A controversial project to build a rail line for transporting soybeans and other commodities through Indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon may get its environmental license as soon as April.
Prosecutors in the state of Pará, where the line will terminate at the Miritituba river port, have filed a court request for a suspension of the project until prior consultation with the affected Indigenous communities have been carried out.
The request seeks to challenge the project on its economic viability, with prosecutors arguing that without detailed data on costs and compensation measures, there is no way of knowing how the project will impact on public coffers.
This is the first time that prosecutors have highlighted a project’s viability to seek its suspension.
A controversial freight railway line that would cut through Indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon looks set to be approved for construction by the federal government as soon as April, despite a lawsuit pending against it by local prosecutors.
The EF-170 railroad, known as the Ferrogrão, or “Grainway,” is a priority project of the federal government and will run 933 kilometers (580 miles) from the municipality of Sinop, in Mato Grosso state, to Miritituba in Pará state. The call for a tender is expected to be released within the first quarter of 2021, and the project is expected to be granted its environmental license in April.
All the freight traffic between the two cities currently flows through the BR-163 highway, bringing produce from Mato Grosso north to the river terminal in Pará. At present, though, more than 70% of Mato Grosso’s harvest is trucked southeast to the Atlantic ports of Santos and Paranaguá for export. With the railroad, the government aims to avoid this arduous step of the journey, instead sending commodities like soybean and corn to the transshipment terminal in Miritituba and onto ships sailing out to the Atlantic via the Tapajós, Tocantins and Amazon rivers. Aside from grains, the government also plans to transport soybean oil, fertilizers, sugar, ethanol, and petroleum products.
While the railroad is considered vital for grain shipping, the way the federal government is pushing ahead with the project has raised concerns.
In particular, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) in Pará has challenged the government’s failure to seek the free, prior and informed consent of the Indigenous peoples through whose lands the railway would pass. In October, the MPF and five civil society organizations filed a request with the Federal Court of Accounts, the government accountability office, for the precautionary suspension of the privatization process and for the call for tender to be stopped.
Public prosecutor Felipe Moura Palha said the fact that the federal government has violated the Indigenous communities’ right to participate in discussions about the project risks imposing significant economic losses in the future. “This is the first time that the MPF has called on the Court of Accounts to analyze a large project in the Amazon with an eye on economics,” he said.
The MPF says the lack of data on the real environmental impacts of the project means the cost of compensation could be greater than imagined and possibly lead to losses from the public coffers. “We maintain that prior consultation, analysis and the effect on Indigenous communities in the economic viability analysis for the project is essential,” Palha said.
In response to the request filed by the MPF, the court notified the National Land Transportation Agency (ANTT), the federal regulator for railway and highway infrastructure, and Funai, the federal agency for Indigenous affairs, to carry out consultations with Indigenous peoples along the route of the planned rail line. But even then, the federal government has played foul, according to the MPF: prosecutors allege that the government’s Special Secretariat of the Partnerships and Investments Program (SE-PPI) tried to improperly entice an Indigenous Munduruku leader to act on behalf of the tribe.
The Munduruku people, with a population of about 13,700 occupying territories along the Tapajós River, have their own political organizations. According to the MPF, the government sought out a single person to be “the speaker granted representation to articulate the interests of his people.” On Dec. 14, the MPF recommended that the prior consultation process also include the project’s impacts on the Indigenous peoples in the state of Mato Grosso who would be directly or indirectly affected by the Grainway. The recommendation was aimed at Funai and IBAMA, the federal environmental protection agency.
Indigenous people ignored
Melillo Dinis is a lawyer with the Instituto Kabu, representing 12 communities of the Mẽbêngôkre-Kayapó people, including some 12,000 Kayapós. He said the Indigenous people have yet to form an opinion about the Grainway because the project has not yet even been presented to them. Dinis said there are currenty three issues under debate: the right to prior consultation and fulfillment of Indigenous protocol, neither of which were acknowledged by the government of President Jair Bolsonaro; the need for thorough social and environmental evaluation of the degradation, deforestation and growing tensions over territory in the region; and the fact that representatives of governmental agencies affirmed that Indigenous rights would be respected but did not carry out their promises.
“The context that has been presented to us until now is completely disrespectful of Indigenous peoples,” he said. “They have been living here for around 10,000 years. We will fight until the end.”
Dinis noted that the project has been dragged out over previous administrations; the Grainway was proposed in 2016, under the watch of then-president Dilma Rousseff, who was later that year impeached and replaced by Michel Temer. Temer was succeeded by Bolsonaro.
“Before, they would listen to us but wouldn’t pay any attention,” Dinis said of the Rousseff and Temer administrations. “This administration won’t even listen to us. So the outcome is the same.”
Prosecutor Palha said there’s no way to stipulate a ceiling on spending on the project without knowing how much to allocate for environmental compensation.
