Sineia do Vale (Wapichana), also known as Sineia Wapichana, began her career in 1992 in Brazil at the age of 17, when she was invited by her uncle Clóvis to work as a secretary at the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR). There, she attended community assemblies and strategic meetings of the more than 200 Indigenous Peoples of Roraima, especially concerning activities related to land demarcation, such as the Raposa Serra do Sol. This direct experience with leaders and organizational processes laid the foundation for her work to this day.
Do Vale’s work in the environmental field began in 1998, during one of the worst droughts in Roraima. She worked on an emergency project called “Droughts and Burns,” implementing water supply and seed recovery initiatives in the communities despite having no prior training. From then on, she pursued a career focused on land and environmental management, and in 2006, she became an environmental manager.
In 2009, do Vale coordinated the creation of the CIR’s Department of Land and Environmental Management, integrating Traditional Knowledge with emerging issues such as climate change and REDD+, a climate mitigation framework developed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that aims to encourage developing countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation.
One of the milestones of this work was the training of Indigenous Environmental Agents, initiated through a partnership with the Brazilian Institute of the Environment. This training was adapted with its methodology specifically for Indigenous people, allowing agents to produce reports on territorial invasions and environmental degradation. After the federal program was suspended, CIR partnered with other organizations under her leadership to continue training agents.
Do Vale also led the creation of the Indigenous Community Brigades and contributed to developing participatory methodologies for Land and Environmental Management Plans. Beginning in 2011, CIR developed the first Plans in the Serras and Lavrado regions with strong community involvement. To date, CIR has implemented 27 Planos de Vida (Life Plans)—local Indigenous mechanisms for coping with and adapting to climate change, developed using their methodologies, without external consultants.
For do Vale, implementing Life Plans means realizing the communities’ dreams of managing and protecting their territories. “When we implement the [Territorial and Environmental Management Plans] in Indigenous lands, where the Life Plans were created, we are implementing the actions communities need to continue protecting and caring for their territories,” she says.
The beautiful Amazon Rainforest. Photo by CS Staff.
The creation of the Land and Environmental Management Plans also coincided with the formulation of the National Policy for Territorial and Environmental Management of Indigenous Lands. Do Vale participated in the public consultations and advocated for policies to anchor the CIR’s experiences, with robust participation from local communities. In 2015, she joined the Brazilian Policy for Territorial and Environmental Management of Indigenous Lands Steering Committee, coordinating the Climate Change Technical Chamber. She is also a member of the Indigenous Committee on Climate Change, an initiative of the Brazilian Indigenous movement.
Do Vale’s entry into the international arena began in 2011, when she participated in her first COP in Durban, South Africa. Since then, she has remained active in international advocacy, connecting community realities with the multilateral climate decisions being made by highlighting the importance of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge, community participation, and grassroots training. Undeterred by the linguistic challenges of international work, she attends long negotiation sessions with the support of translators, observing how Indigenous Peoples from different regions of the world and other allies strive to guarantee Indigenous Peoples’ rights in UN spaces.
Today, do Vale is Co-chair of the Indigenous Peoples Caucus of the UNFCCC, to which she was nominated by the Coordination of the Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon with broad support from the international Indigenous movement. She emphasizes that her presence in this space is not a quest for power, but for qualified political advocacy with Indigenous diplomacy and collective strategies. The Caucus is a space built by Indigenous Peoples with representatives from the world’s seven sociocultural regions, united by the struggle for rights and recognition in the UNFCCC processes.
“My participation as Co-chair for Latin America and the Caribbean in the Indigenous Caucus is, for me, much more about bringing the experience I’ve gained from a collective process that was built from the ground up, from the community level,” do Vale says. “And through the Caucus, we can collectively bring the interests of Indigenous peoples into these spaces that are so far removed from the realities of our communities.”
For the upcoming COP in Belém, Pará, do Vale highlights the strategic opportunity to ensure a qualified Indigenous presence in the Blue Zone, where central and decisive negotiations on the global climate issue take place. She advocates for Indigenous lands to be included as a contribution to Nationally Determined Contributions to combat climate change, in addition to demanding direct funding for initiatives based on Indigenous knowledge. Topics of priority include climate finance, climate justice, loss and damage, REDD+, carbon markets, Just Transition, Indigenous Traditional Knowledge in collaboration with western science, and recognition of the role of Indigenous communities in maintaining biodiversity and climate balance.
“In our work, we bring together Indigenous knowledge with emerging issues. Over time, new topics kept appearing—first climate change, then REDD, and later all these other mechanisms that began to merge with the knowledge Indigenous Peoples already have about how to care for communities and the environment. Everything is connected to nature: to water, to crops, to medicinal plants, and to how we are able to work with these new topics. These are our own methodologies—they are not written anywhere. They are built through lived experience. We bring a training methodology that I always say is the best: co-creation. We don’t bring anything ready-made. All of our training is always built together with the Indigenous agents,” do Vale says.
Do Vale expects the COP in Brazil to deepen the listening of Indigenous voices and advance the implementation of concrete public policies based on Life Plans, strengthening local action with international support. She is convinced that Indigenous action in these spaces must be collective, political, and connected to territorial realities, and that Indigenous diplomacy is fundamental to ensuring effective progress in global climate processes.
This article is based on an interview with Sineia do Vale by Edson Krenak and Patricia Zuppi.
Top photo courtesy of Sineia do Vale.
