Amazon
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 The Amazon River and its tributaries span much of present
day Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana,
Surinam and French Guyana. The Amazon region produces a fifth of
the world’s fresh water and contains the earth’s largest
tropical forest with the greatest diversity of animal life.
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Over 200 indigenous cultures inhabit the vast Amazon region, including the
Karajá, Mundurucú, Shipibo-Conibo, Shuar, Waiwai and
Huitoto.
Some groups still live in traditional communal houses, practice slash and burn
horticulture, hunt, fish and gather food. Their ritual life has complex
ceremonies and rich mythologies. Trade networks, alliances and warfare have
linked them to Europeans and others for centuries.
Their ancestors settled in South America at least 13,000 years ago.
Europeans arrived in the Amazon in A.D. 1500.
They depended on Amazonian people for food, shelter and military aid. Their
encroachment into indigenous territories brought disease, massacre and
enslavement.
Today, environmental damage, logging, mining and dam projects in the
Amazon have implications not only for the indigenous groups – who
continue to defend their traditional territories – but for the whole
world.
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