BELÉM, Pará — Julia Ospina Kimbaya, de-intrusion monitoring coordinator for Brazil’s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples (MPI), announced that federal authorities have detected a shift in illegal mining business networks. These operations are relocating into the Sararé Indigenous Land in Mato Grosso, in the Midwest, following efforts to expel invaders from protected territories such as the Yanomami Indigenous Land.
Called “de-intrusion” missions, these operations are a consequence of ADPF 709 (Allegation of Breach of Fundamental Precept), a lawsuit brought before Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) in 2020. The suit compelled the government, during the pandemic, to protect Indigenous peoples and remove illegal occupants from eight territories, including Yanomami, Munduruku, Kayapó and Apyterewa lands.
On Tuesday (Nov. 18), Julia spoke at a panel at Village COP, the Indigenous pavilion at COP30 in Belém, Pará. She reported that while illegal mining has declined in some areas, the underlying networks remain, merely shifting elsewhere. “There is an intrinsic relationship between the networks operating in Yanomami, Kayapó, Munduruku and Sararé,” she said.
This migration involves both organized criminal groups and businesses supplying machinery, fuel and logistics to mining operations. Julia noted that Indigenous people continue to be recruited at these illegal fronts without pay. “Mining on Indigenous lands is a cruel enterprise,” she said.
The consequences are already evident in the Sararé Indigenous Land. In 2025, it recorded Brazil’s highest number of illegal mining alerts, with 1,814 cases logged by Ibama, the environmental protection agency. A federal task force, coordinated by the MPI and launched in August, destroyed 490 camps, 113 excavators, 361 mining engines, nearly 51,000 liters of fuel, plus motorcycles, trucks and ammunition. According to Censipam—which monitors clandestine activity—estimated losses to illegal mining exceed US$33.22 million (R$177 million).
Covering 67,719 hectares, the Sararé Indigenous Land is home to 201 Nambikwara people. Officially recognized in 1985, the territory is a patchwork of forest and savannah and faces persistent threats from miners, loggers, farmers and land grabbers, according to Brazil’s Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA).
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