It’s been a year since my life changed dramatically with a phone call from a journalist friend telling me Dom had gone missing in the Javari valley. I could tell from the worry in his voice that it was unlikely Dom was still alive.
Dom and I both knew his research into criminal acts against the rainforest and its defenders might one day put him at risk. But we never believed it would actually happen. Dom followed strict safety protocols and was very careful and focused on the details of his trips, organising the itineraries and sending me all the information, as well as contacts.
The search for Dom and Bruno was agonising. My greatest fear was that their bodies would never be found. I prayed with all of my faith that they would be recovered so we could move forward and be able to grieve.
My memory of that period is hazy. There’s so much I’ve simply forgotten. Coping with such immense demands was intense and painful and I couldn’t keep up. My sister was such a great help when she travelled from her city and came to my house. She filtered all of the calls from relatives, friends and the press, speaking on my behalf. She kept me updated on the latest news and helped me record videos and messages.
The simple life and plans for the future I’d had with Dom were over, and with every interview or conversation I absorbed the extent of the loss.
Quick GuideWhat is the Bruno and Dom project?
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What is the Bruno and Dom project?
Bruno Pereira, a Brazilian Indigenous expert and Dom Phillips, a British journalist and longtime Guardian contributor, were killed on the Amazon’s Itaquaí River last June while returning from a reporting trip to the remote Javari Valley region.
The attack prompted international outcry, and cast a spotlight on the growing threat to the Amazon posed by extractive industries, both legal and illegal, such as logging, poaching, mining and cattle ranching.
A year after their deaths, the Guardian has joined 15 other international news organisations in a collaborative investigation into organised crime and resource extraction in the Brazilian Amazon. The initiative has been coordinated by Forbidden Stories, the Paris-based non-profit whose mission is to continue the work of reporters who are threatened, censored or killed.
The goal of the project is to honour and pursue the work of Bruno and Dom, to foreground the importance of the Amazon and its people, and to suggest possible ways to save the Amazon.
Who was Bruno Pereira?
Pereira, 41, was a former employee of the Indigenous agency Funai where he led efforts to protect the isolated and uncontacted tribes who live in the Brazilian Amazon. After being sidelined from his post soon after the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro came to power, Pereira went to work with the Javari Valley Indigenous association Univaja, helping create Indigenous patrol teams to stop illegal poachers, miners and loggers invading their protected lands.
Who was Dom Phillips?
Phillips, 57, was a longtime contributor to the Guardian who had
lived in Brazil for 15 years. A former editor of the dance magazine Mixmag, he developed a deep interest in environmental issues, covering the link between logging, mining, the beef industry and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. His reporting brought him into contact with Pereira, and in 2018 the pair took part in a 17-day expedition deep into the Javari Valley. In 2021 he took a year off to start writing a book, titled How to Save the Amazon. His return to the Javari was to have been the last reporting trip for the project.
What is the Javari Valley?
Sitting on Brazil’s border with Peru and Colombia, the Javari Valley
Indigenous Reservation is a Portugal-sized swathe of rainforest and
rivers which is home to about 6,000 Indigenous people from the Kanamari, Kulina, Korubo, Marubo, Matis, Mayoruna and Tsohom-dyapa groups, as well as 16 isolated groups.
It is also a hotspot for poachers, fishers and illegal loggers,
prompting violent conflicts between the Indigenous inhabitants and the
riverside communities which fiercely opposed the reservation’s
creation in 2001. Its strategic location makes it a key route for smuggling cocaine between Peru, Colombia and Brazil.
What happened to Pereira and Philips?
On 2 June 2022, Pereira and Phillips travelled up the Itaquaí River from the town of Atalaia do Norte to report on efforts to stop illegal fishing. Two days later, members of the Indigenous patrol team with whom Pereira and Phillips were travelling were threatened by an illegal fisher. Early on 5 June, the pair set out on the return leg before dawn, hoping to safely pass a river community that was home to several known poachers.
They never arrived, and after a search by teams of local Indigenous activists, their remains were discovered on 15 June.
Three fishers are being held in high-security prisons awaiting trial for the killings: brothers Amarildo and Oseney da Costa de Oliveira and a third man, Jefferson da Silva Lima.
Federal police have alleged that a fourth man, nicknamed Colombia, was the mastermind of the killings.
Once their bodies were found, thanks to the essential work of the Indigenous search teams, I tried to focus on the next stage: the search for justice.
People have asked me what kind of justice I am seeking.
First of all, I want to see the people who did this – the killers and the masterminds – judged according to the law. Given the investigations, it’s possible to imagine them being convicted. Their conviction would send a powerful message to the criminal organisations which operate in the region, convinced of their impunity.
But despite the repercussions of the case and the recent change of government in Brazil, which brings me hope, violence, threats and criminality continue to exist in the Javari valley, and other regions of the rainforest. So for me, justice is still far from being done. If the Indigenous people and traditional communities who protect the forest are still waging an unequal battle for their lives and their territories against far more powerful opponents, it’s a sign that the deaths of Bruno and Dom have not yet provoked positive change. This makes me angry.
This tragedy has caused so much sadness but has also brought good things, like my relationship with Bruno’s wife, Bia, whom I now consider a sister. It has given me the opportunity to meet so many great, supportive people who are committed to human rights and the environmental cause. I have become closer to some journalist friends. I’ve become closer, too, to Dom’s family and British friends, wonderful people whom I can unhesitatingly trust. My family and friends are closer than ever. My world has expanded and I consider this a beautiful inheritance that Dom has left me. I think of him always, with love and gratitude.
Naturally, I have come closer to that which had become Dom’s passion in recent years: the Amazon and the people of the rainforest. We talked so much about the ideas in the book he was writing.
Dom would tell me about his experiences in the forest and the contact he had with Indigenous people and river dwellers. He always came home from his trips affected, as if he had reached a new level of understanding about the realities he had seen, and wanting to know more, to meet more people and understand their points of view.
It was on one of these trips that he met Bruno, and I believe it was an intense encounter because Dom was so curious and Bruno had years of experience, living and working in the field, in the forest. The Indigenous people treated Bruno like a brother, which is so rare. And Dom was wowed by him and his knowledge and his commitment to the Javari.
They built a mutual rapport and Bruno told Beto Marubo, one of the local Indigenous leaders: “This guy is a good partner.” The people who are out there struggling need loyal allies and I think Bruno and Dom realised they could help each other achieve the same objective: protecting these territories and their people and drawing attention to the crimes that were being committed.
After Dom left us, I realised that, like many, I still knew so little about the subject and set about seeking more information. I discovered, for example, that, through their respectful handling of plants and the environment, the Indigenous peoples have contributed to the Amazon being what it is today: a living, complex, diverse forest with unparalleled natural and cultural richness and ways of life that are connected to nature and its conservation.
There is so much ancestral knowledge we do not value because it is unknown to us. There are well-intentioned people and good socio-environmental projects out there that we ignore. There is so much to learn!
That is why we are getting ready to launch an NGO in Dom’s name, the Dom Phillips Institute, with the aim of sharing what the Amazon is, and its complexities, through the peoples of the forest, and seeking ways to ensure its protection. My hope is to share my discoveries with anyone who is interested as part of a movement of collective learning.
A few months after Dom’s death, I was talking to an Indigenous leader whom I greatly admire and who helped me understand the profoundness of the struggle for conservation.
“Nature is life and the only choice we have is to protect it and to struggle for life,” he told me.
This is the concept that will guide my objectives and acts.