It is almost half past nine in the morning on Tuesday, 7 April. The federal MP Célia Xakriabá leaves her office in the Chamber of Deputies in Brasília, the capital of Brazil, accompanied by her team. She wears a headdress of white feathers that extends down her back, and her face is painted with the natural dye urucum, prepared from the seeds of the annatto tree.
She walks towards the chamber’s assembly hall, where she is to preside over the formal session honouring the 22nd Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL; Free Land Camp), the largest annual gathering of Indigenous peoples in Brazil. During the 10-minute walk, she is stopped several times by visitors, Indigenous leaders and other politicians, who offer compliments or pose for selfies.
Editor’s note
This article is the second of a three-part series examining Brazil’s climate leadership through Indigenous stewardship: from grassroots influence to representation in congress and the outcomes of the first years of country’s new Ministry of Indigenous Peoples.
Xakriabá was one of a record 178 Indigenous candidates who stood in the 2022 elections. This wave was seen as a move to counter the setbacks imposed against these communities by the incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro and his government. Just five Indigenous candidates were ultimately elected to the Chamber of Deputies.
Xakriabá and her fellow deputy Juliana Cardoso lead the so-called cocar (“feather headdress”) caucus. The group champions the Indigenous agenda, pushing pro-environmental policies such as land demarcation.
However, despite being a part of the largest Indigenous representation in the history of the country, they face a David v Goliath battle against the mighty ruralist bloc. This group of parliamentarians, linked to agribusiness, accounts for around 60% of the 513 federal deputies.
Adriana Ramos, executive secretary of the Socioenvironmental Institute, an NGO, says this bloc works against Indigenous rights. It is economically motivated to impose barriers to demarcation, she says, because it attempts to open territories up to environmentally damaging activities. Bills put forward by the ruralist bloc distance Brazil from climate targets, according to the Talanoa Institute thinktank.
Xakriabá claims the ruralists repeatedly block legislation concerning Indigenous peoples, particularly in committees reviewing land policies. “There was already a predetermined stance not to let our agenda move forward,” she tells Dialogue Earth.
These seemingly insurmountable odds have not prevented Xakriabá and her colleagues from fighting to advance Indigenous and environmental causes. But with the polls for Brazil’s general election in October currently predicting a knife-edge result, that battle feels more important than ever.
An uphill battle
On the day of the ATL, Indigenous people from across the country, decked out in headdresses and traditional attire, fill the public galleries of the chamber. Xakriabá enters the chamber to a chorus of songs accompanied by maracas.
Representing Indigenous rights in congress is lonely work. This massive presence of fellow activists reinforces Xakriabá’s commitment, according to her parliamentary secretary Beatriz Mendonça: “She really misses having other Indigenous people in the chamber.”
Since the start of her term, in January 2023, Xakriabá has proposed 83 bills, only three of which have been enacted: one aimed to protect Indigenous women from violence, another to protect pregnant women from discrimination and a third dedicated to rural education.
But she is keen not to be pigeonholed, also joining parliamentary committees on culture, human rights and education. She says this is her bid to move beyond the “stereotyped and romanticised” role to which Indigenous representatives are often reduced.
As Xakriabá heads to another meeting she is greeted enthusiastically by a deputy from the PL, the far-right party of Bolsonaro. Despite their diametrically opposed politics, this scene comes as no surprise to her parliamentary secretary and is testament to her collaborative approach. “She tries to listen to all sides and draft legislation that does not roll back rights, but that can actually be passed,” says Mendonça. “We build within the gaps.”
Joenia Wapichana was the first Indigenous woman to be elected a federal MP, in 2018. She has charted a similar course, seeking dialogue and advocacy beyond her own parliamentary group. Wapichana tells Dialogue Earth she has spoken out “on all kinds of issues”, and that “this has helped me gain access, respect and influence.”
Progress on gender rights, for example, has enabled Indigenous representatives to form alliances beyond their own caucus. In other areas, however, Wapichana says this bridge building has been harder to achieve.
Ruralists against the climate
The ruralist caucus is pushing dozens of bills with “high potential for socioenvironmental damage,” according to a survey by a national network of environmental organisations, the Climate Observatory.
