Don't mess with me, I don't walk alone I don't walk alone, I don't walk alone Awai Dip means forest. To us, the forest is a sacred place, where the guardian of the forest and the spirits live. This is where we teach our children to find food. The forest gives us fruits like the acai berry and the peki fruit, and meat from wild animals like monkeys. The forest gives us everything we need.
It's our livelihood, and it's the best school. Wasan Tit Boikoi Dump Kobet I was born in the village of Ip. We regard the forest as our territory. The entire area is our territory.
It's our forest. SABRE! SABRE!
Vamos la guerrero! Saude! SABRE! Hi, how's it going? Good.
You asked about land prices in Pará? Yes, I have a construction company. I'd like to invest and make some money. I wanted to know what land there costs. ...the Amazon, incorporated into national development, is a great program that Brazil is committed to.
Men, machines and resources are intended for road opening, a decisive step in its integration. This is how the BR-163, the Yabá-Santarém, 1777 km highway was made, which President Geisel recently inaugurated. The process started under the military regime. The regions that belonged to indigenous peoples, local populations or the federal state were designated as unused.
These were gradually developed by the state. central government, which encouraged people to move there, and began issuing land ownership titles. That was done through a legal process. But there's also a process called grillagem, the illegal appropriation of large areas of rainforest so that the land can then be sold. To signal their claim to an area of forest, land grabbers usually just clear it of trees.
Then, over the years, they try to legalize their acquisition so they can make a profit off of it. But the entire land grab process is actually initiated outside the Amazon region by investors who work together with lawyers. It's a form of organized crime. I lost you. I'm in the car.
Where are you? São Paulo. I'm in Londrina. I told you, land prices are going up. The farm is worth over 10 million now.
I warned you, buy yourself some land and you'll get rich. Listen to me this time. By clearing the land they've claimed, they're basically signaling who it belongs to. Gradually, whoever claimed the land tries to legitimize their ownership, so they can sell it later for a profit. So the land grabber takes control of public land, sells the timber, sets up a cattle ranch, giving it a veneer of legality.
Then he sells the land, five or ten years later. This process must be stopped or else we'll continue to lose our public land. Large areas of unprotected rainforest.
One million square kilometers of rainforest is... undesignated public land. It's not listed under conservation or indigenous land. That's what the land grabbers go after. As long as these huge areas of rainforest are so easy to claim, they're fair game for land grabbers.
Highway 163 connects Quiabá and Santarém. They started paving the road many years ago, but only up to the border region of Mato Grosso and Pará. And the road stayed like that until around 2004. Then they gradually started paving more roads again.
It was faster this time because of the stimulus program. Between Paraná and Novo Progreso, where we are now, there's just 28 kilometers of dirt roads. But that's being paved now too. That's not much. A few roads lead off highway 163 to the farms.
Some areas are already developed and are closer to the road. Others are further away. Just one more kilometer.
The tractor tracks have covered ours from yesterday, so they were here after us. They probably went that way. We're watching the area now, so the illegal loggers don't come back.
Environmental crime is very common around the cities of Novo Progreso, Castillo de Soniaz and Itaituba, where the environmental agency IBAMA has its headquarters. Deforestation is carried out by organized crime here. You can tell by the way it's carried out.
The bosses are specialized in land grabbing. The main catalyst for deforestation is land speculation. Can you still get anything at the old price? Not anymore.
No? No, that's the last frontier. In the northeast it's all underway.
In Mato Grosso they're planting more soy. You can forget Paraná, the frontier runs through there and through Amapá. There's 4,000 kilometers in Amapá and here there's 2,500. We often come across fake names and fake documents when we carry out inspections.
Business is often done by middlemen. We have to stay on their backs. The criminals are always finding new tricks.
They're always using loopholes that make it harder to pin them down. In this document, the owner declares which areas have been cleared and which areas are under permanent protection. But the information is false.
Here they wrote... that a certain percentage of the area has been cleared. That corresponds to this area here.
But on the map and from the air, we can see all of it is still covered by forest. The owner claimed his land was cleared a year ago so that he can use it for other purposes. Then he'll chop down all the trees. By the time the Environment Agency gets there, he'll insist it was logged a long time ago.
We are on the way to Castello dos Sonhos, a district of Altamira. As we flew over the region, we discovered several illegal sawmills with a lot of logs. But the sawmills had already been shut down.
