Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has promised Indigenous people that he would stop illegal mining on their reservations and recognise their land claims if he wins the presidential election in October.

Lula on Tuesday visited a protest camp in Brasilia where several thousand members of 200 Indigenous tribes have gathered to oppose plans by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro to allow commercial agriculture, mining and oil exploration on their lands.

“Everything this government has decreed against Indigenous peoples must be repealed immediately,” said Lula, who held the presidency for two terms from 2003 to 2010.

“Nobody did more for Indigenous people than our Workers’ Party governments, and now everything has been dismantled by this unscrupulous government,” Lula told a cheering crowd.

Illegal mining has soared in the Amazon as gold prices have surged in recent years and mining destroyed a record 125sq km (48sq miles) of the Brazilian Amazon last year, according to official figures.

Bolsonaro vowed in 2018 not to recognise a single centimetre of Indigenous reservation land, winning him the backing of Brazil’s powerful farm lobby. “Lula, we are unprotected. Our rights are being trampled on,” said Joenia Wapichana, the country’s only Indigenous representative in Congress.

She said illegal occupations of protected Indigenous lands are being legalised and wildcat miners are invading reservations where they destroy forests and pollute rivers.

“Instead of being world leaders in deforestation, we want to be world champions in facing up to the climate crisis and in socio-environmental development,” Lula said. “That way we will have healthy food on our plates, clean air to breathe and water to drink and lots of quality jobs with green investment.”

Lula takes power on 1 January 2023 and will be charged with rebuilding and reuniting a nation that has been left damaged and bitterly divided

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Baking and yoga are some of the activities some people have turned to as a way to cope with the stresses of 2020 so far. In that vein, we present 6-month-old Brave Yazzie from Onion Lake, Sask., who can’t walk yet, but can sure dance up a storm.

Strapped into a Jolly Jumper exerciser, the baby jumps up and down to the beat of drums and chants while beaming at her mom Aislinn Whitstone.

“While she was in my tummy, we attended a lot of powwows,” Whitstone told HuffPost Canada. “So we think that she’s [also] dancing to what she heard in my tummy.”

Yazzie is Plains Cree from Onion Lake on her mom’s side, and from the Navajo Nation in Arizona on her dad’s. Her parents are both dancers themselves and were eager to include their daughter in their traditions.

“In my culture, the heartbeat sounds exactly like the drum. We are slowly bringing her into life, so that way when she grows up, she knows where she’s from and who she is as an Indigenous little girl.”

Whitstone posted video of Yazzie dancing to a Facebook group called Quarantine Dance Specials 2020, which features Indigenous peoples from all over the world sharing dances from their respective nations during the pandemic. Whitstone made her daughter’s outfit herself and decided to post the video to brighten people’s days.

“We believe that dancing is a way of healing,” she said. “And especially with what’s going around in the world today, we wanted to bring happiness to everyone.”

Whitstone is glad about all the positive feedback from the video of little Yazzie.

“We know that she will continue with dancing, and will make us proud.”

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VIDEOS

This six-month old angel is Brave Yazzie.

She's half-Cree, half-Navajo, and lives in Saskatchewan, Canada.

She can't walk yet — but she loves to dance.

We dare you to not smile.

😀♥ pic.twitter.com/LgvBSRBbLi

— Goodable (@Goodable) June 29, 2020

Brazil has announced the first coronavirus case among the Yanomami people, an Amazon indigenous group known for its remoteness and vulnerability to foreign diseases.

The patient, a 15-year-old boy, was being treated in an intensive care unit at a hospital in Boa Vista, the capital of the northern state of Roraima, officials said.

"Today we confirmed a case among the Yanomami, which is very worrying," Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta told a news conference on Wednesday.

"We have to be triply cautious with [Indigenous] communities, especially the ones that have very little contact with the outside world."

Brazil has now confirmed at least seven coronavirus cases among the Indigenous population, according to the newspaper, Globo. The first was a 20-year-old woman from the Kokama ethnic group, who was confirmed positive a week ago.

Brazil is home to an estimated 800,000 indigenous people from more than 300 ethnic groups. The Yanomami, who are known for their face paint and intricate piercings, number about 27,000.


