An Indigenous woman from the Amazon wins the Goldman Environment Prize
Alessandra Korap’s defense of her ancestral Munduruku territory recognized how she and others overturned the traditionally all-male leadership to organize, helping to halt mining.
When Alessandra Korap was born in the mid-1980s, her Indigenous village nestled in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil was a haven of seclusion. But as she grew up, the nearby city of Itaituba, with its bustling streets and commercial activity, crept closer and closer.
It wasn’t just her village feeling the encroachment of non-Indigenous outsiders. Two major federal highways paved the way for tens of thousands of settlers, illegal gold miners and loggers into the region’s vast Indigenous territories, which cover a forested area roughly the size of Belgium.
By Associated Press via BBC News