A leader from Brazil’s indigenous Munduruku community has been recognised for her successful fight against mining in the Amazon rainforest.
Alessandra Korap Munduruku, 39, has been awarded this year’s Goldman Prize, which recognises grassroots activism.
Her vocal campaign to protect the Munduruku territory saw her confronting mining giant Anglo American.
As a result, Anglo American withdrew 27 research applications to mine inside indigenous territories.
The company’s move represents a rare victory of an indigenous community over one of the world’s largest mining companies.
Asked by the BBC if she found the prospect of taking on the mining giant daunting, Alessandra Korap Munduruku said that she had derived strength from the territory she aimed to protect.
“It [Anglo American] may be powerful to you, but to me, the powerful ones are the river, the strength of our territory and our people, the ant doing its work and the resistance of our people for more than 500 years in the fight for our land.”
She also said that social media had played a key role in giving her struggle more visibility, thereby increasing the pressure on Anglo American.
With the help of the Coalition of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) and pressure group Amazon Watch, Alessandra drafted an open letter calling for Anglo American to withdraw the permits to conduct mining research inside indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon. The permits had been issued without the indigenous communities’ informed consent needed under Brazil’s constitution.
Alessandra says that she first became active in the defence of indigenous territories in 2014 after she had witnessed how gold mining was affecting her community.
“Where I live [in the Brazilian state of Pará, along the Tapajós river], there are more and more settlements springing up. My people rely on fishing to feed themselves. But there are already places where gold mining has contaminated the water and killed off the fish,” she explains.
“When I was a child, I had immense freedom. We fished in the rivers and the lakes, we collected fruits and the seeds we use to make our handicrafts. But starting in 2014, I saw these areas turned into deserts by diggers and other big machines.”
Alessandra says that it was these changes that jolted her from her life of looking after her children and her husband and turned her into an activist.
But she says that it was not easy to take on a leadership role in her community at first.
“In our culture, it’s traditionally the men who take decisions, it’s the men who go hunting and fishing. We women are supposed to stay in our realm, looking after the husband, the children, and the home.”
Alessandra was encouraged by another Munduruku woman, Maria Leusa Kaba Munduruku, to defy these rigid gender roles.