Defenders of the Amazon: inside the 13 June Guardian Weekly

The Guardian

a day ago

It's three years since the murders of the journalist Dom Phillips and the Indigenous activist Bruno Pereira, who were both killed on a visit to the remote Javari valley in the Brazilian Amazon.
Dom was a Guardian contributor based in Brazil, whose reporting often appeared in the Guardian Weekly. Last week his widow, Alessandra Sampaio, came to visit our London offices along with Beto Marubo, an Indigenous leader from the Brazilian Amazon.
From the other side of the world it's easy to feel far removed from the activities of criminal gangs that threaten the Amazon's Indigenous people and plunder its natural resources. But hearing Beto and Alessandra speak so powerfully about the impact of Dom and Bruno's work reminded me why we need to stay focused on a region that defies easy scrutiny.
With that in mind, for this week's big story, Tom Phillips (no relation), our Latin America correspondent who worked closely with Dom and Bruno, made a perilous return to the Javari valley to learn how Indigenous defenders are continuing to try to protect their communities and environment.
I'd also like to draw your attention to two other projects that continue Dom and Bruno's legacy. First is the Guardian's new audio podcast investigation series Missing in the Amazon, in which Tom for the first time tells the full story of what happened to Dom and Bruno.
The second is the book Dom was working on at the time of his death, How to Save the Amazon, which has since been completed by a team including writers and editors at the Guardian. (In this extract, published in the Weekly last month, Dom explains why protecting the Amazon and its people is so important.)
Reporting from the Amazon is a costly and dangerous business, but subscribing to the Guardian Weekly magazine is a great way to support our investigative journalism. For more details and to give the Weekly a try, click here.
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