And for once, in her view, she is being heard. For decades her family picked and panned the borderland near Venezuela, scouring the hills for diamonds and gold. They kept digging even after Brazil in 2005 marked the land as indigenous territory, a measure that prohibited mining despite protests from her family and other wildcatters in her Macuxi tribe. Now, Silva has the ear of none other than Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president. A fervid nationalist abhorred by the global green movement for his eagerness to develop the Amazon rainforest, Bolsonaro has twice met Silva in the capital Brasilia. He first saw her, together with some other like-minded tribal leaders, soon after taking power in January 2019 to discuss a bill that would authorize mining on native lands.