This is part three of a series on the operation to evict illegal gold miners from the Munduruku Indigenous Territory. Read part one here and part two here. Part four and five are coming soon.

Indigenous people recruited by illegal miners in Brazil’s Munduruku Indigenous Territory complicated government efforts to control the spread of illegal mining, which caused diseases, mercury contamination, attacks and deaths in communities. Munduruku organizations told Mongabay that although the eviction operation has so far led to a reduction in mining, they fear miners will return once security forces withdraw.

“Today, all movements have decreased, including the presence of white men, both in the mines and in the villages,” Hidelmara Kirixi, from the Munduruku Wakoborũn Women’s Association, told Mongabay by email. “However, there is another concern: After the operations in our territory end, the white miners may return because some of our own Munduruku relatives may ask them to come back. This could happen again, as it did in previous years.”

In exchange for a cut of the profits, some Munduruku people help illegal miners secure access to Indigenous lands and resist government crackdowns, according to Munduruku organizations and researchers. But rarely do they receive the full amount they were promised, they said.

Mining is always illegal on Indigenous territories, even by the Indigenous people on their own land, a Federal Police officer involved in the Munduruku eviction operation told Mongabay. However, Alisson Marugal, the federal prosecutor responsible for the Yanomami case, explained that while industrial mining using machinery is always illegal, there is some controversy regarding artisanal mining. He told Mongabay there has been a case where a court has allowed this type of mining by Indigenous people.

Since the start of the Munduruku Indigenous Land Removal Operation in November 2024, government agents have carried out 523 actions, destroying 90 camps, 15 vessels, 27 heavy machinery items and 224 engines. The coordinated government effort, which involves the Brazilian Army, Federal Police, the environmental agency (IBAMA), the Indigenous affairs agency (Funai) and others, caused losses of 112.3 million Brazilian reais ($19.2 million) to criminals.

The exact number of Indigenous people who are involved in illegal mining today is unknown. However, Munduruku organizations and researchers told Mongabay it is only a small fraction of the 17,997 Munduruku people in the territory.

Nilton Tubino, leader of the federal task force carrying out the operation, told Mongabay over email that agents also have received support from Indigenous people during the eviction operation. This includes people sharing information about the location of miners in the territory.

Despite the existence of Indigenous miners in the Munduruku territory, a large majority of the population has denounced the invasions on their lands by miners since 1987. Since 2010, they have filed complaints with the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, calling out the actions of illegal gold miners on their land. Munduruku peoples have also voiced their concerns to public authorities, civil society and international bodies, requesting meetings and carrying out their own territorial surveillance.

But “criminal activity seeks ways to circumvent security and maintain itself,” Tubino said. Criminals co-opt some Indigenous people and “entice owners of the territory with minimal advantages.”

The recruitment of Indigenous peoples by miners has been a frequent occurrence since the late 1950s, when prospectors first discovered gold in the north of the Munduruku Indigenous Territory. Exploration activities intensified in the 1980s, along with the participation of the Munduruku, who were sometimes hired to work for the gold miners or, in some cases, opened their own prospecting sites.

This presence of non-Indigenous people and the pressure on their territory was not new to the Munduruku people. In the late 1800s, global demand brought thousands of rubber tappers to the Tapajós River Basin. The Indian Protection Service, the precursor to FUNAI, set up a rubber trading post on Munduruku land in 1940 and 1942, in an unsuccessful attempt to turn communities into rubber tappers.

In the 1980s, many Munduruku united in opposition to the mining in their territory and expelled the miners. But according to João Kaba Munduruku, a coordinator of the Pusuro Indigenous Association, an organization that supports seven Munduruku villages of the Middle Tapajós region, it is impossible to go back to how things were before the mining, “because of the development that non-Indigenous people brought,” which changed their lives forever.

The lack of alternative sustainable income sources to support their new lifestyle pushed some Indigenous people to open their own small-scale mines. By 2010, illegal miners were armed with much larger and more destructive equipment and they lured in some Munduruku people with bribes. The lack of support from the government to help them meet their basic needs, such as food security, health care and education, also helped illegal miners gain support within the communities, Munduruku organizations said.

Kaba told Mongabay over WhatsApp voice messages that when he was a child, he remembers seeing small-scale gold mining by his Munduruku relatives in the rivers, and it was non-Indigenous miners who taught the Munduruku how to do it. For some Indigenous people, “most of their income generation was through mining,” and, many times, these Indigenous people had no other options.

“The vision of young people, when they don’t have an income-generating job, is to work in mining,” he said. “In the Munduruku territory, there is no sustainable project that generates income.”

False promises and deception

Munduruku miners themselves did not share their motivations with Mongabay. But Munduruku organizations said that deception, abandonment by the state or a lack of alternative income sources are what push Munduruku people to mine.

According to Kirixi, the gold miners tell them that no one wants to help Indigenous peoples. The miners make them believe they are the answer to all their problems, offering them an opportunity to leave behind the poverty they face.

