Lands and Lives

All around the world, Indigenous peoples are fighting back against the theft of their lands and resources - theft that is often accompanied by violent attacks. Where Indigenous rights are respected and their territories protected, they thrive: their lands provide food, housing, medicines, clothing as well as being central to their identity as individuals and peoples.

But right now, ranchers, loggers, miners, agribusiness and drug traffickers are violating their human rights, often killing their leaders, and stealing their lands and resources for profit. Land theft is a crime under international law, and for Indigenous and tribal peoples, it brings destitution, disease and death.

Survival works in partnership with Indigenous peoples who are resisting this theft and violence. We investigate, expose and confront atrocities committed by governments and big business, and bring international pressure to bear in order to get results.

To find out more about Indigenous peoples and the struggles they’re facing, sign up to our mailing list for occasional updates.

Yanomami

The Yanomami are the largest relatively isolated tribe in South America. They live in the rainforests and mountains of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela, and some are uncontacted. Survival has been campaigning with the Yanomami for decades. Now, the Yanomami are being killed as their territory is invaded by thousands of illegal gold miners. President Lula has declared it “a genocide.”

Act now to support the Yanomami.

Guarani

Brazil's Guarani suffer at the hands of violent ranchers. For the Guarani, land is the origin of all life. But violent invasions by ranchers have devastated their territory and nearly all of their land has been stolen.

Guarani children starve and their leaders have been assassinated. Hundreds of Guarani men, women and children have committed suicide.

Help us stop this! Please demand that the Brazilian government map out Guarani land immediately.

Act now

Nukak

The hunter-gatherer Nukak in Colombia have been driven out of their rainforest home, and desperately want to return.

Their lands are being violently occupied by various armed groups; by outsiders using the Nukak’s forest to grow coca for the cocaine trade; and by cattle ranchers who have deforested large areas. As if that were not enough, much of their territory is littered with anti-personnel mines.

They want to return to their territory so they can thrive once more as self-sufficient people.

Please take action for the Nukak now.

Send an urgent email

Adivasis Against Coal

A massive coal rush in India will destroy the lands and livelihoods of tens of thousands of tribal people unless it’s stopped. They’re mounting a courageous and perilous resistance, and urgently need our support.

India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, had made it his personal mission to massively expand coal mining in the country – particularly on tribal land. If it goes ahead, the plan will destroy the forests that Adivasis – India’s tribal peoples – have lived in and managed since time immemorial. They will be forced into destitution as their livelihoods are destroyed, and dispossessed of their sacred, ancestral land. And the impact on efforts to combat the climate crisis will be devastating.

Act now

Factory Schools

The identification of mass graves of Indigenous children in Canada and the launch of investigations into similar burial sites in the US has exposed the devastating impacts of schools that aimed to strip children of their Indigenous identity, indoctrinate them to conform to the dominant society and thereby ease the theft of their peoples’ lands. These schools left a devastating legacy.

Today, around two million tribal children are attending Factory Schools – which have similar aims: erasing Indigenous ways of life and enabling the take over of lands and resources, at terrible cost to children, families and Indigenous peoples.

Act now