Content Note: The following includes disturbing information on violence against Indigenous Peoples. We have strived to provide information on each individual, in celebration of their lives and work, without gratuitous detail on their deaths. While we have worked to avoid linking to sources with graphic imagery, please note that the sources linked may contain further details and images may be changed by websites after we have reviewed them.

Latin America is one of the most dangerous regions to be an Indigenous rights and environmental defender. Three out of four assassinations of environmental defenders take place in Latin America. Indigenous defenders face a double threat: defending rights and being Indigenous. In 2021, roughly 40 percent of murdered environmental defenders were Indigenous, a disproportionately high figure given that Indigenous Peoples comprise roughly 6 percent of the global population.

As part of our Advocacy Program, Cultural Survival tracks violence against Indigenous defenders in an effort to draw connections amongst these cases and demonstrate that this crisis, rather than being a set of unconnected attacks on individual people, is systemic.

In these profiles, we remember and mourn 77 Indigenous people who were killed in 2023. We also recognize and condemn attacks, disappearances, criminalization, and other forms of violence committed against Indigenous defenders worldwide. We acknowledge that our scope is limited and that violence against Indigenous Peoples and against particular defenders of rights and the environment far surpasses the data that we were able to collect, and we honor all of the Peoples and communities who have been affected. We commit to continuing to work towards justice for Indigenous land and rights defenders alongside the affected communities to the extent that we are able. 

Aviso sobre el contenido: El siguiente contenido incluye información sobre violencia contra personas Indígenas. Nos hemos esforzado en proveer información sobre cada individuo en celebración de sus vidas y trabajo, sin incluir detalles innecesarios sobre sus muertes. Si bien hemos trabajado para evitar incluir vínculos a fuentes que contengan imágenes muy gráficas, tengan en cuenta que las fuentes vinculadas pueden incluir más detalles e incluso cambiar las imágenes después de que las hayamos revisado.