Brazil’s Indigenous Women Rally to Protect Their Land

This week saw the Third March of Indigenous Women in Brasilia, Brazil. Its theme: “Women Biomes in Defense of Biodiversity Through Ancestral Roots.” Demonstrators took to the streets for women’s rights and to defend their right to Indigenous lands.

Indigenous land stewardship is not only critical for the economic and cultural health of Indigenous people, it is critical in the fight against climate change. And Indigenous women are becoming an ever-rising voice in this battle.

Encompassing nearly 7 million square miles, the Amazon, with its dense tree covering, absorbs a huge amount of greenhouse gas. It is one of the world’s largest carbon sinks. Deforestation and illegal mining are a scourge to the rainforest, releasing stored carbon dioxide, which furthers climate change.

Indigenous territories make up about 35 percent of the Amazon. These areas — and their Indigenous protectors — have been called “the most important barrier to Amazon deforestation.”

“Our goal is to manage our territories and their natural resources in accordance with our traditional knowledge,” Sineia do Vale, the national coordinator for Brazil’s Indigenous Committee on Climate Change, recently told Al Jazeera.

“We don’t believe climate justice can be addressed detached from the management of our territories, as it pervades social and cultural issues, including income-generation alternatives that respect our ways of life,” she added.

The protection of tribal lands is essential for Indigenous groups’ survival, as they are dependent on the natural resources of the jungle. “When their land is stolen, people are forced from their forest homes,” writes the nonprofit group Survival International. “They’re reduced from self-sufficiency to living on the sides of roads and/or depending on government handouts. Rates of disease, alcoholism, malnutrition and suicide skyrocket as a result.”

As of 2019, Brazilian women participated in family farming at a rate that was 80 percent higher than men, according to Brazil’s National Supply Company. Also, domestic duties fall under women’s purview. In the Amazon, severe weather changes — often due to climate change — like drought affect Indigenous women the most, both in terms of food production and the procurement of water for the home.

The march this week in Brasilia made a strong statement about the role of Indigenous women in Brazilian society overall. Previously, “Indigenous men had visibility, but now women are adding their strength to the defense of their territory too,” said Ana Paula da Silva, a researcher at Rio de Janeiro State University’s Indigenous peoples study program.

As the march organizers put it: “To talk about indigenous land demarcation, it’s to yell for the continuity for the existence for our people.”