Features

Laurindo Lazzaretti, left, Vanessa Xavier da Silva and Antonio Nascimento de Alveida of the Pastoral Land Commission.

Small farmers caught in battle to save land

BOA VISTA, Brazil -- Driving up the BR401, it’s hard not to be startled by the sight of a giant soy farm stretching out on both sides of the highway — the empty land is parched and denuded in mid-summer, after the crop is in.

Fr. Ron MacDonell goes over teaching strategies at the Wainhamary Indigenous language school with Silvanira Matos and Jeanne Menendes.

Indigenous survival starts with language

MANAUS, Brazil -- As a caçique or chief of the Apurinã people, Xytara Apurinã has a pretty clear-eyed view of her people’s position in the Amazonian metropolis of Manaus.

Shanenawa people dance during a festival to celebrate nature and ask for an end to the burning of the Amazon, in the indigenous village of Morada Nova near Feijo, Brazil.

Saving the Amazon: A fight for life

MANAUS, Brazil -- For Enock Barroso Tenente, what’s at stake at the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Amazon is life as he knows it.

Photos from the Amazon

Brazil’s Indian affairs agency, FUNAI, carries out a vaccination campaign in Atalaia do Norte in Brazil’s Amazon region, as part of its mandate to protect isolated groups.

Violence, disease, death are constant companions

BOA VISTA, Brazil -- Consolata Br. Carlo Zacquini was ministering among the Yanomami people in a remote area of Brazil, near the border with Venezuela, when gold miners invaded their lands.

A depiction of a woman at work making a panela illustrates the tradition of Makushi pottery.

Makushi tribe seeing their culture being pushed aside for mining interests

RAPOSA, Brazil -- Summer evenings in the community of Raposa are golden and gentle. Half-wild horses wander in from the fields to feed on mangos that have fallen from huge trees in front of St. Isidore’s Catholic Church. A few young Makushi grab rakes to push the mangos into piles out of harm’s way. The setting sun seems so close, a giant ball of fire slipping…

Bishop Dom Mário Antonio da Silva sees the Synod of Bishops as a chance to further evangelization.

Brazilian bishop sees a land of promise in the Amazon

Bishop Dom Mário Antonio da Silva knows the Amazon is in trouble, but he doesn’t want its crises — political, ecological and cultural — to define the synod he will attend in Rome Oct. 6-27.

Saving the Amazon: A Special Feature

MANAUS, Brazil -- On the third finger of his left hand Oblate Fr. Robert Valicourt wears a black, wooden ring made from the pit of a tacumã palm tree, a plant native to the Amazon.

Phil Fontaine, former Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, front row left, takes part in a Star of the North reconciliation event.

Healing is key at Star of the North

By Glen Argan, Catholic Register Special

ST. ALBERT, Alta. -- Star of the North Retreat Centre is making healing and reconciliation between Indigenous people and Canadian settlers a major element of its retreat ministry.