Indigenous women are showing us how to fight for environmental and human rights

Brazil’s Indigenous peoples minister, Sônia Guajajara, speaks from the top of a sound car at a march in Brasília. Photograph: Eraldo Peres/AP

I was invited to the third Indigenous Women’s March in Brasília, the capital of Brazil, earlier this month. The last occupation of Brazil’s legislature was in January 2022, when a group of rightwing thugs, imitating the January 6 riot in the US, attempted to kill Brazilian democracy. This was the exact opposite.

Five hundred Indigenous women from across Brazil occupied the Congress – not with guns or knives or anger, but with the strength and truth of their words, the intensity of their knowing, with their headdresses, feathers and beaded primordial designs calling us to the earth, to know the earth, to protect and respect the biomes and honor Indigenous women’s rights to their lands.