The sawmills try to subvert our inspections. The bottom line is that the entire community lives off this environmental crime. That is our reality.
There's not enough governmental oversight. I'm at the entrance. There he is. Send them away. Anyone who's still there, we're taking them in.
They were taking the logs to the forest. That's obvious. Is he still here?
He was over there. He'll be gone by now. Tell me how this works. Is there another sawmill over there? No.
This all belongs together? Come on. The timber stocks were documented here by the Commissioner.
That's 70 meters, December 16th, 2015. That's an old document. Old wood can be seized, but most of this here is new. Tell me who owns this wood.
I don't know. Of course you do. It's your farm.
It's not yours. Not just mine. There are several entrances, and other people come here too.
See for yourself. It's not just my farm. Ask the charcoal guy there.
I just let him in. Does he have a permit? How should I know?
The charcoal is my farm. isn't on my farm. Really? That's not my farm. The charcoal and the wood aren't yours.
It's not on my farm. That's your waste. My mill hasn't been in operation for two years.
That's not true. Do you see wood shavings anywhere? Look at this wood. If you're so smart, look and see if there are any wood shavings. We saw it from the air.
No way. My logs have been here for over two years. Look at your satellite pictures from two years ago.
Calm down. Tell him that. All right, calm down. We're carrying out an inspection. And remember, you're a businessman, so behave like one.
We're not having a punch-up on the street. We're inspecting your company, so please. Come on.
Calm down. Why should I? Calm down.
Why should I take responsibility for logs that aren't mine? Because it's your sawmill. You must know who comes and goes here. No.
Let's start over. And here I know. It's my turn to speak.
We're going to inspect your company. Your attitude isn't doing you any favors. We'll be here all day, so keep your cool. We'll inspect your company now, and you have all day to tell us who comes in here and who doesn't, and you should really do that. We've been monitoring you for at least a month.
We have aerial shots. We know who's been coming in. coming and going, all that.
Now we're going to check things out. The more you cooperate, the better you can defend yourself. So calm down.
Let's start and get this over with. Okay? Let's go..
12 high, 6 across. Different sizes. 4.55. And those down there? 4.50.
Everything is dodgy here. Documents missing, charcoal everywhere. The logs back there are his. Note it all down.
He'll get three or four citations. Do you mean those logs there, in the forest? Yes.
Now's the best time to buy land for soy plantations. The clock's ticking. Near the highway, land costs 12,000 Reish for 2.5 hectares.
That's all still cattle farms with pasture land, but you can easily turn it into a farm. plantations. A little further up is the port of Miritituba on the Tapajós.
Itaituba and Miritituba are across from one another. They're building loading terminals for soy there. For shipping. Exactly.
The first stop is the port of Santana in Macapá. From there it gets shipped to Asia and Europe. The next 10 years will be decisive for the Amazon region. Our plan, our agenda, has three phases.
The first phase is ensuring no more rainforest is lost. We must protect the remaining rainforest and reduce the pace of deforestation in the next 10 years, ideally to zero. In the second phase, we need to establish the foundations for success, and improve economic and social conditions.
The initial goals will take ten years, but the third phase even longer. We want the Amazon region to serve as a yardstick for the rest of Brazil, which in a sense is already a benchmark for the rest of the world. That will entail finding solutions to economic and social issues, a project that will easily take 20 years.
But we first have to solve the problem of deforestation, because that's a cancer that threatens everything. Are we on the right path? Can we solve the problem? We want the Amazon region to be an example of sustainable development where social, economic and environmental aspects are all given equal weight. That will take long-term investment.
It will take around 20 years to see a full return on that investment. We'll need about five years to reduce or stop deforestation. And that will be followed by a period of consolidation, which will lay the groundwork for new initiatives. In the next few years, we'll invest between 25 to 40 billion euros into the Amazon region for hydropower plants, new roads, power lines and mining projects. It's an unprecedented investment in this region.
But if those investments don't address local conditions or social and environmental factors, they could backfire. It could cause land prices to skyrocket, which would attract more land grabbers. and lead to more clear cutting of public rainforests.
We want to draw the boundaries ourselves. For over 20 years, we've been fighting for the demarcation of our land. An anthropological study was carried out. so that the FUNAI, the Brazilian agency founded to protect indigenous culture and people, could register the boundaries.