“We are not opposed to development projects,” he said. “Our request is: carry out the prior consultation before claiming that the project is viable so it can be discussed.”
He cited the case of the Belo Monte dam in the state of Pará as an example. A significant decline in the flow rate of the Xingu River now threatens the viability of the dam, raising the prospect of new power plants, likely fired by fossil fuels, needing to be built.
“We want to avoid this situation with the Grainway, having a project already installed that hasn’t been properly planned,” Palha said. “This is why the Court of Accounts is carrying out an unprecedented economics analysis.”
Controversy over the Grainway began in 2016 when it was announced that studies would be carried out to make the project viable. In 2018, Mongabay reported that the Kayapó people had expressed their concern over the potential threats posed by the railway and had written a letter to the ANTT. In it, tribal chief Anhe Kayapó said:
“The Grainway cannot be built without reinforcing controls, protection and vigilance in the Conservation Units and Indigenous Lands [along its route].”
Protect Thacker Pass with activists Max Wilbert, Will Falk and Rebecca Wildbear
Activists aiming to stop Lithium Americas’ Thacker Pass open-pit lithium mine – what would be the United States’ largest lithium mine, supplying up to 25% of the world’s lithium – launched a permanent protest encampment hours after the Bureau of Land Management gave final approval to the mine on January 15.
The Green Flame brings you the voices of land protectors Will Falk and Max Wilbert who mean to stay for as long as it takes to protect this old-growth sagebrush mountainside despite winter conditions at Thacker Pass. Rebecca Wildbear, river and soul guide, lover of the wild, joins us in honoring and calling for defense of the Great Basin, Thacker Pass and the whole of wild creation. Many thanks to Green Flame sound editor Iona and to the many non-human voices – Golden Eagle, Coyote, and Greater Sage Grouse – speaking to us in this Protect Thacker Pass episode of the Green Flame.
Two hundred species went extinct today. The last individual from each of these 200 species dies each day. Merely fifteen years ago, that number was 150. While extinctions are a natural process, the scale of the current mass extinction is a direct result of industrial civilization. In this article, Rebecca writes about her grief for all her lost kins, and about some groups who are actively working to save some of the remaining ones.
Hearing the last song of a male Kauai ‘O’o tears me up. He was singing for a female who will never come. Now his lovely voice is gone too. I cry for him, and for all the species we have lost. First listed as endangered in 1967, the Kauai ‘O’o lived in the forests of Kaua’i, and was extinct 20 years later, after their habitat was destroyed by human activity.
One in a million species expires naturally each year, but now extinctions are happening 1,000 times faster. Humans are driving species extinct more rapidly than ever before in the history of the planet. Since the dawn of industrial civilization, we have lost eighty-three percent of wild mammals and fifty percent of plants, and a million more species are at risk —all largely as a result of human actions.
Everywhere there is life, there is song.
The planet is always singing. Humans are meant to live in sync, our unique note resounding within the symphony. Instead, our dominant culture is killing all the other voices, one by one, as if removing instruments from an orchestra. Some birds have forgotten their song, like the once abundant regent honeyeater. Now critically endangered, they are unable to find other honeyeaters and hear their songs.
The world needs the bitter and resonant cry of every creature, even our own deep voices, attuning with the song of the world. As a wilderness and soul guide, I invite people to listen to the voices of all the others and remember their own unique notes, the mythic purpose of their souls. I was made for this work. Yet it is not enough to stop the destruction of the last remaining wild species.
Whistling
Did the Kauai ‘O’o know he was calling out to an empty world? “The costs of civilization are too high,” his song pierces me. “Remember the connection we once had.” The first human words sounded like birds. Humans and birds evolved from a common ancestor, a reptile millions of years ago. Both grew to form complex vocalizations and social groups. Rare whistling languages, often called bird languages, used to be found all over the world. The truest voices of our ancestors, they are now heard only in a handful of places with scattered settlements or mountainous terrain.
In south-western Costa Rica, I lived amongst the Guaymi people in rustic dwellings, eating home-grown rice and beans in banana leaves. We taught each other, in Spanish, our first languages. When the Guaymi whistled to each other, the sound traveled a great distance through the rainforest. They looked beautiful with their heads and bodies vibrating, faces and lips moving wildly to form the unusual sounds.
In the foothills of the Himalayas, the Hmong people speak in whistles. In their courtship rituals, now rarely-performed, boys would wander through nearby villages at nightfall, whistling poetry. If a girl responded, the dialogue would continue. The lovers added nonsense syllables to assure the secrecy of their melody.
Longing
“Is anyone alive out there?” the Kauai ‘O’o sings, but there is no reply, nor will there ever be again. Is he sorrowful? That is what I feel when I sense what is happening and read things like of all the mammals now on Earth, ninety-six percent are livestock and humans—only four percent are wild mammals.
