The 75-year-old, with long white hair and sharp black geometric lines painted across his body, is stepping into a role he has long prepared for: succeeding his uncle, Brazil's most iconic Indigenous leader, Raoni Metuktire.Chief Raoni, 93, who has devoted his life to warning the world about the destruction of the Amazon, has been hospitalized several times in recent weeks.Megaron Txucarramae vowed to carry forward his uncle's fight at a gathering of Kayapo leaders in the village of Pykany in Para state last week. They had come to see Raoni before he became too ill to attend."I told them that I will continue to support the struggle of our uncle to preserve not only Indigenous lands and the forest, but also to preserve our health, our culture, and our language," Megaron told AFP on the riverbank.The Kayapo are one of hundreds of Indigenous groups in Brazil, but their fight to defend their land has become one of the most visible internationally.
Megaron, like Raoni, is one of the last of a generation born before sustained contact with the outside world © Evaristo Sa / AFP
Pykany lies in one of several Kayapo territories which together form one of the largest blocks of protected rainforest in the world -- an area larger than Portugal which they have thanks to the struggle of leaders like Raoni and Megaron.Experts see Indigenous territories as one of the best barriers to climate change by preventing deforestation, as the Amazon edges closer to a tipping point in which it could transition to a drier, savannah-like ecosystem.Invasions and protestMegaron, like Raoni, is one of the last of a generation born before sustained contact with the outside world.He was born in 1950 in the village of Piaraçu in the north of the state of Mato Grosso and lived through the "truly awful" violence of incursions into Indigenous lands by settlers, ranchers and miners.