The report is still in the possession of the FUNAI president. So a few months ago, we went to Brasilia to finally get it signed off by the FUNAI. We presented the report in 2013. and it still hasn't been signed today. I have the report, it's on my desk. We discussed it, but in our final consultations, a series of unanswered questions relating to this report were not answered.
region came up. That meant we needed to consult some other people. You know there's a draft project for a high-tech facility in the region. hydropower plant.
It includes a dam to produce power. This dam is very close to your areas. And that's why we haven't signed anything yet.
We're not taking anyone else's property. We're just defending what's ours. I have a responsibility to you. You're totally in the right.
But I believe and want to because if I stopped believing, I wouldn't be sitting here. As a representative of FUNAI, you have to defend our interests. It's our job to represent your interests.
But parts of the government prioritize the construction of hydropower plants. Why not wind power? That produces energy too. A dam destroys everything. Then what's left?
Mining? There are so many projects for our region. And that really worries us.
The Munduruku people don't want to lose the rainforest, the fish or the trees. The government needs to know we won't just give in. In my view, building more hydropower plants like the ones we already have in the Amazon region is not the right approach.
Hydropower plants, big mining projects, are not the solution. Of course, these hydropower plants are an important source of energy for the country's development. But any dam in the Amazon region brings with it a lot of changes.
It affects habitats, both in the water and on land. And it affects the water. It's the relationship between water and people, the bond our people have to the water. The reservoirs in the southeast have taught us a painful lesson. As we look ahead to developing the Amazon region, we need to take the needs of local people into account, as well as the energy needs of the rest of the country.
We can't focus on protecting a specific section of river, we have to make sure the river as a whole is preserved. That's the only way we can ensure a sustainable process of development for future generations in the Amazon region. It's astonishing. 40 years into these mega projects, and we haven't changed our approach.
They leave us with intractable problems. We used to worry an outsider would come and steal our wealth. Today some monster comes and turns our lives upside down.
So then what? It's alarming how many dams are planned for the Amazon region. There are 92 dams in the pipeline.
That's huge, and it will have an impact on the wider Amazon region. Our leaders are rebelling. The first priority is drawing the boundaries. After the meeting, we decided to draw our own territorial boundaries after informing the Funai president.
Funai is supposed to represent indigenous peoples, not the government. But we had the sense they were under a lot of pressure, so we decided to take action. We're showing the government that Itaituba is home to the culture of the Munduruku people. The FUNAI didn't want to sign, so we decided to take things into our own hands, so that the white people know where our territory is.
We got help from Alto Tapajós. If the government signs the report, they're recognizing the claim of indigenous people to the land. It's our territory, and we're drawing the boundaries in the lawful way.
When the invaders came to Brazil, they used to shoot the indigenous people. Today, the government is trying to use these mega-projects to destroy the indigenous people, the people of the rivers, the members of the Quilombola community, who aren't respected either. These projects are destroying the river, which we depend on.
The projects are destroying the rainforest. Without the rainforest and the river, we would no longer exist. Our people would die out. There's only this piece of the rainforest left.
On the other side, the loggers are destroying everything. That's why we have to take care of this here. We have a sawmill in Mata Grosu. I started working with wood as a boy. I lost a finger working as a carpenter, but I stuck with it.
This is Cambara wood. We use it to make bores for the construction industry. This wood is the most popular in Rio. It's called Massaranduba.
This is Massaranduba. This is Moira Caciare wood, and this is Jatobá. Jatoba is a very good wood. Masranduba is good too, but it's only used for construction, roof girders, planks, things like that. This is aipe.
It's one of the most expensive kinds of timber. This is a bit warped and full of holes. There's not much left.
But it's one of the most expensive woods we have here in Pará. This is kumaru, and it's also exported. It's the second most expensive wood after Ipe. Where does this come from? This comes from the San Antonio plantation, which we want to show you.
This wood here, this timber, comes from the Aris farm. We get our timber from four companies. This here comes from the Alto Brillo plantation in Pará. Where's that? You take the highway from Itaituba for 18 kilometers.
Turn off and hit the road. and head straight down the road. It's about 40 kilometers. It's about 28 to the other plantations.
They're not far. This timber was delivered yesterday. The invoice hasn't been booked yet. It's still on my desk.
This is Jatoba wood. This is Moira Caciare. The other one is Garapiera. That's Garapiera too. This is Jatoban, so is this.
We only deal in quality timber. Do you have documents in case you're inspecting? Of course.
