For years, the Parakanã Indigenous people were restricted to less than a third of their territory, isolated in the middle of a vast pasture area occupied by around 100,000 heads of cattle. Illegal gold mining, illegal logging and land grabbing also proliferated inside their land, the Apyterewa Indigenous land, located in Brazil’s River Xingu basin, in Pará state. ​“It is historically the most deforested Indigenous territory in Brazil, and perhaps in the world,” said Wallace Lopes, an environmental analyst in Brazil’s federal environmental agency, IBAMA. ​The peak of deforestation happened amid the administration of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), who dismantled the country’s environmental enforcement. In 2022, an area nearly the size of Paris (102.23 kilometers squared or 25,261 acres) was cleared inside the Apyterewa land, according to Brazil’s space agency, INPE. ​“It was a massive deforestation,” Wenatoa Parakanã, the president of the Tato’á Association, which represents the Parakanã, told Mongabay. “All we can see now is pasture.” The invaders were estimated at 3,000 individuals, more than four times the Indigenous population (730). After two failed attempts by previous administrations to remove the intruders in 2013 and 2017, they felt confident enough to build a small village inside the Indigenous land, with two gas stations, bars, churches and even a school. The task force in Apyterewa Indigenous land to remove invaders counted on the support of Brazil’s Federal Police, Army and the National Force. Image by the Indigenous People Ministry (MPI). Things started to change in 2023, when leftist President…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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