Democracy Now! Audio - Full Interview: Indigenous Amazon Defender Alessandra Korap Munduruku

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

Full interview with Alessandra Korap Munduruku, who led an Indigenous protest outside the U.N. climate summit in Belém, Brazil.

If you could start by saying your full name, and what did you do on Friday, shutting down the UN Climate Summit for hours? My name is Alexandra Corap and Munduruku. I'm a name is Alessandra Korap Munduruku. I am a leader from the Tapajos River, which is here in the state of Parah. And to come here, my delegation of the Munduruku people,

we took two days by bus plus three days by boat it was a long trip we came with women we came with children we came with our shama so I'm not here alone in Paras

there are over 17,000 Mundo Ruku Cheaganda here we were abandoned so when we arrived here at COP 30 we were abandoned we had

we didn't have access to water we had a hard time finding meals. It was very difficult for our people who had traveled for so long to get here. And the people wanted to be heard. We came in a large delegation and we wanted to speak and we wanted to be heard, but we were blocked. I have credentials to enter cop, but many of the Molduduruku who are here do not. And so we decided that we needed to stop this cop. We needed people to stop and to listen to us. They needed to listen to us because we are the ones. We are the that are saying what the forest is demanding. We are the ones that are saying what the river is

asking for. We are going through a lot of violence in our territories. The rivers, the Tapajos River, the Madeira River, they're being privatized for the creation of hydro waste, for the transportation of soy, for agro business. This will expand the production of soy in Brazil. It will lead to more deforestation. It will lead to more indigenous rights. violations. So we blocked entry to COP because we need to be heard. So we live in the Amazon forest. We know what the river is going through. We need the river. We live with the river. Today the river, the Tapajos river is dry. There are days in which the river disappears. There are so many forest fires. So why is it that we cannot have the power to

decide here at COP. Why is it that they only speak about us, but that we cannot decide? And now President Lula has said that he's going to consult the people about federal decree number 12,600, which privatizes the rivers in the Amazon. But who is he going to consult? Is he going to consult the indigenous groups? Is he going to consult the jaguars, the fish, animals how is this consultation going to be who needs to be heard so and there's another project that lula and the government are trying to implement in the tapajos region in the munduru territory which is called the ferrogrong the soy railway the soil railway it serves to cheapen the export of soy commodities from Brazil to the global market it will lead to the expansion of

soy production. Soy does not grow under trees. Soy leads to deforestation. Soy leads to the contamination of rivers by agro-toxics, the invasion of indigenous territories. We need to demarcate indigenous lands in Brazil because large-scale commodity production is killing indigenous peoples. Yesterday, we had a Guarani Kaiwa, indigenous person who was killed in the state of Matugrosso-Dusu, with a bull it to his head. So large-scale monoculture does not only kill with the pen by decision-making, by evicting indigenous groups from their territory,

but it also kills with the gun. So we're here to urgently ask the international community to support the demarcation of indigenous lands and to support that President Lula revoke presidential decree, 12-600, which privatizes rivers in Brazil.

So you led a float down the river, and you shut down the UN Climate Summit. There's this iconic image of the UN Climate Summit, the COP 30 president. He is the climate ambassador for Brazil, Andrea Correa de Lago, holding a Muduroko child. Can you explain what that is? You've forced him to come out to negotiate with you. So we were there in that moment when we decided to finish. So we were there blocking the entry to the cop. And we arrived very early. We arrived at 5 a.m.

Everyone was hungry. We hadn't eaten breakfast. The children started crying. And the children are the strongest ones. And they were already hungry. And the sun was coming out. And we wanted to speak to an authority. Either the president of Brazil or the president of course.

And at some point, the president of Cobb said that we had to open up entry to COP. And we said, we are not leaving. You have to come out here and talk to us. And so he came out. And we got the meeting with Minister Sonia Guajajara, Minister Maria Silva, because we knew that we had to be listened to. And that child, that baby that André Correa holds in his arms, that is a very important symbol.

because in holding that baby, that child represents the future of the Munduruku people. And André, if he carries out these projects, if the government of Brazil decides to implement these projects without consulting, without listening to the Munduruku nation, he is destroying the future of that child that he held in his own arms. So he's assuming the responsibility for that life and for the life of all Munduruku children and babies. Your protests have made enormous difference. Brazil has now created 10 new indigenous territories as you were protesting this week. Territories for indigenous people, which mean your culture and environment are protected under Brazilian law. That happened this past week.