I have invoices, receipts. It's all by the book. No one would buy timber from me if I sent it to Belem without an invoice. I only get paid when there's an invoice showing where the timber came from. You need proof of everything.
Its origin, the company name, or they won't take it. This is from the Santo Antonio plantation. It arrived yesterday.
It lists the origin, the company name, and the name of the person who bought it. of wood, Tawari, Timburana, Amapá and Jatobá, and here's the total volume, 23,529 cubic metres of timber. illegal timbers traded like it's legal the fraud is in the fake documents we've got countless examples the state of para is a major timber importer just Does that mean wood is imported there?
No, what's imported are the documents that legalized the illegal felling of trees there. You get all these fake documents because there's no forestry management and no private ownership in the region. It's all illegal. It's hard to keep things above board when there's no legal framework. Our controls should support those who act legally, but they don't.
exist here. If you build a road with a conservation area on the right, indigenous territory on the left, and leave the rest unclaimed, the land grabbers are always the first there. Hey buddy! Hey, how big is Fazenda Quioazul?
18 square kilometers. And the price? 20 million. 20 million. Ok, I'll get on it.
Thanks. Bye. Ok, bye. The Amazon region is still at risk. The problem is as acute as ever.
For example, the ministry still doesn't know what land clearing permits have been issued in each federal state. Our goal is not the legalization, but the prevention of deforestation. The law must be obeyed.
Currently, there's no way to distinguish between illegal land and illegal land. and lawful ones. We need to fix that.
We need to know what's legal and what isn't. As I already said to my family, the government representatives will never understand what's happening with the climate right now. You know why not?
Because they work in air-conditioned offices, get into their air-conditioned cars and drive back to their air-conditioned homes. As far as they're concerned, nothing's happening. The indigenous people must make their voices heard, and we should be quiet and listen to them.
They're not the owners of Brazil. They possess nothing. But they are the guardians of this land.
They live with this land. They are one with the Amazon region, with the rainforest, with the earth on which they live. It doesn't belong to them. They are one with it.
They are one entity. And we must learn from them. We live on this earth, but it doesn't belong to us.
The Earth can exist perfectly without us, but we cannot exist without the Earth. We see the river as our legacy. It wasn't created without a reason. The Tapajós was created by the god Karosakaibu from the seeds of the tucuma fruit.
Karusakaibu was a warrior. Whatever he wanted to create, he created. He turned some of the Munduruku into pigs and others into fish. And the area where the pigs crossed through is what we're demarcating now. The Amazon region is often regarded by Brazilians on the coast as a bit of a remote backwater.
But in truth, this is one of South America's oldest cradles of civilization. The Amazon region is the birthplace of many indigenous peoples who populated the continent. It's the site of huge technological developments.
ecological and cultural innovations, such as ceramics and farming, which were emerging at roughly that time in the old world. Many of us imagine the Amazon region as empty of people, but this emptiness was first caused by the European immigrants, the white people. Before that, it was a well-populated region.
The rainforest developed in harmony with the people that inhabited it. Many fruits and plants that are so well known today, the Brazil nut, the babassu palm, the bacuri, the capusu, the peach palm, were cultivated by indigenous people. They thrive here because the Amazon's indigenous residents had that agricultural know-how.
A large part of the rainforest was shaped by human hands. But in contrast to the white people whose ancestors emigrated to the Americas 500 years ago, the presence of indigenous peoples helped sustain the life of the rainforest and not destroy it like we're doing today. The Amazon region is a private...
a product of the coexistence of millions of species, of which we are only one. Humans have existed for millennia here, alongside many other different forms of life, interdependent and in balance with them. I don't know if the rainforest is the lung of the world, but it's certainly the heart of Brazil. A river becomes my body.
Why do I say this river is my body? It's the body of every human being. The water of these rivers courses through our veins.
The loggers are destroying its source. so the entire river will gradually die out. First, the tributaries dry out.
But they'll still feed the Tapajós. In a hundred years, we might have to fight for this water. What's the best approach? You start the first fire, then the second, then the cattle can come. They pack the soil down, so you rotate the pastures.
Wait a bit, set two more fires. Three fires gets you a good pasture. You've burned all the trees. The branches and the heavy logs are gone used to build cow sheds and fences It costs just 15,000 Reich to build a fence you don't have to buy wood just pay the workers and the material. You get a nice piece of land on the cheap.
