19th edition of Free Land Camp is underway in Brazil

The 2023 edition of Brazil's Camp Terra Livre (Free Land), in which indigenous communities and movements debate and mobilize about their future, continues in Brasilia.

With a panel entitled 'Indigenous Amazon: Voices for a fair climate action,' leaders Maria Hildete Tariano, Maria de Fátima Makuxi, Ellen Sateré Mawé and Ilikilipi Kuna reflected on the threat to their territories.

With the slogan "The future is indigenous. Without demarcation there is no democracy", the participants defended this right also from the "strategy of protection and global monitoring."  Among the talks held during the day, the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon pointed out the debate on the impact of artisanal mining, garimpos and economic alternatives in the territories.

The Esplanade of the Ministries of Brazil, where the headquarters of the three branches of government are located, some 5,000 indigenous people are camped, according to local media, who also point out that indigenous peoples occupy 13.7 percent of the territory of the South American giant.

For this reason, President Lula da Silva seeks to reverse the arrival of illegal mining in the Amazon and protected territories, in view of the reality experienced by indigenous peoples, among them the Yanomami Indigenous Territory.

In this territory in the Amazonian state of Roraima, a hundred indigenous children died of malnutrition due to the contamination of rivers with mercury.  Indigenous leader Arnaldo Munduruku said: "In the past, we suffered from malaria.  Now there is no more malaria, now we suffer from mercury."