In the footsteps of the fallen

Three years after the deaths of the British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian activist Bruno Pereira, the Guardian joined the Indigenous peoples continuing their dangerous, often gruelling, work to protect the rainforest

- By Tom Phillips

TATACO GRIMACES AND BRACES FOR IMPACT AS HIS CANOE hurtles towards the banks of Brazil's Jordan River into a blizzard of branches, vines and leaves. In the bow of the boat, his Indigenous comrade, Damë Matis, shields his face with his arms as he is swallowed by the vegetation, twigs gouging his muscular shoulders.

"Get down! Get down!" Tataco yelled, battling to control the vessel before its occupants are skewered by the lance-like boughs jutting out from the shore.

Ripping thick vines from his neck, the boat's 51-year-old skipper hauls the outboard motor from the murky waters, takes a deep breath, and prepares to continue the perilous voyage along a serpentine waterway so clogged with fallen trees it is virtually unnavigable.

"We'll get there," Tataco said with his trademark bonhomie, despite the countless natural obstacles blocking the way. "It's just going to take us a little while."

The group's destination is the south-eastern tip of Brazil's secondlargest Indigenous territory - the Javari valley - a colossal wilderness where the British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian activist Bruno Pereira vanished on 5 June 2022.

To mark that anniversary, the Guardian - which has launched an investigative podcast series about the men called Missing in the Amazon joined a gruelling week-long expedition with the activists Phillips was reporting on for his book when he and Pereira were ambushed and killed.

Tataco-whose full name is Cristóvão Negreiros - and Matis are key members of Evu, an Indigenous patrol group that Pereira helped found with his colleague Orlando Possuelo in the hope of protecting the estimated 6,000 Indigenous people who live in the Javari territory, alongside the world's greatest concentration of uncontacted tribes.