The Mato Grosso cattle rancher has switched to soybeans and wants land for cattle in Pará. You can't get the developed land for a million anymore. That'll set you back 10 or 12 million.
So what about leasing? There's someone who wants a 10-year lease, four years of cattle farming, six years of soy. These recorded telephone conversations illustrate the forces at work in the Amazon and how the land grabbers sidestep the environment.
environmental agencies and legalize their ownership. These land grabbers assume that whatever current rules are, that will change. Fines for illegal activities prior to 2008 have been formally waived, so they assume fines through 2014 will be waived too.
They say they're just clearing the forest in the name of progress. That's their argument and it's no secret. What are you supposed to do if you can't log legally?
It's your property and you need to survive. I regret having acted outside the law, but I don't regret felling trees. There's nothing wrong with that.
If we didn't clear forests, Brazil wouldn't exist. We're all land grabbers here. No one here isn't one. Because we're farming public land.
There's no authority around to tell me, this is your land. I've been occupying a piece of land for over 30 years. I have my farm and I've been trying to... register it for 20 years, with no success.
So that makes me a land grabber. Any public prosecutor would say I'm occupying public property. The environmental impact is a big problem. Environmental laws are being violated, and they're doing everything to keep it that way.
The environmental agency, IBAMA, wants to keep operating illegally so they can keep fining us and freeing us. freezing our operations. It gives them something to do.
We have two documents here from the environmental agency for 6 million and 1.2 million. From where? Santa Re.
Okay, tell Leonardo I'm coming to Itaituba on Wednesday. We have 20 days to file an appeal. Your lawyer has to do it. The case in Itaituba is about slaying...
labor. I'll take care of it. We were on the way to pick up a tractor we'd had stopped and impounded earlier.
The perpetrator knew we were coming and hid in the forest. The officer noticed and pursued him. The suspect was armed and shot and killed the policeman with a hunting rifle. Longing costs money. You need a lot of it to clear areas of around 10,000 hectares, like here in Novo Progresso.
It takes serious logistics, hundreds of workers and tractors. That comes at a price, and these people have the money. Since the public prosecutor can't charge people for clearing the forest, they get accused of forming gangs or fraud.
Things no one can actually prove. What gangs? This is about logging.
But they charge people for logging. charges with something else. The public prosecutor does whatever they please. Who's the biggest seller of land in Pará?
You are. Everyone knows that. Why are there problems?
Because you try to handle it all yourself. We're the only ones doing this job. In the end, everyone will benefit. No one wants to get their hands dirty.
Go to a broker and see if he's got anything. He won't. That's what I said. Some land with proper papers, cash in hand.
Can he give me that? We've received reports that several people with locking companies were active there. We investigated those cases. gangs and their criminal activities.
That included money laundering, forgery and tax evasion, and it's all linked to environmental destruction. But the environmental aspect isn't the only element. A plot of land in the Amazon is much cheaper than in the south or southeast of the country.
So people get greedy. Local people buy land, and having a company gives them an appearance of legitimacy. What about the documents? Are there any?
Not usually, only the newer companies have contracts. The older ones, they have reports from the agricultural authority, the Terra Legal program, and other kinds of documents, like the environmental data register, which has the cattle farming permits. Then there's the agricultural permit and the environmental permit.
But it depends on the agencies. And afterwards, you can apply for a property title. Then you just have to wait a bit for it to be issued.
At first, the land grabbing can happen from a distance. The first stage of a land grab can take place from a distance. Someone sets their sights on a big plot of land in the state-owned rainforest and decides to watch. but the rest has to be done locally.
Someone has to hire workers and do the logging, and the area has to be guarded. It can't be done locally. It can unfold in stages. The land has to be demarcated, and then it has to be defended. Sometimes the same plot of land will be claimed by various people.
This can lead to violence. At first glance, the land may seem empty, but there's actually a local community nearby. And that leads to conflict. Or another land grabber might also be trying to claim the land.
It's no wonder that violence is rife in places where land is stolen. In the Amazon, violence is the most concentrated. where there's a lot of logging. There's a close link between land grabbing, deforestation and violence in the Amazon. If they attack us, we strike back the same way.
Whether they come with clubs, knives or dogs, we fight back with the same methods and throw them out, no matter what. We've been fighting against land grabbing here for 18 years. The people living here were born and raised here, just like their great grandparents.
That's the problem with... land grabbers. They've taken over this whole area. They came from Cuiabá through the Jamajim National Park.
