Just one day before the UN COP30 climate meeting, a flotilla carrying dozens of Indigenous leaders reached Belém on Sunday after traveling for weeks from the Andes glaciers to the warm coast of Brazil. Their mission reflects a growing movement in which indigenous leaders demand greater control over Amazon lands as climate change intensifies and industries such as mining, oil drilling, and logging push deeper into the rainforest.

One of the sixty participants, Lucia Ixchiu, an Indigenous K’iche from Guatemala, stated, “We want to achieve more than just guaranteeing money or financing. We want to come to an agreement that stops sacrificing Indigenous territories.” As environmental pressures intensify in one of the world’s most biodiverse and vulnerable places, the group’s month-long expedition highlighted the critical need for Indigenous-led solutions.

Protecting Sacred Lands and Waterways

The goal of the journey, which began at the headwaters of rivers that feed the Amazon, was to raise awareness of the dangers posed by extractive industries and climate change to Himalayan glaciers. Nearly half of the water in the Amazon River comes from the Andes, which are home to more than 99 percent of the world’s tropical glaciers. These glaciers have already lost between thirty and fifty percent of their ice since the 1980s, according to the 2025 UN World Water Development Report.

To highlight the interdependence of the Amazon’s ecosystems, the participants made symbolic stops along the way.

• In Coca, Ecuador, they held a “funeral for fossil fuels,” denouncing the environmental destruction caused by oil extraction.
• In Manaus, Brazil, they hosted community workshops and screened short films showcasing Indigenous resilience.
• Despite fluctuating river conditions, they completed their 30-day journey aboard a three-storey wooden boat named Yaku Mama, or “Water Mother.”

The trip itself was an act of resistance for the participants, a declaration that indigenous leaders demand greater control over the Amazon to preserve both the planet’s climate balance and their ancestral regions.

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A Call for Justice and Recognition

Ixchiu emphasized that the fight is not just about money: “Mother Earth isn’t a business—not everything has to revolve around money.” Indigenous people have been interacting with biodiversity and life on Earth in different ways for more than 12,000 years. Her message brought together Indigenous voices from all around Latin America at each stop along the way.

Recent reports underscore why indigenous leaders demand greater control over Amazon governance. According to a 2025 assessment by Earth Insight and the Global Alliance of Territorial people, oil, gas, mining, and logging concessions are now putting pressure on roughly 17% of the one-third of the Amazon rainforest that Indigenous or local people manage. In the meantime, between 2012 and 2024, Global Witness recorded over 2,253 environmental defender murders or disappearances in the Amazon, Congo, Indonesia, Mexico, and Central America.

The spirit of Indigenous solidarity is unwavering in the face of these dangers. “This is the COP of the Amazon because we are here, demanding and taking the places that we deserve,” Ixchiu said, expressing hope for the increasing participation of the younger generation. The movement’s core is encapsulated in her words: “Indigenous leaders demand greater control over Amazon as a moral imperative for humanity’s collective survival, not just as a policy shift.”

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