Canadian mining company Belo Sun wants to build a huge gold mine in the Big Bend of the Xingu region, in Pará; project foresees the extraction of 74 tons of gold in 20 years of operation.
Set aside for an isolated Indigenous group, the Brazilian preserve Ituna-Itatá has now been heavily deforested — a grim illustration of the intractable forces destroying the Amazon.
Amazon Indigenous leader Juma Xipaia has fought against massive dam projects and the incursion of illegal loggers and miners onto her community’s lands. She explains why what’s at stake is the survival of her people and their millennia-old way of life.
315 traditional families in the Brazilian Amazon, evicted from their homes starting in 2015 to make way for the Belo Monte mega-dam, have won the right to resettle near their former Xingu River homes.
