Land Protection Orders... Uncontacted tribes in danger

Authorities in Brazil are planning to scrap a vital safeguard for uncontacted tribes in Brazil – Land Protection Orders (LPOs).

These emergency orders are used to protect uncontacted tribes’ territories that have not been through the long process of official demarcation.

LPOs make it illegal for loggers, miners and other invaders to enter the tribes’ lands. Without this protection, the forests would be completely destroyed – and the tribes who look after them and depend on them to survive could be wiped out.

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LPOs are shielding seven uncontacted tribes’ territories...
and 1 million hectares of Amazon rainforest

Three of them are due to expire in 2021, and will need to be renewed.

One of these protects the forest home of the last of the Piripkura tribe – after a series of massacres only three members of this tribe are known to exist, though others may still survive in the depths of the forest.

Piripkura men Tamandua and Baita, photographed during an encounter with a FUNAI unit. The two men, who are nephew and uncle, have had sporadic interactions with the local FUNAI team, but returned to live in the forest. Their territory is shielded by the Land Protection Orders, but at imminent risk of being overrun by loggers and landgrabbers.
© Bruno Jorge

Scrapping LPOs is all part of President Bolsonaro’s deliberate policy to destroy the country’s indigenous peoples and take their land for “economic development.”

Your support is vital if the orders – which are all that stand between these uncontacted tribes and certain death – are to be saved.

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