Largely isolated from the outside world until the mid-20th century, they were devastated by disease such as measles and malaria in the 1970s.

Indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest are particularly vulnerable to imported diseases because they have been historically isolated from germs against which much of the world has developed immunity.
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At just 8 years old, Xóchitl Guadalupe Cruz has invented a device to help low-income families. The little girl from Chiapas was recognized by UNAM's Institute of Nuclear Sciences for her outstanding scientific achievement.

At just 8 years old, Xóchitl has designed and constructed a solar-powered device to heat water, using only recycled materials, Cultura Colectiva reports.

For many, this device may seem totally unnecessary. But, in Xóchitl's community, where resources are scarce, "people don't have the money to buy heaters, so they chop down trees to get firewood [to heat the water]," says Xóchitl.

Her device not only functions to provide hot water to low-income families in her community, it also saves trees!

Xóchitl's family helped her set the device up on their roof and have been using it to heat water to bathe. Xóchitl says she always bathes quickly though, "so [the hot water] will last for my little brother."

If this is what Xóchitl is doing at 8-years-old, we can only imagine what the future holds.


Chiapas is home to the ancient Mayan ruins of Palenque, Yaxchilán, Bonampak, Chinkultic and Toniná. It is also home to one of the largest indigenous populations in the country with twelve federally recognized ethnicities. Much of the state's history is centered on the subjugation of these peoples with occasional rebellions. The last of these rebellions was the 1994 Zapatista uprising, which succeeded in obtaining new rights for indigenous people.
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The government approved a bill Friday to recognize the country’s ethnic Ainu minority as an “indigenous” people for the first time, after decades of discrimination against the group.

The Ainu people — many of whom live in northern Hokkaido — have long suffered the effects of a policy of forced assimilation. While discrimination has receded gradually, income and education gaps with the rest of Japan persist.

“It is important to protect the honor and dignity of the Ainu people and to hand those down to the next generation to realize a vibrant society with diverse values,” top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters.

“Today we made a Cabinet decision on a bill to proceed with policies to preserve the Ainu people’s pride.”

The bill is the first to recognize the Ainu as “indigenous people” and calls for the government to make “forward-looking policies,” including measures to support communities and boost local economies and tourism.

Ainu have lived for centuries on Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido, as well as nearby areas including Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. They struggled to pass down their language and culture after the Japanese government implemented an assimilation policy beginning in the Meiji Era (1868-1912), as Japan was modernizing.


The Ainu traditionally observed an animist faith, with men wearing full beards and women adorning themselves with facial tattoos before marriage. But like many indigenous people around the world, most of Japan’s Ainu have lost touch with their traditional lifestyle after decades of forced assimilation.

The Ainu population is estimated to be at least 12,300, according to a 2017 survey, but the real figure is unknown as many have integrated into mainstream society and some have hidden their cultural roots. In 1997, a law was enacted aimed at preserving Ainu culture and guaranteeing their human rights, about 100 years after the government introduced the assimilation policy.

It was the first legislation acknowledging the existence of an ethnic minority in Japan, but stopped short of saying the Ainu are indigenous. The new bill states its purpose is to “realize a society where the Ainu people can live with their ethnic pride, which will be respected” by others. The government will subsidize projects aimed at promoting Ainu culture and organized by local municipalities.


The law would also simplify procedures for Ainu to get permission from authorities to collect timber from national forests for their rituals, and to catch salmon in rivers in a traditional way. In addition to the new law, the central government also plans to open a national Ainu museum and park in the Hokkaido town of Shiraoi in April 2020.

In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a declaration on the rights of indigenous people, asking each country to take legislative steps to protect their rights. Japan was among the countries that supported the declaration.

“It is the first step for ensuring equality under the law,” Mikiko Maruko, who represents a group of Ainu people in eastern Japan near Tokyo, said.

“There are lots of things to be done, for example, creating a scholarship for families who struggle to send their children to high schools,” she added, a system currently only available to Ainu in Hokkaido.

“It is a major step forward on policies towards the Ainu people,” said Masashi Nagaura, chief of the Ainu policy bureau of the Hokkaido Prefectural Government that has spearheaded policies for the ethnic minority.
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