Informant38

among this wreckage:

Two children from the Guarani Kaiowá tribe have died of starvation, and several dozen are being treated in hospital for severe malnutrition.
Within days of the children's deaths, Valdinez Souza, a Guarani health worker and father of two children, hanged himself. He left a note by his body saying he had killed himself because children in his community are suffering from acute hunger.
Despite this alarming situation, the Mato Grosso do Sul state government has cut food aid to the Guarani.
Survival

The Malaysian government claims that Sarawak is being logged sustainably - but in fact its forests are being destroyed at one of the fastest rates in the world. As the forests are logged, the rivers are silted up, killing the fish. The game is being scared deeper into the few remaining forests.
Since 1987, the Penan have been fighting back by blockading the logging roads - and suffering acute food shortages as a result.

Survival
-

The Jarawa tribe of the Andaman Islands has long captured imaginations around the world, especially among other tribal peoples like my people, the Innu of north-eastern Canada. Since the final years of the twentieth century, when they stopped resisting with lethal arrows any contact with outsiders, the world has watched the Jarawa with fascination.

We don't know why they stopped shooting at the settlers and poachers encroaching on their land. Perhaps they felt overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of settlers from the Indian mainland now living on their islands. But for indigenous peoples who have already lost their land, the drama unfolding before our eyes is far too familiar.

We are holding our breaths as we watch the future of this strong, proud people balancing on a knife-edge.

George Rich/Times of India 14.Feb.07
-

The Mato Grosso do Sul [Brazil] state government has cut food aid to Guarani Indians. This is a severe blow to thousands of Guarani families who rely almost entirely on monthly food rations to survive.

In 2004, at least 21 Guarani children died from severe malnutrition. It was the scandal of these deaths that pushed the government into supplying needy families with food parcels.

This crisis highlights the Brazilian federal government's failure to tackle the underlying cause of hunger among the Guarani - the lack of land. Over the last seven decades, thousands of Guarani have been evicted from their lands by soya planters and cattle ranchers; barely 1% of the Guarani's original forest remains.

Today the Guarani are crammed together onto tiny reservations; as a result, suicide, alcoholism and internal violence are rife.

Survival