Indigenous Voices at Rio+20

ORIGINAL: amazonwatch.org

Meet Nhakre Xikrin and her son, members of the Kranh Xikrin Kayapó community high on the banks of the Xingu River in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon.

Last time I saw Nhakre, she told me she had heard about machines moving in and ripping through the forest, and how she had seen strange barges charging up the mighty river carrying supplies to the site of the looming Belo Monte dam. The boats had already tainted the water her family depends on; fish were becoming harder to find as the river's flow was diverted.

While world leaders gear up to talk about sustainable development at the Rio+20 Earth Summit, the Brazilian government's costs-be-damned attitude about the Belo Monte dam illustrates a frightening hypocrisy between a truly "green" economy and the human and environmental costs of schemes that destroy the Amazon and its peoples.

I'm currently in the Xingu region and will soon be headed for Rio with a host of indigenous leaders ready to speak out about the dam that threatens to destroy them.