Health In Harmony supports the Xipaya Indigenous Peoples protecting 2.5 million hectares of Brazilian Amazon rainforest through radical listening, community-designed planetary health solutions, and narrative sovereignty.
The Terra do Meio region in the Amazon is rich in biodiversity and critical for conservation, covering approximately 179,000 hectares of tropical rainforest. It is also home to the Xipaya Indigenous Peoples, who have protected the forest for thousands of years, living in harmony with their land, practicing traditional medicine, and passing down cultural knowledge systems through generations.
The forest is the silent force that sustains Xipaya life. However, while the Xipaya Indigenous Territory is well preserved by the Xipaya People, climate change and threats to local biodiversity from extractive practices such as mining are damaging it.
“The climate has changed a lot these days; it rains less than it used to, the river is warmer, the sun is hotter, and the animals end up dying, too,” explains Yupã Xipaya, Chief of Yupá village in the Xipaya Indigenous Territory. “This brings us great suffering, because we live with these animals in the forest. So our duty and our mandate are to protect. To ensure the future of our children, grandchildren, and all of the diversity that lives in the Amazon.”
Yupã Xipaya, Chief of Yupá village in the Xipaya Indigenous Territory, describes a forest visibly changing around his community, with less rain, warmer rivers, and dying wildlife, driving home why protecting the Brazilian Amazon is not just an environmental duty but a matter of survival for future generations. Photo courtesy of Health In Harmony.
Since 2020, the planetary health organization Health In Harmony (HIH) and its Brazilian affiliate partner, SAMA-HIH, have worked alongside the Xipaya People. Health In Harmony’s model, which partners with communities to protect rainforests across four basins globally, begins with radically listening to Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, and local communities, recognizing and resourcing their localized climate solutions.
In Brazil, these solutions include but are not limited to: sustainable livelihood programs, affordable healthcare initiatives, reforestation, traditional medicines, territory protection, and cultural preservation. Elsewhere in the Brazilian Amazon, for example, Health In Harmony is supporting Indigenous Peoples in strengthening territorial protection by blending ancestral knowledge and modern technology, including drones, GPS, and community-designed surveillance strategies.
In November 2025, Indigenous protesters gathered outside UN Climate Talks at COP30 in Brazil, demanding recognition of their land and rights, and calling to free the Amazon rainforest from resource extractivism and fossil fuels, both urgent threats to planetary health. To further platform Indigenous voices, HIH and SAMA-HIH are supporting the narrative sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples, such as the Xipaya, by facilitating storytelling that originates from communities themselves, rather than being filtered through outside voices.
At COP30 in Brazil in November 2025, Indigenous protesters demanded that the world recognize their land rights and hear their voices on their own terms, as organizations like Health In Harmony work to ensure Xipaya storytellers share their knowledge of territorial resistance and forest stewardship without outside filters. Photo courtesy of Health In Harmony.
Local young content creators Sekamena recently created a new film, ‘The Xipaya Woman—Strength and Resistance’, about Yupã Xipaya. It is an intimate portrait of the Xipaya elder, made to value the memory and strength of those who keep the Xipaya culture alive.
In the film, Yupã shares how she learned songs, prayers, and the use of medicinal herbs from her elders, knowledge that lives on through intergenerational exchange. She also discusses the role of women in leadership, guiding young people, and defending the territory, demonstrating that female strength is essential to maintaining culture and balance within the community.
“We chose to speak about the Xipai women, who have this great strength to protect, to teach the things that come from our culture, and also to put a barrier against the bad things that come from the outside,” explains Sekamena’s co-founder, filmmaker Mitã Xipaya. “In this documentary, I tried along with the other content creators to translate this full message of concern, of love, and also send a message to the world of what Yupã Xipaya is thinking of, and what she wants from the forest, which is our territory.”
For HIH and communities like these, narrative sovereignty is one solution working in tandem with a holistic web of planetary health solutions that, so far, are showing remarkable results for both people and forests. As of 2026, HIH works with communities in the Brazilian Amazon to protect 2.5M hectares of climate-critical rainforest, storing 121M tons of aboveground carbon, through a people-first conservation model.
“Most of the time, you have support from institutions that never get to know the community itself,” says Ney/Kwazady Xipaya, a leader from the Xipaya Indigenous Peoples in the Xipaya Indigenous Territory, Brazilian Amazon. “Concerning SAMA–HIH, I see them in a positive light: discussing together what will be implemented within the territory.”
More than an individual portrait, the documentary is an invitation to listen—to listen to the Xipaya women, the forest, and to everything that still resists within it. It is an intergenerational portrait created by Indigenous storytellers to share the Xipaya people’s resistance and history with the world.
Going forward, HIH is growing its Community Thriving Narrative work alongside If Not Us Then Who in Brazil, specifically by working with communities in the Apyterewa Indigenous Land/territories and with Midia Indigeneia founder, Renan Renan Khisetje/Kokoyamaratxi Renan Suyá. Sekamena is working on a second film about the Xipaya communities and using this platform alongside HIH to raise awareness of the threats to the forest and land that they protect.