Tears flow. I long for a world more alive than the one we inhabit. For rivers to run clear and flocks of birds to fill the sky. Ancient trees to cover the land. Oceans to teem with whales and coral. For machines that mine coal, oil, and trees to be dismantled. For people to stop extracting and start honoring. For lost cultures and species to return, and be driven out no more.
Longing is prayer, and prayer is a conversation. If we listen to nature and our dreams, we can be guided towards the actions that matter most. If we ask and await the mystery, we can receive a response and then embody what is asked. Prayer is what we become when we offer our lives in creative service.
Will civilization collapse first, before the biosphere?
Or after all species and wild places are already gone? Species can’t survive without unspoiled habitat, but there is less every day. Even in the wake of late-stage global capitalism, I long for a sustainable society, rooted in an ethical approach in its relationship with the land, honoring the voices of river, bird, rock, and tree.
These collaborative relationships have existed for millennium. The Yao people still team up with the honeyguide bird in sub-Saharan Africa to hunt for honey. Using a series of special chirps, humans and birds communicate with each other. The honeyguide birds lead the way to hidden beehives, and the Yao people share the sweetness with their avian friends.
Protecting
Is the Kauai ‘O’o aware this is his last message to the world? What will humanity’s last song be? The last passenger pigeon died in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo. She had a palsy that made her tremble and never laid a fertile egg in her life. In the 19th century, passenger pigeon migrations darkened the sky. Flocks took hours to pass and were so loud that human conversation was impossible. These birds sustained people through the winter. By the mid-1890’s, flock sizes numbered in the dozens rather than hundreds of billions.
Passenger pigeons were hunted out of existence. After the invention of the telegraph and the railroad, the commercial pigeon industry boomed. Hunters killed them in their nesting grounds and harvested the squabs. No one stopped when their numbers crashed. People slaughtered them until the end. In the 19th century, people did not believe they could drive a species to extinction. This seems to mirror a denial still present today. Most people do not believe humans are destroying the biosphere of the living planet.
“People need these jobs,” the passenger pigeon industry said to avoid restrictions on hunting. Industries today make similar claims, as their mines, dams, and industrial agriculture clear cut and pave over ecosystems, poison rivers and the sea, and dry up underground aquifers.
Indigenous peoples have always been the Earth’s greatest defenders.
Indigenous people protect eighty percent of global diversity, even though they comprise less than five percent of the world’s population. The Earth needs more people to stand in solidarity. I wonder if the Kauai ‘O’o felt as desperate as I do, if he understood that the planet is being plundered. I imagine myself singing alongside him, calling out—are you out there? What will you do to protect the beloved Earth?
Industry plans to destroy a critical corridor for pronghorn antelope and mule deer, nesting ground for golden eagles, ferruginous hawks, and prairie falcons. Lithium Americas is slated to build a lithium mine on Thacker Pass. They say it will provide jobs. Falsely, they call it green to manufacture belief that it somehow will not destroy the biosphere. Five to eight percent of the global population of endangered sage-grouse live there.
The watershed is home to the threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout and the endemic King’s River pryg. I invite you to join environmentalists Max Wilbert and Will Falk in protesting the mine. I will be joining them the last two weeks of April.
The songs of eagles, hawks, falcons, and sagebrush are priceless and irreplaceable.
This is the video that inspired Rebecca’s article.
Friends of Earth International (FoEI) published a report revealing the greenwashing of net zero emissions of the fossil fuel industries. In this piece, Kim Hill writes about the problems with the concept of economic growth that the report does not acknowledge.
A recent report from Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) unpacks the greenwashing of fossil fuels in the term ‘net zero emissions’. Net zero is a scheme for expanding the oil and gas industry, that does nothing to address the causes of climate change, and indeed exacerbates ecological collapse.
This is how FoEI describes net zero targets: “‘Greenwashing’ hardly suffices as a term to describe these efforts to obscure continued growth in fossil emissions — ‘ecocide’ and ‘genocide’ more accurately capture the impacts the world will face.”
FoEI joins the many environmental activists and groups campaigning against net-zero, in defence of the ecosystems, indigenous peoples, peasants and third-world communities that are being harmed by fossil fuel expansion and offset trading.
The climate movement has adopted net zero emissions as its core demand, and continues to mobilise many thousands of people around the world to join protests in support of this goal. By endorsing the fossil fuel companies’ campaigns for net-zero pledges and targets, rather than taking the side of environmental groups organising against it, the climate movement and Extinction Rebellion are complicit in genocide and ecocide. While individual climate activists may have other motives, the movement as a whole is controlled by corporate interests, and has been co-opted into marketing the goals of its funders.
While climate activists have been inspired by the celebrity status of Greta Thunberg in coalescing around the net zero target, Greta herself has said in recent months “we must forget about net zero” and calls these schemes “empty words, loopholes and greenwash.”
Just a few of the many headlines to be found via a web search of the term net zero emissions.