There were markings everywhere, logs lying everywhere. Everything was occupied by land grabbers. The land grabbers and loggers don't care about anything or anyone. We joined forces with the Munduruku people to defend the Tapajós and help draw the boundaries.
We share a common culture with the Munduruku people, the forest. The forest is our lifeblood. We hunt, fish and plant potatoes and yams.
There's no difference between our traditional way of life and that of the Munduruku. Good morning fighters. Good morning, Senor Juarez and team. This is a very important moment for us.
We have to stick together and join forces to defend the unique Mangdabal lands. Every one of us should pitch in. Because if we don't fight, we might lose it. Raise your hand if you want to come along. I'll come.
Jose Borges. Who else? Francisco?
Who else? Salimah. So, Limar, if you're in, come up.
How many families live in this settlement? A handful of people is not enough. People should feel an obligation towards their community.
This land wasn't handed over, it was conquered. And if we residents of the region do nothing, we'll end up losing it. I suggest that a few of you go door to door, Senor Chico, Solimar and Rosani, and ask them for help.
We can take the boat over and ask them to help. Then they won't have any excuse. Where's Señor Luis? I think he's in the house over there. Hello my friends.
I'd like to explain to you what drawing the boundaries means and why it's so important. It's important for us, for you to have your land secured in the future. And just like us, you also have to have your land.
to fight for your land. We're being pressured by gold diggers and land grabbers invading our region. If you end up being displaced by land grabbers or the government...
Things will get tricky here. We're only here on weekends. We don't really know what's going on. You should support us. We need you.
If you need us, then we'll help. We're here to help and support them, because we need them and they need us. It doesn't matter whose land it is, because it's being threatened. We're going to lose our land, and they will lose theirs.
We live side by side. Good evening, everyone. We want to talk about drawing the boundaries again.
Let's look at the map and see how to get to the mountain stream, where we'll start demarcating the boundary. We have to go through the mountains and then follow the stream for about two kilometers. That's our starting point.
When we were drawing borders... For the Saori-Moibu region, we encountered miners and loggers. We told them we didn't want any conflict, and we were just drawing the borders. If we run into anyone and talk to them, they won't respond. I'm sure the people moving in on our land are aware of our operation.
I think we should follow the stream in this direction. Then the path will go. will go down onto the road. That will take us to the mountains.
Then we go down the road and follow the river. We'll get to the boundary, this white line here. That's where we'll start.
If you find out anything, get in touch using the Jatoba frequency. Okay, got it. Great boys!
Work your way to the red dot. We've covered 500 meters. Thank you. We came by boat and went to the meeting.
At first we didn't want to participate and we went back home. But then they visited us and changed our minds. Nobody else wanted to take part, so we thought it would be good if we did.
We have to work next week, but after that we'll come back here. One of you crouch down and the other jump on his shoulders. Here's the river.
We are here. and we'll work our way over here. That's point number 12. More and more women are getting involved too, because the government isn't dealing with this.
The women realize they have daughters, and that's why they have to take part in this struggle. But they have to leave their children at home. It's hard for women to take their children to protests.
If they get attacked, with pepper spray for instance, they'd have to run away, with their children in their arms. That makes it harder, of course. But they're not giving up.
They're fighting for the future of their children, and grandchildren, and everyone who's yet to be born. This is our land, our home, and it's been destroyed. We Munduruku women are here with our leaders and our children, and we want to tell the government that this is our home.
Our ancestors gave it to us. This land is sacred to us. But the government has destroyed everything.
We're here to resist and to show that we're both Munduruku and women at the same time. Only my mother is indigenous, not my father. But I want to be a true member of an indigenous people, because I'm proud of my ancestry. I'm a woman.
I know that one day I will have a child too. I'll have children one day too and I want them to live here in peace. Without the land grabbers, loggers and gold diggers who've ended up here. We want them to leave again because they're also driving out the animals we hunt.
Guys, I'm stuck in a traffic jam in Sorriso and saw 16 pickups headed towards Santarém, and two vans that got unloaded in Sinop. I heard there are 60 Environment Agency pickups on the way to Pará. Those two stay here, and three come with me. We're changing frequencies. This one?
Yes, that's their frequency. They're already talking. Eduardo, you read me?
38, you read me? Dedao, you read me? Cuiabano, you read me?
Who's there? six vehicles just drove into your street. Roger that. Cabeza, Simona, 55, Coyabano, Coyabera. Where are you coming from?
