Since Sept. 23, a group of rural producers has maintained a blockade on the road to the Paquiçamba Indigenous Land in the Volta Grande do Xingu region of Brazil’s Pará state. The blockade is supported by local politicians and aims to prevent government officials from physically demarcating the land traditionally occupied by the Juruna (Yudjá) Indigenous people. The protestors want to prevent the Indigenous Affairs Agency (Funai) from entering the area to physically mark the boundaries of the Paquiçamba. It’s a required step before the Indigenous territory can be officially approved by the president and formally registered. Paquiçamba is directly affected by the Belo Monte hydroelectric project and such federal demarcation of Indigenous land in the area was one of the conditions required for the project to receive environmental licensing. “The blockades have delayed the completion of physical demarcation work, which includes georeferencing, the placement of boundary markers on the Indigenous Land, and the installation of signage,” a Funai spokesperson told Mongabay over email. “Given this situation, Funai is seeking legal measures to guarantee the continuation of the work, access to the border areas of the Indigenous Land, and the safety and integrity of the teams responsible for the activities.” Even with support from the National Public Security Force, the spokesperson said clashes broke out between the blockaders and federal agents, interrupting their work. Ya Juruna, an Indigenous person from Paquiçamba, told Mongabay over WhatsApp messages that the protesters are trying to block her community from receiving legal rights to…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Funders of the $1.7 billion pledge to support Indigenous peoples and local communities’ land rights, announced at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, say they have exceeded the target by 35%, delivering $2.35 billion between 2021 and 2025. According to the final report of the Forest Tenure Funders Group (FTFG), in 2025 alone, donors provided about $486 million. Sources say the five-year pledge was a major accomplishment, but problems around direct access, regional inequality, funding for women and youth and aid sustainability persist. In 2025, only 7.2% went directly to Indigenous and local community organizations, the latest report found, while the vast majority still flowed through intermediaries, such as NGOs, consultancies and development banks. According to recently updated data in the report, the share of direct funding has increased over the five-year period, from 2.9% of the $351 million provided by donors in 2021, decreasing to 2.1% of the $514 million in 2022. By 2023, this number had risen to 10.6% of the $533 million provided that year, and in 2024, 7.6% of the $467 million provided went directly to these groups. “The pledge was good news, but the figure of the result doesn’t tell us how much actually reached the territories,” Myrna Cunningham Kain, of the Indigenous Miskito community of Waspam and chair of the Guiding Committee at the Pawanka Fund, told Mongabay over email. The Pawanka Fund is a global organization led by Indigenous people that channels financial and technical resources directly to Indigenous peoples and other…This article was originally published on Mongabay