The Karitiana are an indigenous group in Brazil.
They live on protected land, deep in the Amazon rainforest.
When it was established in 1986, it was surrounded by rainforest.
But today, it’s almost completely surrounded by farms.
This kind of encroachment is happening across the Amazon.
Brazil has over 400 protected indigenous lands.
But its booming agricultural industry has spent the last few decades clearing the rainforest around them.
Now they want in.
And they have the perfect ally to help them.
Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro wants the expansion of farms to continue.
Even at the expense of protected lands.
And that's put 900,000 indigenous people at the risk of losing their homes,
and their way of life.
At the start of the 20th century, Brazil was
intent on becoming a modern country.
Cities along the coast were already being developed.
But the Amazon, which covers almost half the country, was remote, inaccessible,
and home to tens of thousands of indigenous people who had lived there for centuries.
Around the 1920s, Brazil's government pushed an aggressive plan
to change the shape of the Amazon.
They brought telegraph lines, roads, schools, and people into the Amazon,
while forcibly these indigenous groups out of the way.
"Troops had to be called out in Brasilia
to quell the bitter protests of thousands,
through a brief and bloodless military coup."
Then, in the 1960s, a brutal military dictatorship took over Brazil and carried out genocide
against indigenous people.
They took away their lands to build highways, mines and dams across the Amazon.
During this time, more than 8,300 indigenous people were killed,
and tens of thousands had lost their homes.
In 1985, the military regime collapsed and Brazil became a democracy.
The new constitution included historic reparations for the country’s indigenous people.
It recognized their culture and traditions.
And even gave them a way to get their lands back.
Indigenous groups could claim their traditional territory with a government agency, called
FUNAI, that would demarcate the borders of a new protected land.
After final approval from Brazil’s president, FUNAI would then monitor and protect it.
Soon, protected indigenous lands were being set up all over the Amazon.
And today they make up around 13% of the country.
Which includes the Karitiana's land.
But it wasn’t long before these lands would be threatened again.
From the 1990s to the 2000s, Brazil’s economy
was one of the fastest growing in the world - fueled, primarily, by agriculture.
The country became one of the top producers of beef and soybeans,
while logging and mining were also significant industries.
But the economic boom had a downside.
All of these industries needed more and more land, a lot of which came from the Amazon.
The rainforest was rapidly cut down in Para, Rondonia, and Mato Grosso states,
to make room for cattle pastures and farms,
often leaving the protected indigenous lands as the only forest left.
Before long, Brazil’s agricultural industry wanted to gain access to these areas too.
And they found support within the government.
They lobbied to weaken the rules around protected indigenous lands that they claimed were barriers to progress.
And their pressure started to show results...
From 2003 to 2010, President Lula da Silva approved 87 indigenous reserves.
But his successor, Dilma Rousseff, approved just 21.
Followed by Michel Temer, who approved only one.
Rousseff and Temer also cut FUNAI’s funding, which forced the agency to close
dozens of offices in the Amazon, leaving indigenous people unprotected.
As FUNAI's power declined, illegal invasions of protected indigenous lands increased.
By 2017, Brazil's indigenous were under attack.
Loggers, ranchers, and farmers felt emboldened
under a government heavily influenced by the agricultural industry.
And soon, the man leading Brazil's presidential race would further tip the scales in their favor.
As a former member of the Army during the military regime, he shared many of their
oppressive political views, especially those towards indigenous groups:
These words earned him the endorsement of the agricultural industry,
but deeply worried indigenous groups.
As soon as Bolsonaro took office, he turned his attention to the indigenous.
He slashed FUNAI’s budget, and hasn’t approved any new lands.
In fact, he’s proposed taking away FUNAI’s power to demarcate new lands entirely.
And he appointed a former police officer, with strong ties to the agriculture industry,
to lead FUNAI.
Under Bolsonaro, invasions of indigenous lands have skyrocketed in just the first 9 months of 2019.
Just ten days after Bolsonaro took office in January 2019,
40 armed men invaded this land.
By May, 20,000 illegal miners had invaded the Yanomami reserve.
And in July, invaders cleared a huge section of forest in the Xikrin land.
The Karitiana are worried that they could be next.
Illegal agricultural activities have been happening here,
right next to the Karitiana land.
And they've brought actual threats of violence to the people living there.
In the past, the indigenous groups had FUNAI,
a protective agency they could turn to for help.
But now they're left to rely on themselves.
Hi, thanks for watching the third and final episode of Vox Atlas: the Amazon mini-series.
My name is Ana Terra Athayde
and I'm a video journalist based in Brazil.
I went to the Amazon to report on the ground and to meet with
the people who provided us with invaluable information.
I want to thank them all for their time and for sharing their concerns with us.
Make sure to watch the series' previous videos.
The first one explains what drives deforestation in the rainforest.
And in the second video, we take a look at the rubber industry in the Amazon,
and the work and legacy of Chico Mendes.
Thanks again for watching.