The Amondawa team in Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Land
AmazoniAlerta is proud to collaborate with an experienced team of indigenous guardians from the Amondawa community, located in the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Land in the state of Rondônia. These guardians monitor vulnerable territories, collect evidence of territorial invasions and illegal deforestation, contributing directly to the defense of the territory and the protection of local indigenous peoples, including isolated groups.
Today, the Amondawa population numbers around 150 people, living in a single village located in the center of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Land. They first made contact with outside society in 1983. Since then, they have collaborated with FUNAI in monitoring their territory, with special attention to protecting the uncontacted peoples who live in the region. With more than four decades of experience in territorial monitoring in partnership with government agencies and NGOs, the Amondawa also have a wealth of traditional knowledge about the forest and the territory they inhabit.
In the Uru Eu Wau Wau Indigenous Land, we work in partnership with the Amondawa Indigenous People’s Association (APIA), the Uru Eu Wau Wau Ethno-Environmental Protection Front (FPE) (National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples – FUNAI) and the Observatory of Isolated Indigenous Peoples (Opi). The Amondawa have named this partnership the Kaurarepiakawa Project, which means Guardians of the Forest in the Amondawa language.
Together these organizations strengthen the work of the team of Amondawa guardians. AmazoniAlerta offers technical, financial and logistical support, providing the necessary equipment for territorial monitoring and collecting evidence of environmental crimes. In addition, the team works closely with our legal department, which has an Amondawa law intern, Patrícia Juwi. Our legal team uses the evidence collected to put pressure on the legal and federal authorities to take appropriate action. More broadly, we seek to support the Amondawa community in their quest for local, national and international justice, to mitigate and prevent illegal invasions of their lands and to combat deforestation.
The indigenous communities of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Land face constant threats of violence from land grabbers, illegal loggers, miners and hunters. During its expeditions, the Amondawa guardian team has found evidence of large-scale illegal logging operations, camps abandoned by invaders, signs of illegal hunting and new areas of the territory violated by illegal mining. The team often destroys structures built by invaders, such as camps and hunting platforms. Worryingly, the guardians have found several trails used by invaders that directly threaten areas inhabited by isolated indigenous people. Our legal department is actively reporting these findings to the competent authorities, demanding that immediate action be taken.
About the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Land
The Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Land covers an area of 1.8 million hectares and is located in the state of Rondônia, at the western end of the so-called “Arc of Deforestation”, the front line of the agricultural advance into the Amazon. The state of Rondônia has lost 24% of its primary forest in the last two decades, mainly due to the expansion of agriculture, especially cattle ranching and soybean cultivation, as well as mining. The struggle of the indigenous communities of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Land was portrayed in the award-winning 2022 documentary The Territory.
AmazoniAlerta’s collaboration with the Amondawa team in the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Land is funded by the Rainforest Fund.
A three-minute video video from our Instagram page, made by Juventude Amondawa, a collective of young people of the Amondawa from Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Land.