But. These men belong to the more group who tribe. Theyve been visiting a local village. Chief fathers and the others are now returning by motorboat to their village. Is the chiefs paradise on the river top officials. The one hundred twenty people in the chiefs tribe live here near the river. There are twenty families in all. Well healed up i just but i know you have a lot of Little People the. This river means life. The river of water is the life that runs through our veins we will be nothing without this river ok we live with this river you know me live from it is sacred to us. That applies not only to this trivia trail but to the whole river but not. The most maintain contacts with the outside world but the nearest village is six hours away by boat. The rio de baggio says nearly two thousand kilometers long. The name under roku mains red ends it implies that when they have to make an attack in force. But theyve lived peacefully in this region for centuries for their distinctive Language Culture and traditions. The wonder of who are not farmers they gather coconuts many outgroups and other kinds of fruit they also fish and hunt. They try to live in harmony with nature. For example they dont own birds in fact they treat them with great respect. Act if they uki thing up there during the dry season when theres a beach here. Now the water is higher so the birds feel safe on this island with possum they can become must be sheep they breed yeah i. Think it is up of the when they find an isolated spot like this one they build their nests with. The sheep so these places are at fault and both for bugs and for us its the name of the memphis fossil. This morning some of the hunters shot and wounded tapirs. He managed to get to the water before he died. Last month i love you and. According to him one to recoup custom the meat from this latest kill will be shared among all members of the tribe when. You. Move but there is a deliberate existence is threatened by modern development. The government plans to build a huge hydroelectric dam on this part of the river there have been some protests but the authorities are moving ahead with the project if the dam is built the tribes hunting and fishing grounds will be wiped out. Right here at. Band q when weve been very sad since we first heard about the dam project. Were very concerned about it. Because we know that the dam will destroy our sacred river. He was like god you know stem. God created this river for us but. We must protect and preserve our quality of life and he feels. None you know if they build them down it will kill a sacred river. Or this town will open the door to a lot of other projects and that it will create even more trouble you see. As me not the us the build the dam. And then the Mining Companies will become a movie then the railroad which is on. The Money Companies will dig for site and gold right here where we live. And it will be nothing less than im in a beige by white people i see what it was but on. The moon to recoup are worried about projects like this one five hundred kilometers away the barrow mounted dam on the rio janeiro. For the engineers this is a once in a lifetime project but for the local residents its a disaster. You could tell most of the size of the project. In parts we have east of burnie or all the. Greenhouse generating gases and also in brazil we have a big hydro electric with a shell and then the government decided to build some dams around the country and here it was already in fact that the area by when they build the trunk the. Road we have a lot of bass to lose its reporting u. K. Local patients even though its a big huge construction there for that there was too much as mall than all their power plants are the same the same power. A consortium called north to energy is building the dam the total cost is estimated at eighteen billion dollars the federal government will pay half of that. The first of eighteen turbines started up in may two thousand and sixteen all the turbines are expected to be up and running in two years. Once the bellemont a dam is completed he will be the fourth largest hydroelectric complex in the world with a total capacity of more than eleven gigawatts. Weve built of them here and we will give you part of the flow of the sheen who are even proves an artificial reserve board that was built in this area and an artificial channel off twenty kilometers there connects the main coos of the xingu reaver so these are the official reserve and these are roy to the main Power Generation plant that is located here. Is not at the structure now the environment is a change in the vironment and we have. To have this project in place we have to accommodate this population in the. Aspects of their lives we call the dharma zone but we have. Like in the Indian Village we have a parabolic dish is they have satellite t. V. They have. Both suite n. G. And its already the progress the scamming when they build the amazon the transam us on the highway thirty years ago the progress came together and. There is no way to stop these progress or this changing mood because we have satellites we have satellite phones indians use whats up and then. Some people say that we are speeding up the process but easing course we do these big projects so you can have some speed. Up of these progress of this process. The Consortium Says that the dam will provide electricity for sixty million people. But critics plane the construction will cause social and environmental disruption nearly forty thousand people will have to be resettled opponents of the project say that electricity generated by the dam will benefit the regional Mining Industry not local residents. The federal government has pushed