All we want is to preserve our land. Our enemies want us dead
My family have lived in our indigenous territory for generations; the Maranhão region of northern Brazil is my ancestral home. For centuries, across 400,000 hectares of land, my people – the Guajajara – have preserved our traditions and the natural world there, looking after the Amazon rainforest, the scrublands and hills. Our traditions help us sustain the environment, and in return nature provides for us: trees give us food and medicine, we hunt animals, water sustains all life.
Our community of 15,000 Indigenous people inherited our rituals and customs from those who went before us. Also passed down to us, however, was the need to fight. Since 1500, when the Portuguese arrived (uninvited, of course) to our country, our land has been under constant attack.