Two recent articles in The Guardian also expose the net zero spin. One titled Global oil companies have committed to net zero emissions. It’s a sham. says “many companies and countries are using “net zero” to justify expanding the production of fossil fuels…All that the major oil companies have done (with tacit support from many governments) is shift their public narrative about the climate crisis from denial to delusion. They’re no longer insisting there’s no problem, because they lost that argument. “net zero” is their attempt to continue business as usual without addressing what they’re doing to people and the planet.”
A second article, The climate crisis can’t be solved by carbon accounting tricks, states “Net zero increasingly involves highly questionable carbon accounting. As a result, the new politics swirling around net zero targets is rapidly becoming a confusing and dangerous mix of pragmatism, self-delusion and weapons-grade greenwash.”
The FoEI report, titled Chasing Carbon Unicorns, opens with: “Powerful actors, particularly those most responsible for emissions, such as the fossil fuel industry and agribusiness, continue to obscure the need for the phase-out of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions with the distractions and seductions of the carbon market. “net zero” pledges are a new addition to the strategy basket of these actors who are fighting hard to maintain the status quo. And the status quo will certainly worsen the climate catastrophe.”
A few more excerpts:
“These deliberate corporate strategies distract attention from the undeniable and urgent need to eliminate fossil fuel emissions…”
“‘Net zero’ is a smokescreen, a conveniently invented concept that is both dangerous and problematic…” (p4)
“engineered “negative emissions” technologies, such as bioenergy carbon capture and storage(BECCS) or direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS), are untested.” (p8)
“There are no saviour ecosystems around the planet, nor fairy godmother technologies, that will suck up continued fossil fuel emissions.” (p8)
“at best there are no overall emission reductions from an offset” (p11, emphasis in original)
“financial interests are not giving up on the profit-making opportunities they see in markets for carbon and for financial assets, such as securities and derivatives, based on carbon.” (p13)
“There are no surprises among the members of the TSCVM [Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets]. BP, Shell, and Total represent the oil majors; Bunge, Nestlé, and Unilever are there for agribusiness; Boeing, easyJet, and Etihad, the aviation sector. Bank and finance industry members include Bank of America, BlackRock, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, Itaú Unibanco, and Standard Chartered…Major big green conservation organisations are also engaged in the effort to rehabilitate offsetting and help to dramatically increase the supply of “nature-based” offset credits. Four organisations sit on the consultative group of the TSVCM: Conservation International (CI), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and World Wildlife Fund (WWF). All four are prominent advocates for “nature-based” solutions / offsets. All four have active projects in the developing world that are set to generate carbon-offset credits, sometimes including direct alliances with fossil fuel majors.” (p15)
“Government “net zero” targets also obscure fossil emissions and the responsibility for reducing those emissions, as do the “net zero” pledges of the private sector.” (p16)
The report ends with no realistic plan of action, but instead lists vague demands comprising meaningless buzzwords, and calls for “real zero”, a target cooked up in an equally murky shade of greenwash. At no point does FoE acknowledge the reality that infinite economic growth will rapidly destroy all life on Earth, regardless of how the economic system is powered. It takes no account of the physical impossibility of powering a globalised growth economy without continued extraction of fossil fuels, nor the enormous expansion of mining and land-grabbing required to manufacture wind turbines and solar panels at scale. The necessity of scaling back and localising economic activity, and prioritising the needs of people and nature over corporate profits, is never mentioned. Despite sincere efforts to expose the distractions marketed by corporate actors, FoE reveals its own reliance on corporate funding as a serious limit on what it can achieve.
A movement that can genuinely bring down the fossil fuel industry and stop the destruction of nature needs to extract itself from corporate funding, and be completely independent of business interests. It needs to abandon the tactic of making nebulous demands that can be twisted around by governments and corporations to promote ecocidal economic growth. Merely marching in the streets, and expecting governments and corporations to represent the interests of the people, is a failed tactic. Activists will need to be strategic, and take personal responsibility for organising the direct dismantling of fossil fuel infrastructure. The movement must take an eco-centric rather than business-centric view, and unite around the goal of permanently shutting down all extractive and destructive industries, and regenerating damaged landscapes and communities.
Written by Caroline Williford: a Letter and Poem, from North Carolina to Thacker Pass. Caroline outlines her concerns regarding Lithium Mining. Regardless of whether the minerals are used for fossil fuels or for electric vehicles, as far as the natural world is concerned, any form of industrial mining is as destructive as the other. We strongly believe it is of utmost importance to shift our allegiance from these destructive industries to the natural world.
Featured image: Pictured here is the Foote mine, a large open-pit lithium mine in spodumene pegmatite, located on the south side of the town of Kings Mountain, North Carolina. The Foote mine project was initiated in 1938. This photograph was taken in 1983. 45 years later. The photograph shows the mine viewed from its western rim looking east toward the Pinnacle of Kings Mountain. For those curious as to what an open-pit lithium mine in Thacker Pass might look like after its 40 year run, this may give you an idea. Photograph by J. Wright Horton, Jr., U.S. Geological Survey.
