Eye on the Amazon

March 9, 2021 – Across the Amazon Basin, Indigenous women are uniting and organizing in defense of life, rights, and territories while confronting increasing threats. Amazonian women defenders are on the front lines of defense and response to both the climate and COVID-19 emergencies. This is in addition to leading resistance against extractive industries, agribusiness expansion, and government policies that incentivize fires, land-grabbing, and attacks against Earth defenders. Amazonian women defenders are guiding solutions for a better future and call upon all of us to listen to their voices and show our solidarity.

The two-sides narrative is a lie promoted by an admitted global polluter doing anything it can to change the story

March 9, 2021 – First, let’s acknowledge that it is extremely detrimental to the ongoing effort for justice for the people of Ecuador that the press routinely ignores that Chevron admitted to deliberately dumping over 16 billion gallons of toxic oil-waste into the Amazon as a cost-saving measure over the course of decades while operating under its Texaco brand. It never once apologized nor made any meaningful effort to clean up that toxic waste nor assist any of the people it poisoned. Full stop.

Zulema, Indigenous leader of the Kakataibo people, seeks justice after the murder of her husband, Apu Arbildo Melendez

March 5, 2021 – Over the last seven years the Indigenous community of Unipacuyacu – inhabited by members of the Kakataibo people within the central region of the Peruvian Amazon – has lost five of their people at the hands of land-grabbers, who are linked to drug networks. This is the price they have paid for not ending their pursuit to secure legal titles for their ancestral territories.

Will a new government prioritize protection of the Amazon rainforest and Earth defenders?

February 24, 2021 – As an organization dedicated to advancing Indigenous rights and protecting the Amazon, we support the calls from our Indigenous partners for any new government to respect the clear mandate of Indigenous peoples for an end to new oil and mining extraction and guarantee their rights to territory, self-determination, and to live in an environment free of contamination.

Isac was only 24 years old when he was murdered last Friday by the Brazilian military police

February 19, 2021 – Last Friday, February 12th, Isac Tembé left his home on the Alto Rio Guama Indigenous Territory, in the northeast of the Amazonian state of Pará, to go hunting nearby with a group of friends. He never returned. The young Indigenous leader was murdered; shot point-blank in the chest by a member of Brazil's military police, on his own land.

Imbalance of power and environmental racism have so far allowed them to escape paying up

February 11, 2021 – February 14, 2011, was a monumental day in the history of environmental justice, corporate accountability, and human rights. This Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of an Ecuadorian court's groundbreaking judgment holding Chevron, one of the world's largest corporations, accountable for deliberate pollution in the Amazon. This civil court victory was the first of its kind and forever changed the range of possibilities for corporate accountability and environmental justice. We must lift up this date and moment for the unprecedented victory that it represents.