An Amazon nation draws a line against developers.

By Russell A. Mittermeier - A few weeks ago, I flew over the Amazon in a single-engine Cessna to a reunion with the leaders of the KayapaA nation, one of South America's proudest and most famous indigenous groups. For decades, 7,000 KayapaA have defended their 28-million acre, Ohio-sized homeland in the Brazilian states of Paraa and Mato Grosso from incursions by speculators, ranchers, gold miners, loggers, and squatters.Today, the KayapaA face a greater and more dangerous foe: Five huge hydroelectric dams planned on their lifeline Xingu River, and completion of the second half of BR-163, a 1,100-mile paved highway that slices through Paraa. The road will open the remote frontier to the kind of untrammeled exploitation and development that has so far deforested close to 20 percent of the Brazilian Amazon. Some of the richest biological diversity on the planet has been eliminated, mainly to grow more beef and soybeans for export.The KayapaA grand chief, Megaron, is leading the fight to preserve their lands that form the largest tropical rain forest reserve in the world. He and other indigenous leaders recently wrote to World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, imploring him to ensure that the environmental impacts of BR-163 and the dams are carefully considered before the bank funds them. Wrote Megaron: "If you lend money to the government of Brazil to pave roads and build other projects--such as--the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, you will be contributing to the destruction of our forests, and conflicts with, possibly even deaths, of our people."Each year, 10,000 square miles of the Amazon are leveled, an area the size of Massachusetts. The results of this rapacious destruction stunned me as I flew to the KayapaA summit. The forested wilderness I saw 15 years ago was now scrubland pasture holding thousands of stringy cattle, and endless soybean plantations like wheat fields carpeting western Kansas. When we crossed over--as it were--into KayapaA airspace, the scene changed dramatically to magnificent, unbroken rain forest stretching to the horizon. Eden, it seemed, was still safe.As International Indigenous Peoples Day is celebrated this Wednesday, the KayapaA's tenacious ability to protect their vast homeland and use their forest assets in a sustainable way is an exemplar for safeguarding natural resources elsewhere. For centuries, indigenous groups the world over have been victimized by those eager to steal or profit from their lands and resources.Today, many of the worst abuses have been curbed, but the pressures continue, particularly in the Amazon. To help the KayapaA to defend their pristine wilderness, nongovernmental groups like Conservation International have provided modest assistance in the form of guard posts, training, boats, motors, communications equipment, over-flights, and remote sensing analysis to strengthen their territorial surveillance capacity.With an iron will and aggressive determination, the KayapaA have so far defended their 1,100-mile border from intruders. Confrontations have been violent, and increasing hordes of settlers and fortune hunters are flocking into the Amazon's lawless frontier, threatening to occupy KayapaA lands. And how do you repel paved highways and huge dams that enrich farming corporations and fortune-hunters, but destroy a far more valuable resource: unspoiled natural ecosystems vital to human survival?The purpose of our visit was to participate in the sixth KayapaA leaders' summit and strengthen our 15-year alliance. We landed in PiaraE*u, the only village accessible by road in the 44,000-square-mile territory. In a large community meeting house, about 200 chiefs and warriors had gathered. Wearing black body paint, they were dressed in their finest yellow, green, red, and blue feather headdresses with shell and bead necklaces, and carried their traditional weapons--clubs, bows, and arrows. The scene evoked a Frederic Remington canvas depicting Indians of the Old West, a jarring but wonderfully stirring vision in this contemporary age.In 1989, the KayapaA successfully halted the same Belo Monte project, and intensive talks at the summit now focused on renewing their opposition, arguing the dams would have catastrophic effects on regional ecosystems and flood large areas of their territory. Memories of that initial victory 17 years ago were rekindled with several attendants singing personal war songs before speaking, and threatening again to go to battle.There was a time-warp quality to this pow-wow in the jungle. Megaron and other KayapaA elders lead a warrior people, maintain an ancient culture, revere their lands, and defend them against covetous outsiders. They reminded me of Native Americans fighting the intrusion of the white man during the Western expansion two centuries ago. But there is a major difference. The KayapaA are defending their Amazon homeland, not only for themselves, but for all of us working to protect the last vestiges of the planet's unspoiled nature.nRussell A. Mittermeier is president of Conservation International. -The Boston GlobeAn Amazon nation draws a line against developers

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