What Native Amazonians Want

Once there were as many as 10 million native people living in the Amazon rainforest. Today the number of native Amazonians is much smaller.Those who remain want one thing above all: to continue their traditional way of life.

A Sustainable Way of Life

Native people have lived in the rainforest for about 12,000 years. Many live as they always have. They hunt and fish, and they grow crops on small plots of land they have cleared in the forest. When a field is no longer fertile, they clear a new one somewhere else. Over time, new forest covers the old field. This is a sustainable way of life. It uses the resources of the Amazon rainforest without causing long-term damage.

In the 1960s, the government of Brazil decided to open the Amazon basin to development. It began by building a highway into the rainforest. Farmers, ranchers, and loggers followed the road into the Amazon region.

The arrival of so many newcomers has hurt native Amazonians. Many native people have been driven from their homelands to make room for farms and ranches. Some have died from diseases brought by newcomers. Others have been killed or injured in land use conflicts.

Save the Forest to Save Us

Today native Amazonians are fighting to save parts of the rainforest from development. They say they have a right to preserve themselves and their way of life. As native leader Davi Kopenawa has said, “I want to live where I really belong, on my own land.”

In their struggle to survive, native Amazonians have had to learn new skills. One is how to speak Portuguese, the official language of Brazil. Another is how to work with Brazil’s government and legal system. Native groups have called on the Brazilian government to make them the legal owners of their homelands. Only then will they be able to keep others from destroying their rainforest home.