On Thursday, February 11, 2021, a court decision overturned the Trump administration action that would have allowed mining, primarily for fossil fuel projects, on 10 million acres of previously protected land in western states. This decision sounds like a triumph, halting potential mining projects and preserving threatened habitat that would otherwise have been destroyed. This ruling sends the message that mining processes that harm the environment are unacceptable.
Unfortunately, this ruling is aimed only at fossil fuels.
What about the mining project at Thacker Pass, in Nevada, approved in the eleventh hour of Trump’s presidency, that still has the green light? The 5,700 acres of also previously protected land, now currently slated for mining, that would be destroyed for the extraction of lithium?
This lithium would be used in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and as storage for renewable energy. Because of this, the destruction of Thacker Pass is being described as “green.”
If you start to dig into what it means to construct an open-pit lithium mine on a piece of land, you will learn that there is nothing green about it. The Thacker Pass mine would burn some 11,300 gallons of diesel fuel per day, the carbon emissions from the site would ultimately exceed 150,000 tons per year, and producing one ton of lithium would require strip mining and processing of up to 500 tons of earth. Tons of sulfuric acid would be produced every day, in addition to other harsh chemicals that could leach into the groundwater. The project would require over 1.7 billion gallons of water annually from a local aquifer which is already over-allocated. The effect on native wildlife and vegetation would be catastrophic, including species that are rare and already en route to extinction.
This is the native, ancestral, sacred land of Paiute and Shoshone people.
Such a project may provide job opportunities for some locals, but for all locals it would impact air and water quality for future generations. This mining project would continue for four decades. The project that begins at 5,700 acres could expand over time to 17,000 acres, which could triple all numbers mentioned here. Furthermore, the Thacker Pass lithium mine is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. On February 24, 2021, an executive order was put into place by the current administration that could potentially unleash a whole new era of lithium mining in the US.
My question is, why is it acceptable to mine for this purpose, for lithium, if the well-being of the earth is our actual concern? It is mining all the same. This is not actual change. It is more of the same. More destruction, more extraction and decimation, and for what purpose? Continuing a way of life that perpetuates a depletion of the earth’s resources and a number of species that also make this planet their home? Must we destroy the earth in order to save it? Where is the common sense in this equation? We are doing ourselves in. We are not thinking outside of the box. We are on one hand condemning mining efforts for fossil fuels due to the negative impact on the environment, and on the other hand not only advocating mining for lithium, but championing it, pushing it forward to the front of the room under the name of clean and green, all the while hiding its own equally catastrophic impacts on the environment in the periphery.
It’s capitalism and consumerism bullying ahead with an agenda that prioritizes profit over the critical thinking and sound decision making that could actually set us on a path to take care of the earth, rather than destroy it, as we attempt to save it.
Simply said: it’s greenwashing.
As someone who has been a part of the environmental movement for the majority of my life, I hate having to form that word upon my tongue, and to acknowledge such a divide among those of us who would otherwise be unified in a purpose to preserve the well-being of the earth. And yet, that word is upon my tongue, and it’s bitter. Yes, I can agree to forward-thinking actions to protect our environment, but not to those that require further destruction. We are already so far behind. We are already in the midst of a literal sixth mass extinction event on the planet, and this time it is driven by us, human beings. As one of those human beings, I want to do things differently this time.
I am not going to jump on the bandwagon of lesser evils. I am not going to believe the claim that an action is green or clean, unless I can dig all the way to the depths of it and find that it fully honors life just as it is at this moment and it requires no further assault in order for us to move forward. I ask that we do better this time. Lithium mining is not the answer. And, I am here making this statement: I do not support lithium mining, anywhere. I do not support lithium mining at Thacker Pass.
I want to protect Thacker Pass.
I have been following the efforts of Protect Thacker Pass from North Carolina over the last month, and the more I’ve learned about the mining project, the more appalled I’ve become. I had no idea what lithium mining entailed a few months ago. I’ve entered into one long conversation after another, sharing what I’m learning with friends, and with each conversation I’ve observed yet another person, like myself, waking as if from a deep slumber, shaking their head, astonished, and asking endless questions. How did we not know about lithium mining? How did we get so disconnected from the goings-on in the world that we no longer see what is actually happening around us, or ask the critical questions of how things are actually made? Such as, what does it take to make a lithium battery? And why do some people care while others do not? I can’t answer these questions for anyone else and so I am looking at myself.
Have I been asleep? Is it too late? How did I get to a place of such complacency and blind trust, that I stopped actively looking at the world around me, really looking? Looking in the way that matters. And, what can I do about it, now? When I can’t find answers any other way, I sit down and write. What follows is my attempt at answering these questions in my relationship to Thacker Pass. What I ultimately discovered is this: now is the time for action, and it’s time to go to Thacker Pass.
