Maria Tereza Silva

Brazilian indigenous rights leader preserving Amazon ecosystems through legal advocacy

Maria Tereza Silva (b.1978) is a Kayapó indigenous leader and lawyer from Brazil's Pará state, whose legal battles have protected vast Amazon regions from illegal logging. As founder of the Kayapó Legal Defense Network (2003), she developed innovative strategies combining traditional ecological knowledge with modern legal frameworks to combat deforestation.

Her landmark 2016 case Fundo Kayapó vs. IBAMA resulted in Brazil's first ever environmental fines based on indigenous land use data. Silva's team created IndigenaGIS, a mapping system that documents ancestral territories using GPS and drone technology, which has been adopted by 12 Amazonian tribes.

In 2020 she pioneered the Amazon Legal Shield project, training over 500 indigenous leaders in digital取证 and international law. Her work was pivotal in stopping the Jatobá hydroelectric project threatening 12,000 km² of rainforest. Silva's TEDx talk "Our Forests, Our Law" (2019) has become a key resource for environmental activists worldwide.

She co-authored Brazil's 2021 Indigenous Territories Protection Act, integrating indigenous land rights into national environmental policy. Despite death threats from logging cartels, Silva continues to advocate at UN climate conferences, arguing that "indigenous knowledge is the Amazon's most effective firewall against destruction."