BELEM, Brazil - After journeying for weeks from a glacier in the Andes to Brazil’s tropical coast, a boat carrying dozens of Indigenous leaders landed in Belem a day ahead of the start of the United Nations' COP30 climate summit.

Their main goal was demanding a greater say in how their territories are managed, as climate change escalates and industries including mining, oil drilling and logging press deeper into the forests.

"We want to achieve more than just guaranteeing money or financing,” said Lucia Ixchiu, an Indigenous K'iche from Guatemala who was among the 60 or so passengers. “We want to reach a consensus where Indigenous territories are no longer sacrificed.”

"It's a dream and a goal, but we know there are many interests at play,” she told Reuters from aboard the boat as it was midway through the Brazilian part of the Amazon.

A report last week by Earth Insight and the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities said that, in the one-third of the Amazon rainforest occupied by Indigenous or local communities, about 17% of those spaces now faced encroachment by oil and gas drilling, mining and logging concessions.

Meanwhile, more than 1,690 environmental defenders were killed or disappeared between 2012 and 2024 in the nations that share the Amazon rainforest, Congo, Indonesia, Mexico and Central America, according to Global Witness.

"Not everything has to revolve around money, Mother Earth isn't a business,” Ixchiu said. "There are other ways of relating with biodiversity and life on the planet that Indigenous populations have been practicing for over 12,000 years."

CELEBRATORY ARRIVAL

When Ixchiu joined the expedition, she was bundled in jackets and woolen chullo against the chill of Andean glacier ice. That look transformed with the warming weather to the airy purple-and-black short-sleeved blouse she wore upon landing to a scene of celebration on the banks of Belem. 

The group delivered an offering: candles, chants, sweets, see...