***
Now is the Time
It seems to me that there are many ways of looking at the world.
There is the way of looking when we are caught
layers deep
in our stories
of yesterday’s confoundments
of tomorrow’s yearnings
to the extent that we simply cannot see
one inch beyond
where our glazed over eyes might meet the world.
And there is the way of looking
when the rug has suddenly been pulled out ruthlessly, beneath us
and we are searching
eyes keen as eagles
for the thing that has just been lost. How could we not have seen this coming?
Everything is seen painfully anew.
What is now missing like a holy gap,
a tear in the great fabric of the world.
The loss pounds our gut with regret.
And there is the way of looking
that is now
without the stories clouding view. The moment before the thing is lost.
The one that is in fact here, everyday upon waking
if we take up its humble, quiet call.
It requires us to participate.
To shelve the stories.
To get down on our knees and see the world before us.
Really see it.
Every fine tuned rake of the sand, marked
by the talons, hooves, and claws that daily grace this place.
And perhaps the call is not quiet at all.
But a continuous, piercing cry.
The kind of which we as humans may think we cannot hear, may claim
we cannot hear, like other animals.
But we can. If we just lean in. Closer.
Now.
This is the time before.
The imminent hour.
When the stories are rising up,
teeming and swelling and clamoring
to be heard before it’s too late.
This is the time of choice. When we can choose something different than before.
Trading one heartless destructive act for another is not the way.
Destroying in order to save.
Not the way.
The lesser of two evils.
Not the way.
Is this really the only choice we have to make?
No.
We limit ourselves.
Perhaps we are so smothered by the din of
our culture’s mighty noise
that it’s hard to hear. It’s hard to see.
But we owe it to the earth to which we belong
to take off the blinders, to quiet a moment, and listen
to the urgent message being issued forth: please just stop.
Stop mining.
For any reason: coal, oil, lithium.
Not for fossil fuels, not for supposed clean energy.
This is not clean energy.
Drilling into the earth to break, leach and deplete
the elements that make up our very foundation.
Displacing the native inhabitants of a place,
greater sage-grouse already in their ongoing dance with extinction,
pygmy rabbits, golden eagles, pronghorn antelope,
from the burrows in the ground to the nests arching up in the sky.
Poisoning the water as far as 150 miles downstream.
Depleting the water supply of the driest known state in our entire country.
Leaving the land scarred, barren, empty, parched, destroyed.
I want to live this way, and this way only:
Stirred from sleep each waking day
with an ear to the world’s whisperings,
loyal to its call to hear and think critically
outside of the green washings of capitalism and industry
where the solutions are tinged with blood, death and loss.
I want to walk my feet out the door and help trace lines around
that which is mapped for destruction
which we have somehow forgotten is also our very destruction,
our death, our loss.
I don’t ever want to forget that we are one and the same.
We, and this earth beneath our feet.
The only difference between us, the rivers, the mountains,
and the other creatures of this vast place
is the voice with which we speak.
The cadence, the language.
We as humans hold a lot of power, too much, with what we choose to say, and when.
Our voices are crucial.
So I’m going to offer mine up, and say right here:
STOP.
DGR stands in strong solidarity with indigenous peoples worldwide. We acknowledge that they are victims of the largest genocide in human history, which is ongoing. Wherever indigenous cultures have not been completely destroyed or assimilated, they stand as relentless defenders of the landbases and natural communities which are there ancestral homes. They also provide living proof that not humans as a species are inherently destructive, but the societal structure based on large scale monoculture, endless energy consumption, accumulation of wealth and power for a few elites, human supremacy and patriarchy we call civilization.
The Amazônia Minada reporting project has revealed 1,265 pending requests to mine in Indigenous territories in Brazil, including restricted lands that are home to isolated tribes.
Brazil’s federal agency for Indigenous affairs, Funai, holds 114 reports of isolated tribes, of which 43 are within Indigenous lands targeted by mining.
In addition to the spread of diseases such as COVID-19 and malaria, mining activity poses health threats from the mercury used in gold extraction, which contaminates rivers and fish.
Indigenous groups have filed a lawsuit with Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court against the government, demanding protection for isolated Indigenous peoples.
With much of the world under some kind of lockdown over the past year, working from home has become the default for many. But not for miners in Brazil, who have stepped up their efforts to start exploiting Indigenous territories in the Amazon, including areas that are home to isolated tribes.
Mining on demarcated Indigenous lands is prohibited under Brazil’s Constitution, but that didn’t stop miners from filing 143 requests last year, the highest number in 24 years, with the National Mining Agency (ANM). Of those requests, 71 are for areas where isolated Indigenous tribes live, according to data from Funai, the federal agency for Indigenous affairs. Indigenous activists and researchers warn that isolated groups have no contact with society and are highly vulnerable to any disease brought from outside.
