Data from INPE shows multiple fires burning inside the Araribóia reserve, although this number appears to be reducing. Local people have reported the fires there were started by heavily armed loggers who are now preventing responders from accessing the area.
“To make it harder, they are stopping the indigenous fire department from combating the fires,” Tainaky Tenetehar, 34, a coordinator for a volunteer indigenous force that patrols the reserve—known as Guardians of the Forest—told The Guardian.
Environmentalists are becoming increasingly concerned with the administration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, accusing the government of encouraging deforestation and emboldening those who want to exploit the forest for commercial gain.
Indigenous lands are commonly targeted by land grabbers as they are often very remote and unprotected.
“Data speaks for itself: Brazil saw a peak in deforestation, followed by a peak of fires. Indigenous peoples are threatened and killed. The environmental governance is weakened month after month. The connection is evident.”
On the other side of Brazil, the reserve of the Uru Eu Wau Wau tribe—some of whom remain uncontacted—has also been ravaged by fires
“Most of these people are constantly fleeing, they are constantly being threatened,” Vaz told The Guardian. “These people depend on the forest and as fire kills the animals they feel completely desperate with the situation.”
Campaign groups are worried that the latest outbreak of fires could wipe out the uncontacted Awá people—who have long been threatened by illegal loggers who are destroying their forested lands.
“These fires are now not just an environmental catastrophe, they’re also potentially genocidal,” Survival International Director Stephen Corry said in a statement. “By encouraging the land invaders and ranchers who set these fires, President Bolsonaro is signing a death warrant for the uncontacted tribes whose homes are going up in flames. If their forest is destroyed, they simply won’t survive.”
History and research has shown the most effective and lasting method for protecting rain forests is to support the territorial land rights of the Indigenous people who live there, Laurel Sutherlin, a spokesperson from the Rainforest Action Network, told Newsweek.
“Unfortunately, the current government in Brazil is openly hostile to both indigenous rights and environmental protection, so international support directly to indigenous groups is more important now than ever,” he said.
“The human toll is intense,” he said. “The anti-indigenous sentiment promoted by the government—including actively threatening these lands’ legal status, a Bolsonaro campaign promise—and the desire to convert this land are now acting in consort, and many of these peoples are under current assault in this firestorm of forest conversion.”
