Indigenous Land Rights and Environmental Challenges: A Comparative Analysis of Canada and Brazil

Abstract

The Amazon Forest fires of 2019 raised climate change awareness within the context of indigenous efforts to claim their indigenous land rights and environmental rights to a different level. In November 2019, Paulo Paulino Guajajara, an indigenous Brazilian nicknamed "forest guardian," was shot dead by a group of illegal loggers in the Amazon Forest. Paulina was a member of a group of 120 indigenous Guajajara people who actively protect the Araribois reserve of the Amazon against illegal logging. Guajajara indigenous people also act as protectors of the Awa Guaja people. The Awa Guaja people are uncontacted indigenous people classified as one of the most threatened indigenous people on the planet. Brazil is facing unprecedented polarization in its politics due to the contrasting public opinions on the environmental rights of its indigenous people and the future of the Amazon. Canadian national railway networks have been closed due to Canada-wide protests against a multi-billion-dollar pipeline that is planned to pass through the pristine unceded lands of the indigenous Wet’suwet’en people of British Columbia. Environmental justice concerning development that threatens the land rights of indigenous people also threatens their natural environment. Such rights are protected under various national and international legal instruments. Perhaps it is the competing socio-political and socio-economic interests that juxtapose the question of indigenous land rights and environmental justice. Such conflicting interests also paint the indigenous people's land rights as an extension of threats to national sovereignty. This paper examines the land rights of the indigenous people, primarily using the cases of the Canadian indigenous nations and the Brazilian indigenous people as the contextual lens.