In a lawsuit filed with the Supreme Federal Court last July, the Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) and eight political parties denounced illegal mining in areas of identified isolated peoples. They called on the federal government to adopt measures and avert what they called a “real risk of genocide” due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet even as the pandemic was entering its fifth month in Brazil, the lawsuit revealed the government had not implemented any protective measures in several areas that are home to isolated peoples.
The threat from mining, which can bring disease into rural forest areas, becomes tangible when considering the hundreds of requests from mining companies to operate on lands where isolated peoples live. Of the 114 reports of isolated peoples that Funai holds, 43 are within 26 Indigenous territories in the Amazon. These same territories are targeted by at least 1,265 requests for prospecting or mining activities, according to mapping data from the Amazônia Minada reporting project as of Jan. 29 this year.
“Isolated peoples have a strong connection with their environment,”
says Leonardo Lenin, who worked for 10 years with Funai’s unit for isolated ethnic groups, and who is currently executive secretary of the Observatory of Human Rights of Isolated Peoples and Recent Contact (OPI).
“Any invasion has a violent impact on their lives because the land is what guarantees their well-being,” he says.
Luísa Pontes Molina is an anthropologist who investigates illegal mining in the Indigenous Munduruku territories in the state of Pará. She warns of the health risks that mining poses to Indigenous peoples. In addition to spreading diseases such as malaria and COVID-19, mines harm the environment. Liquid mercury, used to bind gold particles, contaminates the rivers and fish that Indigenous communities depend on, according to a recent study by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) and WWF Brazil. The study found traces of mercury in the entire population tested in the central region of the Tapajós River in Pará state, which includes the municipalities Itaituba and Trairão where the Munduruku people live.
Molina says there is evidence of isolated people living in the municipality of Jacareacanga, in southwest Pará, which have not been reported to Funai. That region is also the subject of 106 requests for gold mining that overlap with the protected Munduruku Indigenous Territory. Funai records at least one isolated Indigenous community in this area.
“Many communities of the Alto Tapajós have been reporting of and denouncing illegal mining and other crimes in the region since 2015. This also includes invasions near isolated groups. But despite these reports, Funai’s budget for inspection is cut more and more,” Molina says.
She adds she has tracked cases of illegal mining and public enforcement, and found that,
“in October 2020, just 2,000 reais [$345] were allocated toward monitoring and inspection in the region of Tapajós.” The study is still in progress, but preliminary findings suggest “state neglect in fighting illegal mining on indigenous lands,” Molina says.
The Amazônia Minada project, an initiative of the InfoAmazonia journalism outlet, cross-references the location of mining applications filed with ANM against demarcated Indigenous territories in the Amazon. Its Twitter feed, @amazonia_minada, tracks ANM processes in real time and tweets when a new mining application is filed within a protected area of the Amazon.
18 mining requests for restricted lands
Most of the mining requests are for land within demarcated territories where most of the Indigenous inhabitants have already made contact with the outside world but where some groups also live in isolation. But there are also 18 mining applications targeting four protected areas with the special classification “restricted,” which means they have been demarcated based on the presence only of isolated peoples.
Six of these requests were filed by the company Bemisa Holding, controlled by the Opportunity Group. Its owner, banker Daniel Dantas, was investigated for financial crimes and convicted in 2008 on bribery charges, but was acquitted in 2016 on a technicality. All six of Bemisa’s mining requests are for copper prospecting on Piripkura land in the state of Mato Grosso. Although the territory was declared restricted in September 2008, ANM in the preceding months still granted exploration permits for the company’s six applications, valid until 2012. On Jan. 19, 2021, the Piripkura land became the target of another application for gold mining, filed by the Miner Cooperative of Vale do Guaporé.
The isolated Piripkura people first made contact with the outside world in 1989, when Funai worker Jair Candor encountered two of the community members who had remained on their land after invasions by outsiders. Over the next three decades, there have been 14 contacts with these two individuals. According to Candor’s account in the documentary Piripkura, evidence of traces of their life in the area guarantees the sustained restriction of the land. Any sign of the pair’s track is photographed proof. All the material is kept secret so as not to reveal the location of the area; the two men are believed to be the last members of the Piripkura ethnic group.
Mining giant Vale, responsible for the two biggest mining-related disasters in Brazilian history, in Mariana and Brumadinho, requested access to the territory of the isolated Tanaru, in Rondônia state. Its application to mine platinum came in 2003, three years before the territory was officially declared restricted. However, the ANM system shows the company managed to unblock the application in 2018. There is no record of ANM’s approval of this application.
Last year, Vale announced to its shareholders that it would abandon all its mining applications within Indigenous lands, only to back down right after.
