On the Amazon’s lawless frontier, murder mystery divides the locals and loggers

The Ka'apor tribe fight a daily battle in Brazil's Maranhio state to protect their forests

Sairi Ka'apor patrolled one of the most murderous frontiers in the world, a remote and largely lawless region of the Brazilian Amazon where his indigenous community has fought for generations to protect their forest land.

Armed with clubs, bows and arrows, GPS trackers and crude guns, he and fellow members of Ka'apor Forest Guard drove off - and sometimes attacked - loggers who intruded into their territory, the 530,000-hectare Alto Turiaiu Indigenous Land, which is roughly three times the area of Greater London and contains about half of the Amazon forest left in Brazil's northern Maranhio state. That vigilante role came to an end last April when Sairi was stabbed to death in Betel, a logging town close to Ka'apor territory.