The Media’s Representation of the Amazon Fires is Elitist
What about the effects on Indigenous populations?
By Neha Mehta
The Progressive Teen Contributor
In this new age of social media, news spreads like rapid fire. One like, one retweet, one repost, and soon, a story becomes global news. Similarly, the Amazon is burning: rapid-fire, spreading over sacred, indigenous land. The media is picking up this story with staggering headlines such as, “THE LUNGS OF THE EARTH ARE IN FLAMES” or “EARTH’S LUNGS ARE BURNING”. The Amazon ablaze directly affects those in the Amazon Rainforest: the Indigenous peoples of Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela.
Characterizing the Amazon as the Earth’s Lungs is not only a gross misconception but also a dismissive insult to the Indigenous peoples who call the Amazon home. People indigenous to the Amazon have been colonized, isolated, and manipulated by the Brazilian government and while their sacred land is in raging flames, the world is making it a selfish issue. For something to be important, it need not affect everyone — by claiming this, people are inherently diminishing the worth of native lives: something that has been done over and over by colonizers.
Firstly, the statistic that has been thrown around in the news that the Amazon produces 20% of the Earth’s oxygen. On the contrary, Amazon forest expert Dan Nepstad stated, “there’s no science behind that. The Amazon produces a lot of oxygen but it uses the same amount of oxygen through respiration so it’s a wash”. This is just one example of the media manipulating fake news, and this statistic has been used to evoke a sense of self-involvement in the Amazon fires. This unintentionally belittles the impact that the fires have on Indigenous peoples, whose land is being destroyed by the effects of colonialism and capitalism.
An example of this was French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron’s plea at the G7 conference in August. Macron described the fires an “international crisis”. He is correct in that assertion; however, the reasoning behind it is flawed. Macron constructs the fires as a threat to the world, but in reality, it is an immediate threat to the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon. This in and of itself should be a justification for an international crisis. What people fail to realize is that something does not have to directly affect them for them to do something about it. The leaders of G7 still had remarkably good intentions: setting aside 22 million USD and France’s promise to send military aid is invaluable to the Amazon, though Bolsonaro refused. This shows an overall sentiment of indifference towards the lives of the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon and carries on from the colonization of Brazil to now.
The consequences of an Amazon ablaze are dire and grave, and the first people to be impacted are Indigenous peoples who reside in the selva of the Amazon. Among them are tribes that have not yet made contact with modern civilization. An example of an uncontacted tribe is the Awá, a group that resides deep within the eastern Amazon. Loggers are burning swaths of rainforest in the heart of their land. A unique characteristic of the Awá tribe is that a number of their peoples are considered uncontacted and haven’t been introduced to modern civilization. This makes them more vulnerable to this government-sponsored invasion. Under Bolsonaro, any Indigenous land with protected status is no longer respected as regulations are unenforced and rolled back. This is an example of a group with less than 500 members at risk of complete extinction or forced contact with civilization, both grossly atrocious scenarios. These fires are not only killing Indigenous tribes but also forcing them into contact with modern civilization, something that many people do not survive.
Since Europeans first landed in the Americas, colonizers have done nothing but disrespect, devalue, and destroy Indigenous land and people. With the Amazon on fire, it imperative to realize and understand that this is yet another effect of the apathy and indifference towards Indigenous peoples. The way the media has characterized this crisis is in a self-serving way, where the privileged elite feel that their world is being harmed. While this may or may not be true, Indigenous peoples are dying at this very moment, and this should be enough reason to spark international outrage. Indigenous lives matter. They matter as much as white lives. They must be shown that same respect and the outrage felt should be a result of the atrocities that Indigenous peoples have faced since the colonization of the Americas.
