Amazon tribes turn the tables on intruders with social media
BY FABIANO MAISONNAVE
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MAY 03, 2022 8:53 AM
FILE - An Indigenous man with the phrase painted on its back that reads in Portuguese "Mining Kills," participates in a protest against the increase of mining activities that are encroaching on his land, in front of the Ministry of Mines and Energy, in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, April 11, 2022. A fast-expanding network of antennae is empowering Indigenous groups to use phones, video cameras and social media to galvanize the public and pressure authorities to respond swiftly to threats from gold miners, landgrabbers and loggers. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File) ERALDO PERES AP
RIO DE JANEIRO It was dusk on April 14 when Francisco Kuruaya heard a boat approaching along the river near his village in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. He assumed it was the regular delivery boat bringing gasoline for generators and outboard motors to remote settlements like his. Instead, what Kuruaya found was a barge dredging his people's pristine river in search of gold.
Kuruaya had never seen a dredge operating in this area of the Xipaia people's territory, let alone one this massive; it resembled a floating factory.
Kuruaya, 47, motored out to the barge, boarded it and confronted the gold miners. They responded in harsh voices and he retreated for fear they were armed. But so was he — with a phone — the first he'd ever had. Back in his village Karimaa, his son Thaylewa Xipaia forwarded the photos of the mining boat to the tribe's WhatsApp chat groups.
“Guys, this is urgent!" he said to fellow members of his tribe in an audio message The Associated Press has reviewed. “There's a barge here at Pigeons Island. It's huge and it's destroying the whole island. My dad just went there and they almost took his phone."
Read more at: https://www.bellinghamherald.com/entertainment/celebrities/article260995987.html#storylink=cpy
