The volunteers who will assist the Deni Indians demarcating their land in September and October have left Manaus and are on route to the remote reaches of the Amazon rainforest. Read the updates from the crew as they travel up river and into the jungle.

29 August 2001

	This is our third day aboard the Commandte Savio, a triple decker Amazon river boat.
We are headed upstream, the river is flat, the colour of chocolate milk. Hammocks on the centre deck swing gently with the light roll of the ship.

Small acrobatic grey dolphins splash in an inlet, pushing fish at each other. Sometimes the back of a boto (pink river dolphin) breaks the surface for a quick breath. The trees behind them are 2000 shades of green, with the odd flash of fluoro blue or bleached white as a kingfisher or heron skims past the brick red riverbank. The river is low at this time of year, only a meter of bank is visible.

Today is a very good day to travel, hot but not too humid, and surprisingly bug-free. Everyday the river narrows a little.

There are a few signs of human life, floats from fishing nets, an occasional stilted hut, even a cleared field with fenced in cattle, but mostly it is pristine.

We launch a voadeira (a narrow aluminium boat with a 40 horsepower engine) to cross to the far bank to look at a small log raft being towed down river.
We have previously documented the journey of such log rafts from protected Indian lands all the way to the logging companies.

I came to this area as part of the first Greenpeace expedition in 1999. I am a doctor and my role then was to make an assessment of the problems which future expeditions might face in the area and how we might help the Deni Indians with their health problems, of which malaria is probably the most severe.

On this trip we are providing logistical and medical support for the Deni who are in the process of demarcating their territorial boundaries as protection against predatory logging companies who claim to have purchased land which is traditional Deni territory.

We will divide into three smaller expedition groups later in the week and spend six weeks in the jungle assisting the Deni to mark the boundaries of their territory, then logging and other developments will be prohibited in the area.

If all indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon were demarcated, 20 percent of the forest area would come under legal protection.

The Deni lands are one of the largest indigenous areas to be demarcated. The process needs accurate plotting of lands, so we use Global Positioning Systems to plot out points on the boundary at five kilometre intervals. It is going to be hard work mostly because of the insects and midday heat.

This afternoon, Marcio the Brazilian doctor and I will run through some medical scenarios with the team to prepare them for emergencies. Here there are snakes, scorpions, spiders, flatfish, crocodiles, malaria, tropical ulcers and bush kitchen cooking to survive.

We have set up a well equipped hospital bay in Manuel´s cabin. Sometimes the jungle's main role seems to be to provide a large surface area for biting insects to breed in.

Ian
United Kingdom

Read more updates from the volunteers:
Bryan from the United States
Steve, the Greenpeace cyberactivist on board, from Sweden
Márcio from Brazil
Manuel, the logistics coordinator from Portugal

TAKE ACTION: Add your voice in support for indigenous land rights by writing to the President of Brazil supporting the demarcation of all indigenous territory.

Read the statement from the Deni to the Brazilian government

Read more about the Deni and their struggle to protect their lands from logging. Send a Deni ecard to a friend.

Download the pdf version of the Deni letter in Portuguese.