Less than two weeks before the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon was scheduled to begin at the Vatican, the Brazilian bishops’ Indigenous Missionary Council reported that the number of indigenous land invasions and indigenous murdered in Brazil in 2018 soared.
Indigenous peoples
Posted inDispatches, Faith
The working document for the Amazon Synod has been controversial—just not in Brazil
But the Pan-Amazon Synod’s organizers say much of the unhappiness with the its working document simply reflects Eurocentricism. Many critics “have little knowledge of the Amazon and in some cases have no commitment to its people.”
Posted inFaith, News
Church advocates for protection of indigenous people in the Amazon region
After denouncing the record number of wildfires in the Amazon in August and the growing deforestation of the region, the Brazilian Catholic Church is pressuring the government to guarantee the safety of several Amazonian indigenous peoples, alerting the authorities of the imminent risk of genocide in northern Brazil.
Posted inDispatches, Politics & Society
‘Safe third country’? Guatemalans are not convinced
“Our own people don’t have dignity. There’s no security. There are thousands of malnourished kids. How can we offer to be a safe country if it isn’t even safe for our own citizens?”
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
Residents fight to keep the Amazon alive, ‘but big money speaks louder.’ Can the church help?
For more than three decades, Juscelina Silva Batista’s life has followed the rise and fall of the Amazon River.
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
Struggles of families uprooted by Brazil’s Belo Monte reveal the dam’s dark side
“People used to live there,” said Joana Gomes da Silva, pointing to the cluster of skeletal trunks and branches. “It was a very pretty house. It’s underwater now.”
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
Development in the Amazon threatens way of life for Afro-Brazilian communities
Although slavery as an institution no longer exists, forms of forced labor persist in the country.
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
When miners, loggers and developers invade indigenous lands, isolated people die
With the miners came violence and diseases like malaria, to which the relatively isolated Indians had no resistance. In one village, no one survived. In others, as many as one-third of the villagers succumbed, some to disease and others to malnutrition.
Posted inFeatures, Politics & Society
How one midwife is helping indigenous mothers connect to their childbirth traditions
These traditional, indigenous birth practices should never have been erased in the first place.
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
Pope Francis to mining industry: Respect the rights of indigenous people
“I urge everyone to respect the fundamental human rights and voice of the persons in these beautiful yet fragile communities.”