Brazil’s Javari valley is under threat. Lula’s government must protect it | Beto Marubo

Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were killed in a region where 23 Indigenous groups live - and we all face the same danger

Among my people, the Marubo, knowledge is transmitted through oral history, passed down by elders throughout the centuries. For many generations these stories described the approach of people we call nawas - outsiders who always brought misfortune, usually in search of natural resources from the forests we inhabit.

My ancestors spoke of Catholic missionaries from Spain and Portugal, of Peruvian rubber barons and logging companies. The stories my generation tells are of fundamentalist evangelical missionaries, illegal miners and fishing gangs bankrolled by drug trafficking networks.