The first glimmer of dawn was squinting over the horizon when Rita Piripkura and her family realised that strangers had appeared on their land.
At first, her father thought they were monkeys, but her grandmother understood what was going on. ‘White men’ had arrived in their remote forest in the north-west of the Brazilian state, Mato Grosso, ready to plunder Indigenous land.
Rita can still remember the sting of buzzing mosquitoes and strong winds on her face as she and her family escaped across the river in a canoe made of jatobá (Brazilian cherry) wood. Nine of her relatives were killed in the ensuing massacre, an event she has described in a video published last month by Survival International.
