The activist-led Amazon Defenders Fund (ADF) forges a bond of solidarity between Amazon Watch and our Amazonian partners and allies, and contributes to the woven tapestry of direct actions in their territories.
Our ADF grants address urgent security needs for Earth Defenders at risk and channel resources to Indigenous leaders, communities, and organizations, as well as to traditional communities and allied nonprofits and social movements. This rapid solidarity grantmaking goes to organizational and legal support, Indigenous-led communications, travel, and mobilizations, as well as to small-scale local Indigenous economic initiatives.
From July 2021 to June 2022, the ADF doubled its previous mobilization of direct, timely, and secure solidarity funding to local organizations in the Amazon. Today, the fund redirects $2 million per year to Indigenous and forest peoples, respecting their holistic, interrelated, and reciprocal cosmovision while committing to support accompaniment processes of self-determination, autonomy, Indigenous rights, and territorial integrity.
We are proud to have a part in efforts to unite women across the Amazon, including with ANMIGA (National Association of Ancestral Indigenous Women Warriors) in Brazil and Mujeres Amazónicas, a collective of Women Defenders of the Ecuadorian Amazon, who work tirelessly to restore hope and balance back to the rainforest.
Emerging Women’s Leadership, from Territorial Defense to Political Changemaking
In October 2021, the women’s leadership of the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (COICA) carried out its first Women’s Summit in Colombia – with solidarity funds from ADF – in an effort to advance the movement to dismantle patriarchy in an Amazonian context.
The resulting declaration from the summit, entitled “Indigenous women in movement, Amazonía alive for the defense of our big house,” represented the deliberations and reflections of the leadership of 511 Amazonian peoples.
The declaration decreed the creation of an Amazonian Women’s Fund, the formation of a Women Defenders of Amazonian Territories Network, and the establishment of a Colombian Amazon Women’s Movement, while demanding the equal participation and decision making of women in all COICA spaces, including in its member organizations, both locally and internationally.
“Keep walking, sharing, and learning in unity, and above all, recognizing the great strength of our diversity”
COICA Women’s Leadership Declaration, October 2021
Forms of Resistance and Revitalization
Ecuador’s Mujeres Amazónicas strives to challenge, expose, and address all forms of violence against Amazonian women. Employing various strategies, Mujeres Amazónicas centers the priorities of women enduring the negative impacts caused by the exploitation and expropriation of their body-territory and the Earth we share.
Indigenous women are holders of ancestral knowledge and the carriers of language and our culture. We defend our territories and families. But gender-based violence against Amazonian women continues to be overlooked in Indigenous communities and by the rest of society. Women who decide to leave the violence have little or no economic, legal, or emotional support. Extractive violence against the land and Indigenous women’s bodies go hand in hand. We think that healing women also heals the Earth.
Mujeres Amazónicas
Mujeres Amazónicas has forged a unique healing process by holding “Healing Circles,” spaces where Indigenous women who have experienced violence can meet others and heal collectively and individually. This process enables the creation of solidarity networks as a practice to recover and develop individual and community capacities and resources.
As Guatemalan Maya K’iche’ scholar Gladys Tzul Tzul has said, “the will to live” is “the political energy that Indigenous women produce to preserve memory and defend the land.” In 2022, ADF backed Mujeres Amazónicas with rapid funds for the opening of a physical space in which Healing Circles can be held.
Brazil’s Free Land Camp: Transforming Horizons Along Diverse Paths and Directions
ADF worked with partners in Brazil to enable the travel of several Amazonian delegations to the annual gathering of Brazil’s Indigenous movement, the Free Land Camp, or Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL). The largest gathering in its history, 2022’s ATL convened 7,000 Indigenous representatives from across the country in Brasília.
During a week of activities, participants centered Indigenous voices and cultures while confronting the forces undermining their rights and making the movement’s demands heard. In powerful actions, they protested the current legislative assault on Indigenous land rights, including Bill 191, which aims to open native lands to mining and commercial exploitation, and Bill 490, a land-grabbing scheme that would alter the demarcation of Indigenous territories. They also decried the explosion of illegal gold mining on Amazonian Indigenous lands.
The ATL brought solutions to the table as well as important non-Indigenous voices, including former Brazilian president Lula da Silva, who committed to supporting the Amazonian Indigenous movement’s agenda.
While Amazon Watch has maintained a regranting fund over its 26-year history, today’s Amazon Defenders Fund eclipses our previous ability to mobilize solidarity funding to our partners and allies on the ground.
This comes at a critical moment, as the Amazon and its peoples suffer an unprecedented assault, requiring new levels of support to resist mounting threats and back much-needed solutions that keep the rainforest standing and its defenders safe.