ahead with the dam despite efforts by prosecutors to delay it. I had to does it and the situation is out of control when construction began in twenty ten the consortium promised to abate the law and protect forested areas. They were supposed to preserve tens of thousands of hectares of tribal lands but as construction continues the lives of the local residents have been severely disrupted by the influx of all those workers. That dozens of those rigs the tribal lands were not protected and theyre cutting down more trees in this area than in any other part of the amazon basin directly around the belo monte construction site is still there and if there was a dangerous rise doesnt bother them and so on here and a lot of malmo. And. This is the city of i to mira located about forty kilometers west of the down. Despite that distance construction has had a major impact here. Antone a mellow disembody is one of the leaders of the local anti dam movement. Shes seen how much the city has declined over the last three decades. Entire districts have been flooded and the sewage system is backing out. Of the better they havent seen the effects of the construction and bellow monta. Are devastating and irreversible you have a fever weve had floods. People are resettled into areas that have no infrastructure or Running Water but i would just just say theres been an increase in Violent Crime and thats a real cause for concern. But if you visit those personas. And tonja says that no one warned them before the water started rising theres never been a dialogue between the Construction Consortium and the local residents no one ever explained what impact this project might have on the region. But the best did the. People have been up rooted and their lives have been disrupted the park committed by now many are just getting by. Electricity costs more and other prices have risen to you know what life has become more expensive and our quality of life has become worse. But the main problem is that a lot of people have lost their jobs weve lost our identity entire families have been separated from each other from their traditional way of life from their home last day of school every week. When the reservoir behind the dam was being filled seven thousand residents about a meter had to leave their homes the Construction Consortium built new homes for them far outside the city limits they had no sewer system Running Water bus service or medical facilities and. I dont want to ever play by side the number of my guys and the. Subelements of people are always talking about progress and improvements when the local residents found out that this was just propaganda. And thats when they started calling this project the monster. Jam has done nothing to make peoples lives better. Just the opposite its made things worse by the. Media his young. You used to be able to make plans but not anymore. No one knows what the future is going to look like. By san. Antonio claims that the consortium has engaged in corruption and theres no legitimacy. About it so the dam have managed to delay the project by filing lawsuits. Local prosecutors have stepped in as well but some people who spoke out has been threatened even the prosecutors. Say. This project is a violation of basic legal principles. The social and environmental damage associated with delamont or has gone completely unchecked for years managed to get some of the quad as this isnt being dies yeah the muscles of the compton satori measures that were acquired by a lot of far short. Things this construction project is seriously flawed because its illegal to. Read the names of you guys at. The home of antonios parents was torn down. I feel like ive been tossed out of my own house. My life and the way i live have been taken away from me i mean thats happened to a lot of people here. I feel. Like ive been assaulted its like theyre trying to wipe out my identity. With sic is that. They show us no respect at all its in the silt if youve seen. The movie i think its a crime against humanity do you get a me quote there when you go to. The. King and them. Luke. Luke. Luke about sixty kilometers southeast about to meet or a near a big bend in this ng good river we find the home of theres a room the indians there chief is trying to sun he doesnt have much power or dignity anymore the only indication that he is a chief is his necklace. Bought it for yourself stuck in there used to be a lot of sand bags here and river wrappers and rocky cliffs as it was thank you and you know it took us a long time to travel down the river because of the rapids. There were banners in the river. Sometimes we travel fast. Sometimes slowly. Now its like a quiet like here. The river has changed into a lake. The water level never changes. And. I can explain what happened. Things have changed. The river used to flood and later the water levels would fall depending on the time of year. But the landscape was always green especially the trees. These days the water levels stay the same. After the water backed up behind the dam the trees started dying. The water turned a dark color the trees and plants were dying everywhere and we have no idea why i think its because the water doesnt flow anymore it just sits there. Ive never seen anything like it. Never gave us the hard look at these the negative. The trees in the water start to decay and this produces methane a greenhouse gas. The name of the tribe your ruler means lords of the river but they are no longer the masters here the river has been conquered by outsiders and chief giles son and the three hundred members of his tribe have become slaves. The construction of the dam has changed everything. And the water levels have risen so the houses were