What exactly does that mean? So to start, you know, we were here much before, thousands of years before colonization began, so all of this territory is ours. But today, to demarcate an indigenous land, it's very difficult. It's a very long, bureaucratic and political process, where we have to prove many things. So we have to prove that that land is ours, even though it has always been ours. And if government does not demarcate the land, it means that we will be expelled, evicted from our territories, and we will be killed. Demarcation is something that needs to happen because non-demarcation means our deaths.

There are so many companies that have an eye on our land. So hydro power plants, mining, soy producers, land grabbers, illegal loggers, legal loggers. There are so many people that wants our territory. and there's so much land that still has to be demarcated. So let's talk about the Munduruku lands in the Mita Pajos region. My land, Saureabapin, was declared yesterday. Declaration is the third step in the long process of demarcation of an indigenous land. So this is one more step in ensuring the full rights to our territory.

But there's another territory called Sauremaibu, which has already been declared, but now the illegal occupants need to be removed from this land. That's the next step, the physical demarcation. There are so many invaders in these lands. Soy producers, farmers. It's so easy for non-indigenous people to have access to land in Brazil. All they need to do is go there, de-forest, take down the forest, and they say that the land is theirs.

That's how land grabbing works. It's so easy for them, but it's so difficult for us. And now there's this marco temporal cut-off limit that says that we only have rights to lands where we were physically present in 1988, but we were always on these lands. It doesn't make any sense. So what I want to say is that we're very happy that our lands advanced in the demarcation process, but there are so many lands that still need to be recognized and demarcated in Brazil. In 2003, you won the Goldman Environmental Prize for fighting the,

British mining company, Anglo-American. Can you explain what they were trying to do and what you won? Hello, 2002, 2019. So in 2019, after President Bolsonaro was elected, we started living a reign of terror in our territories. So there was a lot of invasion by, illegal gold diggers, illegal wildcat miners, garinperos. They came into the territory. They brought with them illegal criminal groups. They brought with them prostitution, violence,

contamination of rivers, contamination of fish. It was a real order of terror. And at that same time, between 2021 and 2022, we found out that the British mining company, Anglo-American, had filed a request to prospect minerals within our land. Anglo-American declared that our territory was not an indigenous land because it was not yet formally demarcated. But everyone knew that we live there. Everyone knows that it's our territory. For us, it's our territory.

And so we were forced to fight at the same time against the Garinpo, the illegal gold mining, and the big mining corporation Anglo-American. So we decided to speak out. We wrote a letter explaining everything that was happening, explaining that what we demanded, that we demanded an Anglo-American leave our territory immediately. Amazon Watch, which is a partner,

send this letter to the corporation, and they were obliged to step back, and they were obliged to remove their mining interest, to give up their mining interests, our territory because of our struggle. So for us, that is an indigenous land. That is a sacred land. It's where our fish are, our fruits. It's where we have authorization from the forest to step in. And so we will continue fighting. We have so many victories that the world needs to learn more about. We kept a hydropower plant from being implemented in our territory, and we will continue

fighting. Alessandra, I want to ask what keeps you going. I mean, indigenous land protectors, environmentalists especially the indigenous are face such violence talk about that threat that so many

face and why you keep going what I maintain is the people so what keeps me going are my people keep me going and my people keep me alive. The children, the territory, my family, it's a collective struggle and this is what keeps me alive. I've already suffered two attacks. Twice people have entered my house, have invaded my

house to try to keep me from fighting, threatening me, but I will not give up. I want the entire world to know who the Mundo people are, who the indigenous peoples of Brazil are, and what we represent. I know who I'm facing in my struggle. I know who I'm up against. I'm not up against just anyone. It's against big corporations, against government, against these people that we commonly say that have power. But we have power. My people have power because we have a people. We have culture. We have the forest. We have the things that really matter. So we know that we are powerful and not them. I am not afraid and I will not be silenced. And I will not be silenced. I will keep fighting. I'm wondering if you could compare your struggles against the current

government, the Lula government, to the Bolsonaro government. It's very different struggles in these two political contexts. So, former president Bolsonaro, he would foster violence against indigenous peoples, openly. There were no human rights. There was no protection. He was incentivizing the invasion of all territories. He was against the poor. He was against the black population.

He was against the indigenous groups. He was against Brazilian society. He was only in favor of corporations. And his speech was that indigenous people should become white people, that they should simply integrate Brazilian society and no longer be indigenous. He would say this openly. And the Munduruku people very openly confronted Bolsonaro.

They very openly confronted the Garinco. There was a lot of violence against the Munduruku women. Maria Leuza, a Munduruku leader from the Haitha region. She was attacked. Her house was burned. There was a lot of direct confrontation. Under Lula, things are very different. Lula speaks openly about the protection of the action.