What's the farm called? I don't know. It's my cousin's.
How far is it? Four or five kilometers. Leave your motorcycle here.
We'll check that. You say it's four kilometers? Get in and check it. About 25,000 areas are clear-cut each year. Most of these areas are on public land and linked to illegal activities.
They usually involve land speculation, the formation of land monopolies, and appropriation of public land. The logging operation is just the first step. Huge areas are illegally occupied. An area of 30,000 hectares belonging to just one person can yield tremendous profits while inflicting major damage on the rainforest. With a huge...
This guy named Castanha was fined several times for logging. There wasn't enough to arrest him, so the authorities chart him with tax evasion. They had to release him for lack of evidence. Clearing forests isn't a crime. People have been doing it since the dawn of humanity.
My cousin's farm is over there. In the front, at the cow shed. And there's another building farther down.
We don't have anything against you as an employee, but these activities are illegal. Show us where you worked. Leave your motorcycle here and get in.
Turn left here. Are those your motorcycles? Yes.
If we burn this, how much did you get paid? 3000 Reish for felling trees. Per month?
Yes. Pack up. The camp is being dismantled.
This land belongs to indigenous people. No one's allowed to be here. We'll let you pack up, and then we're burning the rest.
And we'll take care of the tractors. Let's get the tractor. What kind of tractor is that? Skid? They knew they could get caught at any moment.
They were listening in on us. There was a radio in the tractor. That's why they were leaving. We were here two weeks and wanted to head off today.
And then you got caught? Yes. How much did you make? Nothing yet. We're still waiting to get paid.
He still has to pay me. I'm supposed to get 1,600 reich. I don't earn anything.
I earn 1,600. Who ends up paying you? We earn more working illegally on indigenous land than on legally purchased land. The workers take big risks, so they earn more. They know it's illegal, but the bosses can pay high wages because the profits are huge.
We're on untouched indigenous land, and the lumber here is extremely high quality. A single angelim tree fetches 10,000 rai, so there will always be people doing this kind of work. There are many people willing to receive this money. We know it's illegal, but we can't read or write, so this is our livelihood.
There's no other work here. How are we supposed to survive? If jobs disappear because the Environment Ministry shuts everything down, many people will starve. You won't be able to sell your house or your land. Everything will collapse.
We wouldn't fell trees if we didn't have to. Without a high school diploma, you can't work anywhere anymore. Where should people like me work who didn't go to high school?
That's how it is here. We note down their details and statements. We need that because we intend to prosecute their employer, who's operating a logging company. Of course, their tractors aren't permitted here.
since this is indigenous land. This tractor is in such poor condition, it can't be moved. If you can't remove the tractors and they pose a risk to the environment because they continue to be used illegally, we're allowed to destroy them. That's what we'll do.
The environmental agency has frozen operations on my land, my entire property. If anyone wants to buy 500 hectares of grassland, I'll sell it for two million Reis. I put half of that into another piece of land next door or a bit farther away and clear that. Then they freeze operations on that too. What's the point?
Instead of 500 hectares, it's 1200. I've cleared the land anyway. It's a real industry. Land grabbing in areas of state-owned rainforest means the Brazilian people are gradually being expropriated.
And then there's the clear cutting, which land grabbers use to solidify their illegal occupation. It's the worst thing that can happen. Public property is appropriated and the rainforest is cut down. And since it's all illegal, that keeps away honest investors. That's good for land grabbers and bad for Brazil.
The IBAMA's fine won't be enough, the judicial action won't be enough. Official fines and claims for damages aren't enough. We have to respond quickly and forcefully.
It's the only way we can protect the fundamental rights of the Brazilian people. And the punishment needs to be swift and commensurate to the crime. The environmental issue is so complex, I've made a funny comparison.
The environmental issue is very complex. I'm going to play devil's advocate. Who can guarantee me the coming generation will approve of today's protection of the rainforest? In other words, do you miss dinosaurs on Earth today? Sorry?
Dinosaurs. No. No. Imagine if we'd stood up to protect them back then.
then they might still be around today. Who says the next generation would want them? The indigenous peoples belong to the past. The aboriginal peoples belong to the past.
But in the end, they might be the ones to survive. Or rather, their modest and respectful way of life that regards humans as a small part of a larger whole. Perhaps that way of life will be the only one to endure. It's conceivable that the project of the new world that the survivors of the downfall of Western civilization, with its claims to universality, will be these people.
