On what's working

Indigenous organizations are reclaiming the debate on isolated peoples.

One of Angela's most significant contributions during her time as COIAB's executive coordinator was the creation of a formal management body within COIAB dedicated to the debate and defense of isolated Indigenous peoples' rights. Until then, no Indigenous organization in Brazil had a structured, formal space for this debate; it had always been understood as the domain of the state and FUNAI. Creating that space was an act of institutional reclamation: asserting that Indigenous organizations not only have a right to lead this debate but have always held knowledge and authority that the state never did.

Across the Amazon and beyond, dedicated spaces through which Indigenous organizations can systematize and lead this work have taken many forms: a monitoring collective in Acre conducting expeditions and raising awareness among neighboring communities; the Guardians of the Forest in Maranhão carrying out surveillance and monitoring actions; a board of directors at AIDESEP in Peru with deep governmental advocacy experience; and an executive secretariat at OPIAC in Colombia facilitating a formal dialogue table with the state. What connects them is not their structure but Indigenous institutional ownership of this agenda.

On terminology

The language we use to describe isolated peoples shapes the politics of who gets to protect them.

"For us Indigenous people, for my people, we don't use this term ‘isolated,’” Angela notes. “We have various ways of talking about these groups that are in the process of resistance, resilience, and remaining true to how they've always lived."

This is not just a semantic point. The terminology shapes the politics: who gets to name these groups, who gets to define their condition, and who is understood to have authority over their protection. Indigenous peoples have always had their own frameworks for understanding and relating to these communities, frameworks that have been systematically sidelined in favor of state-controlled narratives. Indigenous organizations are now reclaiming that space, and with it, the authority to define the terms on which this work is done.

On the intersection of climate and PIACI rights

Protecting PIACI communities and addressing the climate crisis are the same agenda, and territory connects them.

For Angela, it is not a question of linking two separate issues. The protection of PIACI communities and the response to the climate crisis are inseparable, because PIACI are the primary stewards of the knowledge systems and territorial practices that preserve the environment.

The most effective advocacy narrative, Angela argues, is territory. Indigenous territories curb deforestation, maintain potable water, and conserve biodiversity. "There is no other way but to guarantee Indigenous territories as a fundamental part of global climate action, because these territories are what regulate various aspects of the climate crisis,” she says. This narrative also unites the vastly different legal and political contexts of the Amazon basin's nine countries.

On barriers

Without territory, no other protection measure holds.

Angela asserts that territory is not one element of the protection of PIACI communities; it is the precondition for all of it. "Without territory, indigenous peoples are not safe, they are in a vulnerable situation, and we cannot guarantee access to other forms of existence,” she says. The health of PIACI is managed through the quality of life that a secure territory provides, not through the delivery of external services.

The diversity of political contexts across the Amazon basin makes this challenge acute. Suriname does not recognize the existence of Indigenous peoples. French Guiana does not recognize them as Indigenous. Others use terminology Angela describes as deeply inadequate. What cuts across all of these differences is the centrality of territorial rights as both a practical and political narrative that can unite supporters, funders, and policymakers across nine very different countries.

Mining is the next frontier, and its damage may be even deeper than deforestation.

In Indonesia, extraction from Indigenous territories is already at a scale she describes as shocking: communities displaced from their lands in a permanent and ongoing violation. "They are literally thrown off the land for mining exploration,” she says. What makes mining particularly alarming is its irreversibility. A deforested area can, in principle, recover. Excavated and degraded soil cannot. Mining and extractive policy is a commonality across South America and Indonesia, and its irreversibility may make it the most serious long-term threat of all, one the field is not yet adequately confronting.

On consolidating PIACI as a global category

International frameworks are still too superficial to be binding.

Angela’s assessment of international frameworks is that significant progress has been made, but more in-depth study and thorough listening processes with Indigenous peoples and organizations is needed, including a willingness to reformulate and rewrite existing international treaties from the ground up.

A recent convening in Indonesia illuminated how far there is still to go. "Initial contact" is not an agreed upon concept in Indonesian policy; it is still far from being recognized as encompassing not just temporal contact but a whole complex of existence, assimilation, living conditions, and relationships with the surrounding environment.