'The answer is us': Indigenous groups protest

HERE in Brazil, marchers revelled in their right to be heard, their voices rising in a city chosen precisely to focus the world’s attention on the Amazon and its defenders.

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Indigenous groups led much of the procession, their painted faces and feathered headdresses a vivid reminder of who stands on the frontlines of climate breakdown. Their banners spoke of mining threats, land invasions and agribusiness encroachment. “The answer is us,” read their signs, a tellingmessage to negotiators working behind fences at the conference venue.

The march came at the halfway point of COP30, a summit already marked by tension. Indigenous activists had twice disrupted proceedings earlier in the week, demanding their voices carry weight in decisions that will shape their survival. Saturday’s peaceful procession channelled that urgency into spectacle, trans-

forming anger into art and desperation into dance.