In May, the caucus organised Agro Week to vote – under urgent procedure – on a series of these proposals, including restricting the use of satellite imagery for identifying illegally deforested areas. The Ministry of the Environment, along with other official bodies, stated that the bills “undermine environmental protection” by weakening deforestation enforcement and making it harder to classify certain threatened species as endangered.
The Federal Senate, Brazil’s upper house, followed through on this effort in July. In about 10 minutes, it approved a bill that weakens protections for 486,000 hectares (approximately 37%) of the Jamanxim National Park in Pará state. According to the Climate Observatory, this has paved the way for the “formalisation of agricultural invasion”.
Brazil’s Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement aim to cut emissions by between 59% and 67% by 2035, compared to 2005 levels. Increased deforestation as a result of these bills would make it harder to meet this goal, according to analysis published in May by the Talanoa Institute’s Política por Inteiro (Policy in Full) initiative.
In 2024, agriculture and land-use change accounted for more than 70% of national emissions. This was driven mainly by livestock farming and deforestation, according to an independent Brazilian platform called the Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removals Estimation System.
These emissions drive climate change, which, as Política por Inteiro says, leaves Brazil more vulnerable to extreme weather events. These in turn threaten the agricultural goods that make up almost half of national exports. Environmental and social trading rules, such as the European Union’s anti-deforestation legislation, pose further threats to the profitability of these exports.
Bolstering Indigenous peoples’ rights, including via land demarcation, is a key tool in combatting climate change. The World Resources Institute found that forests managed by Indigenous peoples in the Amazon removed 340 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere per year between 2001 and 2021. That is equivalent to the amount of greenhouse gases emitted annually by the United Kingdom through the burning of fossil fuels. Furthermore, rainfall generated by preserved Amazonian forests on Indigenous lands is crucial for agribusiness.
Indigenous representatives are also involved in debates over Brazil’s reserves of rare earth elements, which are second only to China’s in size. Rare earths, which fall under the broader term of critical minerals, are essential for the global energy transition. Their role in the manufacture of wind turbines, electric vehicle motors and electronic equipment has made them hot property.
The Energy Transition Observatory has surveyed Brazil’s critical minerals exploration applications and says they overlap or are adjacent to 278 Indigenous lands – 44% of Brazil’s Indigenous areas.
In May, Indigenous activists were excluded while the Chamber of Deputies approved the National Policy on Critical and Strategic Minerals. It is currently being debated in the senate. In mid-July, another bill on critical minerals policy was introduced, also behind closed doors.
Xakriabá is chairing a committee to discuss the potential impacts. “The energy transition must not mean further violations, conflicts and violence against Indigenous and traditional peoples,” she says.
Electoral challenges
As Xakriabá rallied her team on the day of the ATL, her political future was likely to have been forefront in her mind. To date, an Indigenous federal MP has never been re-elected. With the October elections looming, she wishes to at least end her term on a high note.
But the winds may be blowing more favourably during this year’s elections. Indigenous candidates will be entitled to a larger allocation of funds and campaign airtime than in the past. This measure was approved by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court following a formal petition made by Xakriabá in 2024. She successfully extended funding quotas already guaranteed to women and black people to also cover Indigenous people.
During the ATL in Brasília, dozens of new Indigenous candidates were announced.
Marcos Sabarú, of the collective campaign of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, says congressional representation for Indigenous peoples is vital.
“We want people to discuss and defend the rights of Indigenous peoples in the National Congress,” he tells Dialogue Earth. “We want a warrior to be in the space that we cannot easily enter ourselves.”
Ramos from the Socioenvironmental Institute explains that higher numbers of Indigenous people in congress has made it harder for non-Indigenous politicians to force specific agendas onto communities: “They can no longer use the voices of some Indigenous people who are in favour of an activity as if they represented the will of the entire movement.”
Martha Fellows, an advisor to Brazil’s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, says electoral success for the cocar caucus should be judged against the partnerships it builds to ensure its longevity and impact, not just on pure numbers. Ramos emphasises that, given Brazil’s role in the global climate debate, this admittedly limited presence remains essential in giving visibility and weight among international partners to the demands of Indigenous peoples.
Xakriabá, meanwhile, is looking ahead to the upcoming elections. Her ambition is to advance the Indigenous agenda through “a combative climate caucus that transcends the cocar caucus”.
