especially amongst rural populations.’

The advertising regulator ruled that these and other claims made in the advert were misleading and could not be substantiated.

Members of the Penan tribe who have already lost much of their land to oil palm plantations said today:

‘Our people welcome the ban on the magazine advert by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council. How come the advert claimed that palm oil helps alleviate poverty, when from the very beginning oil palm plantations have destroyed our source of livelihood and made us much poorer? A lot of people are hungry every day because our forest has been destroyed.’

Oil palm plantations and logging are destroying the forests the Penan hunt and gather in, and polluting the rivers they fish in. Without their forests they have difficulty finding enough food.

Survival’s director Stephen Corry said today, ‘Claims that Malaysian palm oil is green and people-friendly will not wash, especially with the Penan. The industry’s expansion onto their land is a disaster.’

Palm oil is used in many everyday grocery products, and is increasingly being used for biofuel.

Download the banned advert

The Harakmbut are one of three tribes that depend on the reserve where Hunt is exploring for oil.
© Dilwyn Jenkins/Survival

Indigenous people have threatened to evict a US company, Hunt Oil, exploring for oil on their ancestral land in the Peruvian Amazon.

According to FENAMAD, an indigenous organisation in south-east Peru, at least two hundred people have gathered in a small town called Salvación, which acts as Hunt’s base in the region.

A meeting between company representatives, local indigenous people and high-ranking government ministers, including the prime minister, was scheduled to take place on Wednesday. Fifty policemen have been sent to Salvación – a move condemned by Peru’s national indigenous peoples’ organisation, AIDESEP.

FENAMAD says local people have not given Hunt consent to work on their land, and they are willing to put their ‘lives on the line’ to stop them from doing so. They said they would evict the company if it continued to violate their rights.

FENAMAD says that local people have also asked to speak directly to Hunt’s owners. Hunt is a private company whose CEO, Ray Hunt, is a long-standing associate of former US presidents George Bush and George W. Bush.

Hunt owns the rights to explore in the region, which includes land belonging to the Yine, Matsigenka and Harakmbut tribes, with Repsol-YPF. Last month, FENAMAD announced it was suing both companies.

At the heart of the region is the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve, used by many indigenous villages for hunting and fishing and the source of six rivers that are the only fresh water supply for an estimated ten thousand people.