Indigenous peoples’ demands got more than lip service at COP30 climate summit

The long ordeal of the Kaxuyana, an Amazonian tribe airlifted from its land during Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1960s, reached a happy conclusion at the COP30 summit in the city of Belém.

On the sidelines of the United Nations climate talks, which ended over the weekend, Brazil officially recognized the Kaxuyana’s original territory, a vast stretch of old-growth rainforest roughly the size of El Salvador a few hundred miles west of Belém, in the state of Pará.

It wasn’t the only victory at COP30 for Indigenous people, who had unprecedented visibility at the conference, where they staged multiple protests and adorned attendees with body painting, an art of the Kayapó people. Some 3,000 Indigenous people gathered in Belém for the event, and there were more than 400 representatives