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Brazil's divisive President Jair Bolsonaro has taken another step in his bold plans to develop the Amazon rainforest.

A bill he is sponsoring, , would allow transportation infrastructure to be built on indigenous territory. Such lands cover 386,000 square miles of the – one-fifth of the jungle. Here, Native people are constitutionally entitled to exercise sovereignty over resource use.

The right-wing Bolsonaro administration says "opening" the Amazon will . But say that the move will promote mining, logging and other damaging activities.

As evidence, they cite Bolsonaro's appointment of a Brazilian general who last year served on the board of the to lead Brazil's federal agency for indigenous peoples.

Our takes us to areas affected by infrastructure development. There, we have witnessed the disheartening aftermath for Native people and met the .

Riches now in reach

The Amazon possesses a wealth of minerals including . But the region is so remote, with its southern edge lying 1,000 miles from Rio de Janeiro, that resource extraction was .

This began to change in the 1970s, when Brazil's military government through the Amazon. It paid little heed to the desires or safety of the living there.

Terrible abuses occurred, including the military's systematic killing from 1967 to 1977 of up to 2,000 to make way for .

The territorial aggressions culminated in the 1980s, when looking for gold. An estimated from disease and violence over a seven-year period. Today there are about 900,000 indigenous people in Brazil.

After democracy was restored in 1985, Brazil got a that codified indigenous rights, including the right to aboriginal homelands. Because is indigenous territory, indigenous sovereignty became .

The connection between indigenous communities and conservation is global. Indigenous people make up . This can make indigenous people extremely effective environmental defenders, because in fighting for their ancestral territory they .

A world in peril

At the turn of the millennium, Brazil was generally .

About a decade into the 21st century, however, environmental policy to allow in the Amazon. By 2016, some 34,000 square miles of the Brazilian Amazon had .

Indigenous sovereignty, however, was never called into question—until now. Since taking office in January 2019, Bolsonaro has also , leading Amazon deforestation to spike.

Brazil's president has long seen protected indigenous land as a . In 2015 then-Congressman Bolsonaro that "gold, tin and magnesium are in these lands, especially in the Amazon, the richest area in the world."

"I'm not getting into this nonsense of defending land for the Indians," he added.

Bolsonaro defends his current efforts to build in the Amazon as a means of assimilating native Brazilians so they will no longer need their territorial homelands.

"The Indian has changed, he is evolving and becoming more and more a human being like us. What we want is to integrate him into society," he .

The statement accusing the president of racism, a crime in Brazil.

Resistance as conservation

Accelerating deforestation under Bolsonaro has sparked violence in the Amazon.

Seven indigenous land activists , according to the Brazilian not-for-profit Pastoral Land Commission, the most in over a decade. Indigenous environmental leaders in the and Amazon have also been murdered.

Such killings mostly go unsolved. But Brazil's Indigenous Peoples Association says one indigenous activist killed in 2019, Paulo Guajajara, was gunned down by illegal loggers in November for as part of an armed group called Guardians of the Forest.

"We are protecting our land and the life on it," Guajajara told shortly before his murder. "We have to preserve this life for our children's future."

Indigenous Brazilians have also defended their land in court.

In 2012, the Munduruku sued to in the Tapajós River Valley—projects that would have ended life as they know it. Federal prosecutors agreed, filing in support of the Munduruku and calling for the suspension of the largest dam's environmental license.

Under legal pressure, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources in their curtailed the entire infrastructure plan, conserving .

Amazon's last hope

Not every indigenous Brazilian is a born environmentalist. Many mix traditional livelihoods like hunting, fishing and gathering with .

Like other farmers who clear forest to plant more crops, indigenous farmers stand to benefit from Bolsonaro's environmental deregulation. The president recently announced his administration would offer .

In Roraima state, the live on land rich with gold, diamonds, copper and a slew of lesser-known metals that . Royalty payments to Native peoples who open their land to miners could be substantial.

So far, however, indigenous interference. They may be the Brazilian Amazon's last hope.

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