Amazon Watch works to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. In partnership with Indigenous and
environmental organizations, we campaign for human rights, corporate accountability, and the preservation of the Amazon’s ecological systems.
Since 1996, Amazon Watch and our partners have won significant victories that have protected millions of acres of bio-culturally diverse rainforest and mobilized
international support for more than 1,000 Indigenousled projects in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

Grand Circle Foundation through it’s partnership with Amazon Watch, has supported Indigenous leaders in South America.

Josefina Tunki in Ecuador,  the first female president of the Shuar People.  She lives and travels in the heart of the Cordillera del Condor from where thousands of tons of gold and copper are extracted. She is unafraid and has confronted both the state and the mining companies. As is often the case for Indigenous leaders, she has been threatened and her community militarized in 2020. Read this article on Josefina in Mongabay News entitled “If We Have to Die in Defense of the Land, We Have to Die.”

Célia Xakriabá, a teacher, poet, and activist from the Xakriabá people in the Cerrado biome of Brazil. She is one of the founders of the National Association of Ancestral Indigenous Women Warriors (ANMIGA) and a leading member of the Indigenous women’s movement in Brazil. She also helped to create the “Reforesting Minds” movement based on Indigenous ancestry and wisdom which advocates for a change in consciousness among the global public about planetary preservation.

Patricia Gualinga , of the Sarayaku Kichwa Ecuadorian Amazonian community, has worked to protect the forest and defend her people’s rights for more than 20 years, particularly as part of the Network of Women Defenders. In 2012, she helped her community win a court case that found the Ecuadorian government guilty of authorizing oil exploration and militarization of Sarayaku property without permission from the inhabitants. The ruling fined the government $1 million and set a legal precedent that Indigenous people must provide consent for governments or private corporations to enter their territory.