Amazon. He speaks about demarcation. He sits down with us. There is dialogue. He is demarcating indigenous lands, but he still has a lot to learn. If he had learned what he should have learned by now, he would not have passed this decree, which privatizes the rivers and turns them over to companies and concessions. He would be demarcating a lot more lands. So it's a lot better now, but there's still so much to be done. And what does it mean to you that Lula appointed the

first indigenous minister, Sonio Guajajara? Look, O'Lula, in his campaign of his campaign, Lula had already promised that he would create a

ministry for the indigenous peoples, of the indigenous people. And we, already expected that it would be a woman and a woman that the ministry would be led by a woman that was involved in the struggles. And this is Sonia. Sonia is a woman who has a long history of leading indigenous struggles in Brazil. The problem is that when the right and when Congress saw that Sonia Guajajara would be the minister of indigenous peoples, they tried to destroy the ministry. And they did this by reforming the ministry and by removing the attribution to declare

indigenous lands from the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples. So Sonia faced a decision, a difficult choice. Either to leave the ministry, in which case it could be handed over to someone else, so we don't know who that would be, or to stay in the ministry and use it as a device to represent indigenous rights and indigenous demands within government. And within a government that's very unfavorable to indigenous groups, within a very complex coalition government that's very anti-indigenous in its majority. So Sonja-Jara has been doing an extremely challenging job. Her work is very fundamental

so that indigenous rights are represented within the federal government. But President Lula, unfortunately, has still not fully understood what the territories represent, what the sacred is, that it is the indigenous territories and traditional territories that keep the forest standing, that keep the people standing, that keep the water running. He has still not learned this. But Sonia's work has been crucial for the indigenous fight.

They want the ministry to keep on going, and they are very fearful that if a right-wing government takes over in the next year's election, The ministry might be dissolved. They are very concerned about this because the ministry must keep going. Alessandra Munderuku, I asked you about Lula. I asked you about Bolsonaro. What about you and your plans?

Do you think you might run for President of Brazil someday? So I have been asked many times if I would run for elected offices. I am from the land, from the river. I travel. I can travel far away. I can go places to represent my people. And maybe the time has come to take my fight somewhere else. I am thinking about whether next year it's the time.

The time is ripe for me to run as federal congresswoman. I don't know if that would be easy. Probably not. I don't have funds, but I have a lot of strength. And this is a big debate within the indigenous movement because we fight so much outside of the institutions. And we think that it's time for us to occupy these institutions, to occupy Congress, to occupy the mayorships, even the presidency, why not?

We want to take our bodies into these spaces and to take the confrontation and the fight into these institutions as well. Finally, you represent so many Mundruku, not to mention indigenous people and their allies, but I wanted to ask you about your representation of nature, even just by what you wear. If you can tell us about the feathers in your hair, the flowers that are earrings, and the straw skirt that you wear, what it all represents, each one? The forest, it gives us everything that we need.

It gives us our food, it gives us our medicine, it gives us our culture, it gives us our clothing. why do I use these feathers? Why do I use these coconuts? Everything that we use are food, but not only literally in the terms of eating, but everything that constitutes us is in our gardens, is in our backyard. So the coconut, for instance,

the small little coconuts, they're eaten by the birds, and we also use them, we use them to make our jewelry, we use them to make the things that make us beautiful. We wear them. we have we look at nature in terms of what it shares with us of what it gives us of the parts of itself that it shares with us

these paintings that i have in my face there are the paintings of the korap the kodap or the it's my clan the white half of the munduruku the kore up clan so these these these paintings they represent the kodap these fish in munduruku the women came from the fish so karosa kaibu the great He took the fish out of the water and transformed them into women. And in transforming them into women, he made us into women warriors. And this is why we struggle. And finally, if you can look right into that camera and share your message to the world. What I do, for you who are there,

So my message, as Alessandra Kourapimundo, is what are you watching this now, is what are you doing to the environment? What is your country doing to the environment? What is your corporation? What are your companies? What are your representatives doing to the environment and to indigenous rights? Do you know what they are doing? Are they respecting the rights?

of indigenous peoples and of the environment. Are you monitoring where investments are going? Are you monitoring how corporate activities are taking place on the ground? You need to know, because we here, we do not eat soy, we do not eat gold, we do not eat iron ore. We eat the fish and we eat the fruits from the forest, and we need our forest standing. So I ask you, please monitor your corporation. monitor your company, monitor your governments, watch your representatives, be aware of what they're doing. We need you to do this for us here in the forest. This is my message to you

from Alessandra Korap Munduruku. Alessandra Korap Munduruku, thank you so much for joining us.