Society

One indigenous community is counting the social costs of Amazon fires and conflict

amazon fires hurt indigenous people in brazil
Members of the Huni Kuin community survey the damage after a fire on August 22. Photo: Centro Huwã Karu Yuxibu via Facebook

The cultural center of Huwã Karu Yuxibu was the educational and spiritual home of Brazil’s indigenous Huni Kuin people. Located 50 kilometers from Rio Branco, the capital city of the Amazonian state of Acre, it was built in 2015 and provided a focus for agroecological knowledge, traditional medicine, and cultural ceremonies for the community. However, on the afternoon of August 22, Huwã Karu Yuxibu was burned along with trees, drinking well, and the medicinal and food gardens of the Huni Kuin people.

Many of the Huni Kuin people who live near the center were previously displaced from the Brazilian-Bolivian border, where they had lost territory to competing land interests in the Amazon.

Across Brazil, there was an 84-percent increase in fires between 2018 and 2019, the greatest number of registered fires in seven years. Over half of these were in the Amazon, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (Inpe). In the state of Acre, there have been a staggering 2,498 separate outbreaks, an increase of 176 percent from the previous year.

The Huni Kuin community are well known to us, and articulated their ongoing struggle for territorial autonomy at the launch of our major research project in February. In April, they made it clear to researchers and students at the Federal University of Acre that they are determined to preserve their cultural identity and practices, underpinned by the Huwã Karu Yuxibu center.

The community’s chief, Mapu Huni Kuin, told us that the community has called on the government to investigate the cause of the fire, and invited a research...

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