Karl Marx called religion the ‘opium of the masses’ because he believed it gives followers a false sense of comfort. Nowadays, democracy does something similar to many of us. We think that voting every few years relieves us of responsibility for the bigger picture. Nothing could be further from the truth. Climate change calls every one of us to stand up and draw a line in the sand.
Climate Change Calls Amazon Tribes Together
Some four hundred small, indigenous tribes comprising a total 800,000 people live in the Amazon forest. They get on with their lives without causing the rest of us any bother. There may be some we have never heard of or seen before.
Those tribes represent the last humanity almost untouched by technology. They could help us survive a post-climate-change apocalypse. Brazil’s constitution enshrines their land rights in 450 demarcated territories totaling 12% of the forest. However, the pieces are not joined up, and neither are the warring tribes. This situation is changing as climate change calls them to stand up against loggers and miners.
Indigenous Leader Raoni Metuktire Urges World Leaders
The Kayapó and the Panará People Join Hands
The Brazil administration believes 12% of the forest “is disproportionate to the number of indigenous people living there”. It wants to open their territories for mining, logging and agriculture. There are at least two sides to the argument. However, the Kayapó and the Panará fear they will lose their land rights if they do not defend them vigorously.
The two tribes harbor deep resentment between them because they warred against each other in the past. “Today, we have only one enemy, the government of Brazil, the president of Brazil, and those invading indigenous territories,” the Kayapó leader told a BBC reporter. “We have internal fights but we’ve come together to fight this government.” The Panará leader agrees. “We’ve killed the Kayapó and the Kayapó have killed us, we’ve reconciled and will no longer fight each other.”
Their Amazon forest home is our bastion against global warming too. Climate change calls us to support the Kayapó and the Panará tribes people, defending their homelands and future of our earthly refuge.
Related
Opposition Heating Up Over Amazon Fires
Earths Lungs are Straining in the Amazon
Preview Image: Xingu, an Indigenous Territory of Brazil
Video Share Link: https://youtu.be/Cgn0BfxAAbo
