Indigenous Leaders Fight for Land Rights & Survival in Brasilia
HAVANA TIMES – In Brazil, thousands of Indigenous leaders have been rallying in Brasília this week, calling on the government to recognize their ancestral lands and enforce stronger protections against illegal mining and other forms of exploitation. Protesters also denounced plans to build a railway that would transport grains across Brazil’s farming states to ports in the Amazon rainforest. A group of Indigenous leaders met with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, while others gathered outside government buildings.
Mana Shanenawa: “In the past, we died by the knife, the bullet. And today we die by the pen, by making laws, by the law and taking away our rights. This is a huge genocide that can happen within our nation, within the people, because our Indigenous land is life. For us, it is forest and life.”