Today, vast fires continue to rage uncontrollably across the Amazon's irreplaceable ecosystems. In Brazil alone, nearly 11,500 square miles of forests have been consumed in August, quadrupling the area burned last year. This is the equivalent of 4.2 million soccer fields, most of which were lit by criminal arson.

Approximately a third of today's fires are raging in protected areas of the Brazilian Amazon, with the Kayapó and Munduruku indigenous territories among the worst hit. The legendary Kayapó Chief Raoni addressed the disproportionate impact on native communities in an op-ed entitled: "We, the peoples of the Amazon, are full of fear. Soon you will be, too."

Meanwhile, Bolsonaro's immoral regime frantically scurried to appear as if it were taking action to address this global emergency. In a meeting with allied state governors purportedly called to find solutions, he instead launched into a hateful diatribe, stating: "Indigenous people don't lobby, they don't speak our language, and yet today they manage to have 14 percent of our national territory ... One of their intentions is to hold us back."

In response, the Association of Brazil's Indigenous Peoples countered: "While the Amazon is in flames, the anti-indigenous President Jair Bolsonaro continues spewing his ignorance and racism against ingidenous tribes in Brazil. Using the argument that we are protected by foreigners, he continues preaching his genocidal, ethnocidal, anti-ecological, and anti-indigenous politics."