moved further up the hillside. Much of the relocation work was paid for by the Construction Consortium. The consortium also built more than forty schools for people who live along the river. Including this one. Further upstream the dams turbines are rinsed out occasionally and this sends a huge flow of water down the river the local residents never know when this is going to happen. What did you say about this once we were out fishing and came back late everyone thought thered been a break at the dam and thered be a huge flood. Everybody was scared people in the village thought that my brother in law and i had drowned. If the dam does break water and mud will come flowing down and everyone who lives along the river when youre killed were all afraid that Something Like that is going to happen whats it going to do to you. Older members of the tribe preferred traditional means of transport and canoes. They dont burn fuel and they dont scare away the fish. But the people who run the dam recommend boats that have outboard motors. In the old days we only used wooden boats but they dont get the job done anymore and theyve built a ramp over there so we have to walk a whole kilometer. Maybe. There are rapids above the dam only metal boats can get through them its too dangerous for wooden boats if you dont have a metal rod you cant get to the city theyve built a lot of roads in the area but we live on the river ive always used the river to get around. The general have also been forced to change their diet. But used to rely primarily on many arcand fish before the dam was built it was easy for fathers and sons to catch fish but now in those parts of the river that have been cut off and filled with silt some species of fish have disappeared others are scrawny and sickly. And. There have. Been every two weeks members of the tribe paint their faces with di. Today the women and children are doing it the chief is worried that some of the men may soon switch to war paint. The sand be. We always a paint our faces in the traditional way because we feel like were fighting a war. When we go to the capital to protest but we feel like were waging a war against these government projects put it down to our yak you move in with us in the right hands. Oh yes. Our rights have been violated. Them. We know that those rights are guaranteed by the federal constitution. When you stand when you see what the government refuses to acknowledge those rights when they see the father mark boys beating on by force and so we have worried that the government may use the military to crack down on us e. C. Iow not me and. Building these dams wont produce clean energy. Its gertie energy the government will have the money people on its a conscience you know so jam is being built with our blood but we all worry less and we must stand and fight. But they dont have a real strategy and they refuse to use weapons. Were. Found you know look like one of them but. One of the ways that were fighting to protect our land is to put up a new signs to the border of our territory. The one on the right was the first one that we came up with. The one on the left was done for us by an environmental organization. It looks like an official government sign. Warriors helped us to put the signs are. Black the local residents respect the signs because they know that this land belongs to us and we will protect it. But the sign on the right says we are protecting mother we must respect it and preserve it by his. Total. Energy to set the fate of the amazon basin is still in doubt just as the dam projects and the measures associated with them provide the government with an opportunity to intervene in tribal territory that. Does not mean they can cut the size of the protected zones but the government can just say that this is a political necessity and the president issues a decree. But as you. These illegal activities raise concerns that the amazon basin will be opened up to widespread Industrial Development so that was an innocent life for me as a federal prosecutor this represents a very clear assault on the constitution. And. We want people to understand that the entire planet has become unstable because of the destruction that you see every way. This threatens to throw the earth out about. But and. White people dont understand this but we Indigenous People do because we live in the forests. In the forest and. Everything has changed about what the climate is changing and its becoming an almighty but im no youth brand nor why people live in the stone houses with air conditioning life you feel the sound im not they dont feel any difference but those of us who live in the forest do thats why were fighting the construction of dams that destroy these forests were fighting against all of these Big Government projects. They wont benefit does or anyone else they wont benefit white people not even poor white people. And certainly not a native People Like Us you know with bonding. Over the next decade the brazilian government plans to build a total of forty three hydroelectric plants in the amazon basin. And by that time these children will have become adults. But their traditions and culture will have been issued. The fast pace of life in the digital no shift has the lowdown on the web showing new developments and providing useful information the wittiest finds and interviews with makers and users. Shift next on d w. Its all about the moments that lie before. Its all about the stories inside. Its all about George Chance to discover the world from different perspectives. Join us into being speired by distinctive instagram or others at g. W. Stories the topic each week on instagram. For. Shift living in the digital age coming up stars of in