Why do we support it?
Joenia Wapichana is a lawyer and human and environmental rights activist, with a master's degree from the University of Arizona, in the United States. She has extensive experience in politics in defense of the rights of indigenous peoples in Brazil. She was the first indigenous woman parliamentarian in 190 years of legislative power in Brazil, the only one since the Citizen Constitution, elected Federal Deputy for the State of Roraima (2018-2022). It was based on the evaluation of more than a thousand indigenous leaders from Roraima about the political situation in Brazil, that her name was chosen to compete for a seat in the National Congress. Her agenda is for indigenous collective rights, especially the defense of territories, as well as indigenous women's rights, sustainable development and respect for the environment.
Born in the Truaru da Cabeceira Indigenous Community/RR, she is the first indigenous lawyer in Brazil. For more than two decades, she worked in the Coordination of the Legal Department of the Indigenous Council of Roraima, an organization that today has 261 indigenous communities and has been working in defense of the rights of indigenous peoples for more than 50 years at the local, regional, national and international levels. As a lawyer, she was a protagonist in the judgment that defined the demarcation of Raposa Serra do Sol in the Federal Supreme Court, and in the international denunciations of violations of the rights of indigenous peoples in Brazil, such as in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights/OAS. Joenia has been a leader of the indigenous movement since her youth, having carried out legal and political training in grassroots indigenous communities, in addition to having been, in 2004, one of the mentors of the Free Land Camp, a national mobilization of extreme importance for indigenous peoples in Brazil.
Joenia was the first president of the Commission on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of the Brazilian Bar Association. She received several awards for the defense of the rights of indigenous peoples, such as in 2004, the Reebok Award for her work in the defense of human rights; in 2010, she was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit by the Ministry of Culture; in 2018, the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Award; in 2021, the Congress in Focus Women in Politics Award; among countless others.
During her term, she was one of the most well-evaluated parliamentarians and active in defense of rights. She defended indigenous peoples throughout Brazil in the National Congress and opposed the Bolsonaro government.
#JoeniaMinistra
