Photo: Afro-Indigenous and Indigenous Brazilians, taken in 1858 and 1894, Wikimedia Commons
Content Note: The following includes disturbing information on violence against Indigenous Peoples. We have strived to provide information on each individual, in celebration of their lives and work, without gratuitous detail on their deaths. While we have worked to avoid linking to sources with graphic imagery, please note that the sources linked may contain further details and images may be changed by websites after we have reviewed them.
Globally, 64.8% of all attacks against defenders were against those defending land and territories. Latin America is one of the most dangerous regions to be an Indigenous rights and environmental defender. Three out of four assassinations of environmental defenders take place in Latin America. Indigenous defenders face a double threat: defending rights and being Indigenous.
In 2023, 49% of murdered environmental or land defenders were Indigenous or Afro-descendants, a disproportionately high figure given that Indigenous Peoples comprise roughly 6% of the global population. It is important to take into consideration that killings are just the tip of the iceberg, and that before reaching that point, a variety of violence has occurred. According to the latest data from the Alliance for Land, Indigenous, and Environmental Defenders, for every killing of an Indigenous land and environmental defender documented in 2022, at least five non-lethal attacks took place.
As part of our Advocacy Program, Cultural Survival tracks violence against Indigenous defenders in an effort to draw connections amongst these cases and demonstrate that this crisis, rather than being a set of unconnected attacks on individual people, is systemic.
In these profiles, we remember and mourn 41 Indigenous people who were killed in 2024. We also recognize and condemn attacks, disappearances, criminalization, and other forms of violence committed against Indigenous defenders worldwide. We acknowledge that our scope is limited and that violence against Indigenous Peoples and against particular defenders of rights and the environment far surpasses the data that we were able to collect, and we honor all of the Peoples and communities who have been affected. We commit to continuing to work towards justice for Indigenous land and rights defenders alongside the affected communities to the extent that we are able.
Courtesy culturalsurvival.org
