The murdered indigenous lawyer Bruno Pereira has been buried in his home state of Pernambuco, Brazil, after a small ceremony attended by relatives and local tribes.
Dozens of Xukuru tribe natives paraded around his coffin singing farewell rituals to the beat of their percussion instruments on Friday.
Topless and with headdresses made of palm leaves, they greeted a man who had spent much of his life working with isolated communities in remote parts of the Amazon rainforest.
“We will continue our struggle without them,” one of the tribal leaders said in a brief speech in front of the coffin and next to Pereira’s wife, Beatriz Matos.
Pereira’s coffin was covered with flags of Pernambuco and his football team, Sport Recife.
The father of three, 41, died on June 5 when he and British journalist Dom Phillips were shot in the Itaquai River in the far west of Brazil.
Phillips was writing a book on sustainable development in the Amazon and the two men were returning from an information trip when local fishermen allegedly attacked their boat. Shots were exchanged and Pereira was hit three times, and Phillips once.
Three men are being held and more are being sought by police for allegedly helping to undo the bodies.
Although authorities initially said the killers acted alone, the officer in charge of the investigation is now revoking that hypothesis. “There may be an intellectual author behind this,” Eduardo Fonte said. “The investigation is ongoing. We are looking at everything and we will not leave any stone unturned. We will find out what happened and what did not happen.”
Lumberjacks, searchers, ranchers and drug traffickers are invading indigenous lands in the remote Javari Valley, local groups say, and hunters and fishermen are known to catch protected species of animals and fish. Locals say organized crime groups active in the area may have been involved in the killings.
Pereira worked with an indigenous organization called Univaja. He helped the tribes living in the Javari Valley delimit their land and protect it from invaders.
Pereira had previously worked with Funai, the indigenous foundation of the Brazilian government. He was removed from office in 2019 after leading a successful operation to destroy an illegal mining operation on indigenous lands.
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He found a new home working with NGOs in the Javari Valley, overseeing isolated Indian tribes living in one of the most remote corners of Brazil.
“Today the land where he was born receives him, his body finds again the clay, the roots of the plants, the water and the heat of the soil,” the Observatory of Human Rights of Isolated Indigenous Peoples and Recent Contact (OPI). ), one of those NGOs, said in a statement.
Phillips, a longtime contributor to the Guardian, will be buried Sunday in Niteroi, near Rio de Janeiro. The 57-year-old journalist will be buried on a plot in his wife’s family.