- The 2022 documentary “The Territory” won an Emmy award this January, shining a light on the Uru-eu-wau-wau Indigenous people and the invasions, conflicts and threats from land grabbers in their territory in the Brazilian Amazon from 2018 to 2021.
- After years of increasing invasions and deforestation in the protected area, experts say the situation has slowly improved in the past three years, and both Indigenous and government officials in the region “feel a little safer.”
- Grassroots surveillance efforts, increased visibility of the problems, and a more effective federal crackdown against invaders have helped tackle illegal land occupiers and allowed the Indigenous populations to take their land back.
- Despite the security improvements, however, the territory still struggles against invasions and deforestation within the region, experts say.
Brazil’s Indigenous peoples have come under systemic attacks for five centuries, a crisis that worsened from 2019 to 2022 under the government of Jair Bolsonaro. These hostilities were encapsulated in the Emmy-winning documentary The Territory (O Território), which unveiled the challenges one Indigenous land and its population faced from land grabbers from 2018 to 2021.
The film, which won the award for “exceptional merit in documentary filmmaking” this January, documents an Indigenous group’s fight against conflicts and threats from invaders in the Uru-eu-wau-wau Indigenous Territory, an area covering more than 1.8 million hectares (4.4 million acres) of the Amazon Rainforest in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. The territory is home to nine Indigenous groups, including the Jupaú (also known as the Uru-eu-wau-wau), the Oro Win, the Amondawa, and the Cabixi, as well as five communities that have not had contact with non-Indigenous people.
Today, the situation in the region has improved, experts say, adding that although threats still exist, the territory has become safer and deforestation has dropped thanks to increasing visibility, local action, and a change in the federal government.