It has more than 200 active applications within Indigenous lands, 62 in areas where isolated peoples live. Two applications are in the land of the isolated Ituna/Itatá nation in southwest Pará, through the company Mineração Santarém Ltda.
Vale has denied having any active mining bids in the Tanaru and Ituna/Itatá territories, saying that the processes “are no longer pursued by the company since 1989.” Although ANM records show 200 applications on behalf of the group and its various ventures, Vale says “most of these processes were dropped by Vale itself, while pending approval by the ANM.” However, application number 886.223/2003 in the ANM registry, which intersects with the Tanaru Indigenous Territory, does not indicate Vale has given up on its request to mine there.
The Ituna/Itatá land spans 1,420 square kilometers (548 square miles), about the size of São Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city. It was declared restricted in 2011, following three decades during which Funai workers collected evidence of the presence of isolated indigenous peoples. However, the territory is a constant target of miners, landowners, ranchers and politicians. Zequinha Marinho, a senator from Pará, has even requested the end of the restricted status for the Ituna/Itatá Indigenous Territory through a legislative decree, saying there are no isolated tribes in the region according to “knowledge of the facts.”
In February 2020, an anthropologist linked to the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro was arrested for entering the Ituna/Itatá protected area without authorization. He had tried to block an intervention by the federal environmental agency, IBAMA, to remove cattle from the land. In November 2020, the Federal Public Ministry in Pará (MPF-PA) also recommended the suspension of an expedition by Funai. According to the agency, any entry into the area should only be allowed after the removal of invaders who had occupied the Indigenous land and who presented a threat to the life and security of public officials as well.
“You have to leave the Indigenous people in their territory, but that doesn’t happen. What we usually see is permissiveness from the state,”
says a Funai official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“The Ituna/Itatá lands, for example, are being taken over by squatters. Precisely because they are isolated, these people will not be vaccinated. The precaution with them must be permanent in regard to COVID-19 and any other disease that a miner or squatter can transmit,” the official says.
Denialism and indifference
In July 2020, when Indigenous organizations were already counting nearly 400 Indigenous victims of COVID-19, APIB and eight parties filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Federal Court to force the government to protect Indigenous peoples. Justice Luís Roberto Barroso ordered emergency “situation room” meetings: one for Indigenous peoples and another specifically to monitor regions of isolated peoples and peoples of recent contact.
The meeting on measures for isolated peoples was coordinated by the Institutional Security Cabinet (GSI) of the president’s office, and denounce as “mild” by Beto Marubo, a representative of APIB and leader of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (Univaja).
“By calling on the Supreme Federal Court, we hoped to end the denialism of the Bolsonaro government, but it is clear that this has not happened and will not happen,” Marubo said. “The situation room meetings are coordinated by GSI members who have no idea how to protect an isolated Indigenous community. In practice, they are indifferent.”
At the end of July, with Brazil on track for the most COVID-19 deaths after only the U.S., the GSI admitted in a petition to the court that eight Indigenous lands did not have any kind of barrier to prevent people from entering. Three of them are home to isolated peoples: Alto Rio Negro (in Amazonas state), Alto Turiaçu (Maranhão), and Enawenê Nawê (Mato Grosso).
Eight months since APIB filed its lawsuit with the court, and with the COVID-19 death toll among Brazil’s Indigenous people at more than 1,000, the Bolsonaro government has presented no protection plans that Indigenous organizations, medical experts from Fiocruz, and other associations have been able to approve. Three versions have been rejected by Justice Barroso, and a fourth is under consideration.
Indigenous rights activists warn the scenario may only get worse, citing a bill proposed by the Bolsonaro administration that aims to allow mining activity on Indigenous lands. This bill, known as 191/2020 , was shelved last year by Rodrigo Maia, the speaker of the lower house of Congress at the time. But there are fears that it will be revived under the newly inaugurated speaker, Arthur Lira, whose campaign was supported by Bolsonaro.
On Feb. 15, Bolsonaro told supporters and the press during an event in São Francisco do Sul, Santa Catarina state, that “we have to regularize” the exploitation of Indigenous lands. He said it would be “very good because Indigenous people are no longer people who are living isolated, but they are integrating more and more into society.”
That same day, Mongabay requested clarification from the federal agencies ANM, Funai and GSI; as well as from Bemisa Holding. We received no responses from any of them by the time this report was originally published in Portuguese.
UPDATE
On February 15, we asked for a response from Bemisa on the processes mentioned in the report, but there was no feedback. After the publication of this article on March 17, the mining company wrote to Mongabay and informed that in 2011 it asked to waive the six requirements at Piripkura Indigenous Land, in Mato Grosso state. However, all processes are still active in the ANM system and on behalf of Bemisa.
This report is part of Amazônia Minada, a special project of InfoAmazonia with support from the Rainforest Journalism Fund/Pulitzer Center.
This story was first reported by Mongabay’s Brazil team and published here on our Brazil site on March 2, 2021.
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