Free Land Camp: biggest indigenous gathering in Brazil

“Our future is not for sale” was the main claim from Indigenous activists in Brazil during Free Land Camp 2026. Brazil has over 300 different Indigenous communities and every month of April they organise the Free Land Camp, where thousands of Indigenous People meet in Brazil’s capital to protest for better climate policies, celebrate their culture and demand more political participation. In 2026, around 6 thousand Indigenous People attended the Camp from April 6th until the 10th  and the ECOnGOOD team interviewed some leaders to hear what the Common Good means to them and how they currently see global context as a threat or an opportunity for their fight.

Alice Pataxó believes that Brazil is becoming an environmental example worldwide and that this is a victory of Indigenous Peoples. “We understand what we want and what we don’t want in our territories so when we politically educate youth and society as whole we collectively resist to the degradation of our biomes”, shares Alice, who has been attending the Free Land Camp since she was a kid. Her community in the Northeast part of Brazil was recently granted its land rights, but there are a few more legal processes before her community can fully celebrate this achievement.

Economy was a frequent topic during the plenaries at the Camp and during the two main marches that happened towards the Congress, several posters were seen demanding the end of mining activities in Indigenous territories and also how this quest for rare minerals is threatening their way of living. “GDP as it is presented does not favor Indigenous Communities because we are trying to protect the small land that remains preserved. GDP is against our culture in a way that we feel unsafe inside our own communities wondering what is going to be tomorrow’s impact”, states Sally Nhandewa from the Amazon region. Development is associated with companies and policies that ignore their culture and their identities.

For the past 7 years Itamar Krenak, Indigenous leader from the Southeast part of Brazil, has attended Free Land Camp with the purpose to mitigate the impact of climate change to future generations. For him, the right to perform their rituals, to bath and survive from clean rivers, and for a protected forest is a fundamental aspect that is being taught to even younger kids so they can also understand earlier what is at risk. “Nature is seen externally as a product so we are always trying to associate it as a common good, like the air. We rely on nature to be alive so it is up to us to protect it so we can protect our future”, explains Itamar Krenak.

For 22 years Free Land Camp has gathered thousands of Indigenous Peoples in April, a moth also remembered internationally for Earth Day (April 22nd) and although Indigenous Peoples are only 6% of the population according the United Nations, they preserve 80% of biodiversity. This stewardess is a direct reflection of the ancestral knowledge of protecting the Earth as something crucial to preserving their territories. “We are the answer” was also one of the main claims made during Free Land Camp. In previous years, the number of participants have reached over 30 thousand, specially in years when extreme right Party in Brazil was in power.