More than a decade after Avatar brought global attention to the destruction of Indigenous lands, Amazon Watch has released a new short video that brings that story into the real world.
Narrated by Avatar: Fire and Ash actor Oona Chaplin and featuring filmmaker James Cameron, Kayapó leader Chief Raoni Metuktire, and Munduruku leader and Goldman Prize winner Alessandra Korap Munduruku, the video highlights the urgent reality facing Indigenous peoples defending the Amazon today.
In the film, Chaplin draws a direct line between fiction and reality. In Avatar, the Na’vi fight to protect their home. In the Amazon, that fight is happening now, with consequences for all of us.
The Amazon rainforest is nearing a dangerous ecological tipping point after decades of deforestation, mining, oil extraction, and agribusiness expansion. Scientists warn that continued destruction could trigger irreversible collapse, accelerating climate breakdown worldwide. Indigenous territories remain some of the most intact forests in the region, and Indigenous leadership is one of the strongest defenses against destruction.
Indigenous peoples are working to end this destruction and protect the Amazon today. Simultaneously with the release of this video, more than 1,000 Indigenous leaders and community members from Brazil’s Tapajós River region have blockaded commodity giant Cargill’s grain terminal in Santarém. For weeks they have blocked highways, shut down access to an international airport, and refused to leave until the Brazilian government revokes Decree 12,600, which privatizes three Amazonian rivers and greenlights destructive dredging, turning living rivers into dead industrial corridors for soy and other monoculture exports.
For the Kayapó and Munduruku peoples, the forest is not a resource, it is life itself. Their lands are living systems sustained by generations of stewardship, culture, and responsibility. Yet these territories face growing pressure from industrial soy expansion and infrastructure projects like the proposed Ferrogrão railway.
In response, Indigenous associations are helping lead Brazil’s Enough Soy Alliance, a movement calling for an end to destructive agribusiness expansion and for development models that respect people, forests, and the climate.
As the video makes clear, the future of the Amazon depends on unity across movements, generations, and borders. Indigenous resistance through culture, legal defense, and nonviolent action offers a path forward at a moment of profound crisis.
Indigenous peoples are the true defenders of the Amazon. Standing with them is not symbolic. It is essential for the future of life on Earth.
Watch the video and stand with Indigenous leadership defending the Amazon.
