For the A’uwẽ-Xavante people of Brazil, the Cerrado is not simply a biome, a resource, or a piece of land.
It is kin.
The Cerrado, known as ‘ró by the A’uwẽ-Xavante, is where food, water, memories, rituals, dreams, and the future of the people are rooted. Its forests, rivers, plants, and animals are part of a living territory that connects generations.
This relationship shapes how the A’uwẽ-Xavante care for their lands. Stewardship is not a separate environmental activity carried out alongside everyday life. It is woven into food systems, cultural practices, ceremonies, intergenerational relationships, and the defense of territory.
For the A’uwẽ-Xavante, ancestral knowledge does not belong to the past. It remains an active practice of care.
One example is the traditional collection of native seeds.
In A’uwẽ-Xavante communities, women lead expeditions that can last one to two weeks. Families travel through their territory carrying bags and woven baskets to collect seeds, many of them from the ground. Some seeds are gathered for food, while others are used to regenerate vegetation and attract animals and other species.
In recent years, these expeditions have become increasingly difficult, and in some communities, they are no longer possible. Roads and highways associated with large development projects have brought violence and insecurity to Indigenous territories, forcing some families to abandon journeys that have traditionally connected them with the land and its seeds.
Yet where these traditions remain possible, families continue to gather and care for seeds. In 2024, A’uwẽ-Xavante communities collected tons of seeds.
There is also a difference in how this work is understood. What Western conservation language might describe as forest restoration, the A’uwẽ-Xavante may understand as tending a garden or food crop.
The distinction matters.
The Cerrado is not viewed as an empty landscape that outsiders must manage. It is a living territory that provides food and supports animals, plants, families, cultural practices, and future generations.
Seed gathering is therefore both ecological work and cultural continuity.
The same connection is visible in traditional practices such as the Corrida de Tora, or log race.
Participants carry heavy buriti palm trunks from the forest back to the village. The logs can weigh between 50 and 120 kilograms and reach up to three meters in length. Two or three teams may participate, although the practice can also have other social meanings, including a young man demonstrating his strength and endurance to the family of a woman he hopes to marry.
The purpose is not simply to win.
The practice demonstrates endurance, strength, and collective spirit. Afterward, the logs are used as firewood, benches, or craft materials.
Through practices like these, younger generations remain connected to the land and their ancestors.
This connection is increasingly important as the Cerrado faces pressure from deforestation, agricultural expansion, water contamination, habitat fragmentation, and major infrastructure projects.
For A’uwẽ-Xavante leader Hiparadi TopTiro, defending the territory is both a political and an everyday responsibility.
Known for his deep connection to the Cerrado and his people, Hiparadi spends time with his family maintaining seed banks and organically grown pineapple gardens that help support them. He and his relatives have also helped stop three hydroelectric dams from being built in their territory.
These efforts demonstrate that Indigenous territorial defense is not simply opposition to development.
It is also about protecting the conditions that allow Indigenous communities to maintain their cultures, food systems, relationships, and ways of life.
For those working alongside A’uwẽ-Xavante communities, this distinction matters.
Indigenous stewardship should not be romanticized as a practice belonging to an untouched past. It is active, ongoing work: gathering seeds, maintaining gardens, conducting ceremonies, monitoring territory, raising children, defending rivers, and deciding what happens on Indigenous lands.
It is also a defense of the right to determine what the future of those lands will look like.
That question recently brought A’uwẽ-Xavante leaders thousands of kilometers from the Cerrado to Geneva.
In July 2026, A’uwẽ-Xavante leaders traveled to the United Nations to challenge a railway project known as the Ferrovia de Integração do Centro-Oeste, or FICO, promoted as part of low-carbon logistics for Brazil’s agribusiness exports. For the A’uwẽ-Xavante, the proposed railway threatens sacred places, waters, food systems, and cultural life, while advancing without genuine Free, Prior and Informed Consent.
In July 2026, A’uwẽ-Xavante leaders traveled to the United Nations in Geneva to challenge a railway project promoted as green infrastructure, arguing that no climate transition can be called just if Indigenous Peoples bear the costs without the power to decide whether projects proceed on their territories. Photo courtesy of Cultural Survival.
Their message challenges a growing contradiction in global climate policy: projects can be presented as green while Indigenous Peoples bear the environmental and social costs.
A transition cannot be considered just if the people whose territories are affected do not have the power to meaningfully decide whether those projects proceed.
For the A’uwẽ-Xavante, the struggle over the railway is therefore connected to the same relationship that guides seed gathering, traditional practices, and the defense of their territory.
The Cerrado is not merely land beneath a proposed railway.
It is ‘ró.
It is where dreams and memories live. It is where food is gathered and grown. It is where ceremonies connect generations. It is where communities continue to build their futures.
That is why protecting the Cerrado cannot be separated from protecting A’uwẽ-Xavante rights, culture, and self-determination.
Around the world, Indigenous Peoples are demonstrating that protecting ecosystems and protecting Indigenous rights are deeply interconnected. Cultural Survival’s work is grounded in supporting Indigenous Peoples’ rights, self-determination, cultures, and political resilience, recognizing that Indigenous cultures remain dynamic and deeply connected to land, language, spirituality, and self-governance.
The A’uwẽ-Xavante experience offers a powerful example.
Their stewardship is not nostalgia.
It is not simply about preserving what existed before.
It is the work of caring for a living territory while defending future generations’ right to inherit it whole.
And perhaps that is the most important distinction: the A’uwẽ-Xavante are not asking the world to save the Cerrado for them.
They are continuing to defend their relationship with it—and asking the world to respect their right to do so.