“They say that they can help, promising many things,” Kirixi said. “Some chiefs and leaders believed them and the Indigenous peoples allowed them to enter and destroy the rivers and streams.”

Kirixi explained that the people who help are promised a large percentage of the profits by the miners, but “they never pay the agreed amount.” Kaba told Mongabay the percentage they receive is only about 10%. Miners can find anywhere between 3 and 60 grams of gold on the river per day, although the latter can be closer to a miner’s weekly average. The current price of gold per gram is 563 reais (about $99).

“The communities that received this percentage have no results and there is no better investment for the community [as promised to them by the miners],” Kirixi said. “Where there was gold mining, there is no production, such as the construction of schools, flour mills and artesian wells. There are no quality houses and it is difficult to have access to drinking water for consumption. Gold mining has not brought anything good to the Munduruku Indigenous population, only destruction.”

While sources say the communities lose big, the miners reap huge benefits from having Indigenous miners on their side. Indigenous peoples help miners secure access to Munduruku lands, provide security and help them resist government crackdowns.

Luísa Molina, deputy coordinator of the Xingu Program at the Socioenvironmental Institute, told Mongabay over WhatsApp voice messages that criminal groups provide Indigenous miners with weapons to protect mining machinery. In other cases, according to Kirixi, the Indigenous individual reaches an agreement with the gold miners, allowing them to operate their machinery in the territory in exchange for a small percentage. Estimates of the percentage, however, were not shared with Mongabay.

Few alternatives

For decades, the 2.4-million-hectare (5.9-million-acre) Munduruku Indigenous Territory has been heavily impacted by illegal mining, which causes deforestation, mercury contamination, water pollution and health impacts in communities. Livelihoods have also been threatened, as mining operations destroy traditional hunting and fishing grounds and contaminate food and water sources.

Areas where Kirixi used to harvest fruit, such as buriti palms (Mauritia flexuosa), açai (Euterpe oleracea) and patawa (Oenocarpus bataua), have been destroyed and deforested. “Where there used to be hunting on the banks of the streams, there is no more,” she said. “This situation we are facing is very sad and complicated. What exists in the rivers, such as fish and other various foods, is all polluted and has a lot of mercury, making it difficult for our daily consumption.”

Large carnivorous fish that are caught and consumed by the Munduruku, such as the black piranha (Serrasalmus rhombeus), the peacock bass (Cichla ocellaris) and black piranha (Serrasalmus rhombeus), carry the highest concentrations of mercury because the methylmercury accumulates and magnifies along the chain.

In addition to the threats Munduruku people face from mining activity, the region also suffered from extreme drought in 2024, which dried up several small rivers and springs used as water sources by communities. Mongabay previously reported that residents from around 10 villages were forced to drink water from larger rivers such as the Tapajós, where much of the illegal mining takes place. Kaba said the Tapajós River had a very scarce supply of fish, which the Munduruku depend on for food.

These issues, combined with the lack of basic services within Munduruku communities, are responsible for further pushing some individuals to mine, despite its detrimental impacts. “It’s common to hear that a certain community or certain chief gave in to talk of enticements in exchange, for example, for drilling an artesian well in his village, things that ideally would be done by the government,” Molina said.

For Kirixi, Indigenous peoples turning to mining reflects the social and economic issues that impact indigenous populations and Brazilian society as a whole. “It is also a reflection of the State’s neglect of public policies and territorial protection.”

FUNAI and the Ministry of Justice and Public Security did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comments by the time of publication. The Secretariat of Indigenous Health (SESAI) told Mongabay it provides assistance to approximately 14,000 Munduruku people.

“Services are offered in the areas of women’s health, children’s health, oral health, the elderly and people with disabilities, as well as actions in mental health, food and nutrition,” a SESAI spokesperson said. “In order to combat mercury contamination, SESAI carried out neurological assessment campaigns in children, in partnership with Fiocruz, USP [the University of São Paulo], Harvard [University] and the Evandro Chagas Institute, totaling 115 consultations and collecting samples for new studies starting in 2025.”

Today, as the government prepares to enter the second phase of the eviction operation, which now includes implementing a maintenance plan, Kaba told Mongabay a large concern among the local communities is that the miners will return once security forces withdraw. Additionally, without a post-removal plan that guarantees food security and promotes sources of decent income and sustainable alternatives for the region, Indigenous miners with no alternative incomes will be forced to join them.

“Those people who worked in mining activities, they have no other way of surviving,” Kaba said. “They have no other type of project to generate income.”

The living conditions in the Munduruku territory are increasingly difficult, Kirixi explained. Many people are hungry, and diseases are worsening because of the lack of medical care in communities.

“The state must not only remove the miners but also undertake a process of reparation for the damage caused by mining and the abandonment of our territories,” she added. “It must invest in public policies and alternative projects for economic sustainability and food sovereignty so that our people have assistance and better health conditions so that we can continue to resist and protect the forests.”

Banner image: Munduruku in the Tapajós river, next to Sawré Muybu Indigenous Land, home to the Munduruku people, Pará state, Brazil. Image by Valdemir Cunha / Greenpeace.

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