BRAZIL

Brazil is home to nearly 60% of the Amazon basin and some of the world’s leading protagonists in indigenous activism. Here, ACT operates in select regions, primarily in the northern Amazon where Brazil borders Colombia and Peru in the northwest and the Guianas in the northeast. ACT also leads smaller initiatives with longtime partner communities in the southeastern Amazon in the Xingu River Basin and savanna-rainforest transition region. As of 2024, we have partnered with 14 indigenous peoples and 13 indigenous organizations in their fight to materialize and defend their constitutional rights for healthy territory, community well-being, and cultural expression.

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LAND:

Protecting biodiversity, tropical forests, and ancestral territory.

Forest and sky reflection in the river

Land rights: For many indigenous communities, territory is fundamental to cultural and physical well-being, not only in a philosophical sense, but also in a material sense. Once a community has their territory officially approved by the government, they have full property rights as to the management of these areas for the common wellbeing. They can also call upon the government to enforce the removal of incursions. ACT supports communities throughout the entire bureaucratic process of pushing through their claims for land rights, in particular through the execution of detailed studies and by supporting advocacy efforts to pressure government action. Currently, ACT is in the midst of demarcating over 120,000 hectares toward the establishment of three new indigenous territories, which will unify a mosaic of conservation corridors into one connected area of over 2.5 million hectares deep in the deep Amazon.

Community environmental monitoring: Community-based monitors are the backbone of on-the-ground protection. These community members have often self-organized into groups to keep watch over the boundaries of their territories for incursions or pollution from illegal activity. ACT supports many villages in their efforts to protect the health of their ecosystems, including training and equipping in forest monitoring methodologies, constructing guard posts, and providing satellite intelligence to guide on-foot interventions. Additionally, we facilitate communities in developing and updating the central official document of environmental governance in an indigenous territory—the Territorial Management and Monitoring Plan (referred to by their acronym, PGTAs, in Brazil).

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LIVELIHOODS:

Improving physical health, food sovereignty, basic community infrastructure, and economic security to ensure collective well-being.

Waurá Women Toasting Farinha

Intercultural health: Public healthcare is a constitutional right for indigenous communities in Brazil, with even a specialized government branch dedicated to indigenous health, DSEI. However, DSEI clinics are historically underequipped and poorly maintained, and practitioners are often unaware of cultural sensitivities when working in indigenous villages. ACT serves as a bridge, training DSEI practitioners in interculturality in medicine. Additionally, ACT builds and equips medical centers out of which DSEI practitioners can work.

Community infrastructure: Villages need to be maintained and improved. ACT supports villages in installing solar power systems, constructing traditional buildings for collective use, and establishing wells and irrigation systems. ACT has supported the establishment of two villages in southeastern Brazil – one with the Waurá people of the Xingu, and another with the historically disenfranchised Awã peoples who suffered forced contact and displacement in the 1970s and have been fighting to reclaim their territories.

Food sovereignty: ACT supports families in their agroforestry, agriculture, and beekeeping efforts, all of which contribute to their own food security while providing an alternative income source. We jointly prioritize planting and cultivating native food-bearing species with high genetic diversity, as well as revitalizing ancestral food production techniques. This not only contributes to nutritional wellness, but also reduces dependence on food staples provided by the government or other entities.

Sustainable incomes: As of 2024, ACT is in the midst of collaborations with FLACSO and COIAB to develop an education program on the subject of indigenous economies specialized for indigenous leaders. In villages, ACT supports communities in their income-generating efforts including plant nursery production, beekeeping, craftwork, and ecotourism.

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GOVERNANCE:

Supporting indigenous self-determination, human rights, and cultural revitalization.

Waurá village circle

Intercultural education: Many indigenous communities recognize that it is essential for their children to have access to education that acknowledges the contextual reality of families and communities as well as a pedagogy informed by indigenous values, beliefs, and principles. They understand that education is inherently political and cannot be neutral, and their way of educating must empower their children to be informed and engaged citizens who can transform conditions of injustice and inequity. ACT facilitates indigenous communities in developing a tailored educational program for their youth that will be recognized by the Brazilian state as part of their constitutional right to public education.

Indigenous medicine: Indigenous leadership and traditional healers are fighting to preserve and strengthen their communities’ knowledge of and cultural connection to traditional indigenous medicine. Across Brazil, we are supporting elder healers in transmitting their knowledge to young community members and growing practitioners’ ability to monitor the efficacy of learned techniques. With systematized data-keeping, healers hope this can elevate the legitimacy of traditional treatments not only within the communities themselves, but also with the national government towards integrating indigenous medicine into the public healthcare system for indigenous peoples. A cornerstone facility for this program is the ancestral knowledge center in the village of Urunai, which ACT helped construct.

Cultural revitalization: Communities also prioritize the preservation and strengthening of their living cultural heritage, and we partner with them in these efforts. Some methods through which communities do this include preserving languages, teaching ancestral knowledge, recording community oral history, and holding traditional ceremonies.

Indigenous leadership: Communities seek to build and strengthen their own organizations—be them grassroots, national, or regional—to represent their interests to various levels of Brazilian government and international fora. ACT provides close support in building internal governance structures so that these groups may function in political spaces and also be eligible to apply for grants from government and private institutions. In addition to these projects, ACT finances community participation in critical indigenous mobilizations to fight against anti-indigenous and anti-environment legislation, and to get public attention and pressure for their causes.