Perhaps their culture is our future, not our past. We can learn so much from them, and not the other way around. We believe we're civilizing them.
Yet they ought to be civilizing us. In my eyes, the indigenous peoples are of critical importance to Brazil's identity. There's one thing that sets us Brazilians apart from those who are destroying our planet. And that thing allows us to imagine a different future for Brazil.
And that is that there are people who are going to destroy our planet. There are people still living in our country who live intelligently. This is really tough.
Everyone out there looking at us, look at how exhausted we are. This is really strenuous. With nothing to eat. I'm eating sugar. Instead of cassava flour.
And if they don't come? We agreed they'd meet us here at the border, but they're not here. Now we're worried and want to head towards them.
From point 10, about 100 meters from here, it's another 385 meters to Jutai. So we're almost there. If we want to stop the deforestation of the Amazon, we have to protect all the unused forest areas that right now are still accessible to land grabbers within the next five to ten years. They are mostly in the states of Para and Amazonas.
In much of these areas the rainforest could be preserved, for instance in the form of nature reserves, extractive reserves, or reserves for sustainable crops. sustainable development. There are several categories of protection that could allow local people to make use of the land and help accelerate the process.
We have to keep these lands from being privatized. Privatization promotes deforestation. If this large stretch of land that is covered in rainforest were to be privatized, every owner would be permitted to clear 20% of their property. So privatizing a million square kilometers would mean that 200,000 square kilometers could be clear-cut, completely legally.
That's an area roughly the size of the state of Sao Paulo. That would accelerate the deforestation of the Amazon completely within the bounds of the law. The very process we're trying to stop. often refer to these unused forest areas as no man's land But they belong to the Brazilian people and must be preserved as a public good. They must be secured, preserved and protected.
That's our agenda, and it's vital for the coming years. We've been waiting for this for a long time. We had a victory today. We're just getting started, but we hope to keep going and finish drawing the borders.
Your children were crying, what if we don't make it? We just If you see my family, tell them I'm doing well. We're out of food.
The cassava flour is used up. Yesterday at the camp? Yes.
So you didn't have any flour left? A new root. We found a pretty trodden path. We didn't see anyone, but we heard the sound of machines all day.
They're putting a lot of wood here. None of the motorcycles had a license plate. The trucks didn't either.
It's all illegal. It's all gotten worse under the current government. Logging. palm heart harvesting, fishing, there's a lot more of that than there used to be.
We see ourselves as guardians of the land, so we're very concerned. These people are taking all of our resources and selling them. We recently inspected the border of our lands to make our presence felt, and we found a lot of traces of intruders, especially people clearing the forest to make grazing land. land out of it. So our border runs straight through an area being cleared.
The loggers said they'd cut down a lot of trees there. And they even wanted to make a deal with us. But I said, I'm not here to make a deal.
What about us and our stuff? Until we've worked everything out, we could at least take our logs with us. We won't cut down any more trees, but let us take the logs. How does that sound?
Is that a deal? No, that's not how things work. We make the rules here. Others may rule the roost in Brasilia, but we decide here.
At one in the morning, they started taking out their tractors. Our people were there monitoring everything. It's not easy dealing with the loggers. By defending an area, we're exposing ourselves to danger, and sometimes even risking our lives. I was scared.
We were standing with cameras in front of our warriors, so if they'd attacked us, we would have been hit first. So I was very afraid. But we stood up to them, and we won.
That's why we're demanding the government draw up our borders, so we can protect our land. How are we supposed to survive in the coming years? How are the next generations supposed to survive?
A warrior doesn't cry. You have to be strong. I'm more Brazilian than many others are, because this land is what made me. Off to battle!
indigenous people are despised not just because they occupy space they're also hated for the wildness inside them their connection to nature it's their color, like molded bronze, the precision with which their arrow meets their prey, their sweeping gesture that envelops the river, their penchant for caressing feathers and crafting headdresses. They are hated for their silent walk, their agile movements, their noble heritage, their bodies that reach up for the sunlight. Indigenous people are hated for the sun, they are hated for the tree within. They are hated for the river within. They are hated for their connection to life.
They, indigenous people, are hated for their enduring childhood. Que eu não ando só, eu não ando só, que eu não ando só, não mexe não, não mexe comigo, que eu não ando só, eu não ando só, que eu não ando só.