00:00An indigenous community has been pushing for the Brazilian government to issue more land titles.
00:06They see this as a key to defending their rights and protecting the ecosystems where they live.
00:12The community, the Columbus, descendant of former slaves, have been pushing the Brazilian government to give them titles to land that they have lived on for generations.
00:21They see the forest as a key to their survival and livelihood as they also seek to protect the ecosystem.
00:28We have a way of surviving in which nature itself provides most of what we need to survive.
00:34So we understand that keeping the forest standing and keeping the forest alive is also keeping us alive.
00:40The community has been depending on the acai tree for its berries.
00:44Acai is an important source of food and by preserving traditional harvesting and production techniques, they protect the lush forest that surrounds their community.
00:52For us, it is much more advantageous to keep the acai trees standing so that you can harvest the acai berry for your family's consumption than to cut down the trees to sell the palm hearts.
01:03About 500 meters, a company called Revita has been trying to set up a landfill that, according to some of the people, threatens to contaminate the area's aquifers on which they depend on for fishing and daily life.
01:17Our fear is that both the spring in the area of the plant landfill and the water in our wells will be polluted by the leach that's produced by the waste.
01:28We are doing what the world should be doing, which is preserving the forest, and we are paying a very high price that many countries don't want to pay, because they should pay us to keep the forest standing.
01:42There is almost 2,500 kilometers in the Brazilian Amazon, but only 258 have been officially marked by government institutes, according to a recent study by the National Coordination of Rural Black Communities and Association of Columbus Communities.
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