As COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe, national leaders offer conflicting approaches to tame its path of destruction. Citizens around the world are urging Brazilian leaders “to adopt immediate measures to protect the country’s indigenous populations against the devastating virus.” Brazilian artists Sebastião Salgado and Lélia Wanick Salgado created a petition and open letter addressed to the President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, that has been signed by around 220,000 people-including famous celebrities such as Meryl Streep, Paul McCartney, and Brad Pitt.

In the open letter created on May 1st, the authors argue that the main reason why Brazilian indigenous tribes are at risk of decimation is the illegal intrusion of outsiders on their lands for economic gain such as “miners, loggers and land grabbers.” According to Amazon Watch, an organization devoted to spreading awareness of the struggles that the Amazon’s indigenous people face, “more than 20,000 [outsiders] have illegally invaded the Yanomami territory,” one of the Amazon’s largest indigenous tribes, in the past year. These outsiders frequently transport common diseases into the area that the isolated tribes of the Amazon have never experienced. The indigenous people’s lack of immunity can lead to a widespread eradication of their populations. Since COVID-19 has proven to be detrimental to even the most prepared areas, it is most likely to have grave consequences on Amazonian tribes. “We are on the eve of a genocide,” Sebastião Salgado told the Guardian.

It is essential to the preservation of some of Brazil’s oldest communities, their people, and their cultures that the Brazilian government takes more extreme and calculated measures to protect the indigenous people of the Amazon as soon as possible. The Amazonian tribes do not have the medical necessities needed to treat patients for COVID-19, and the medical treatment camps proposed and carried out by the Brazilian government has surprisingly proven to be a possible threat to the indigenous people due to the importation of professionals already exposed to the Coronavirus. Additionally, the Brazilian authorities typically responsible for the protection of Amazonian tribal borders against outsiders have been immobilized by the pandemic; like the open letter argues, the Brazilian government must send more reenforcement dedicated to both safe medical practices and the defense of indigenous boundaries against outsiders potentially carrying the virus.

The Coronavirus first reached the Amazon in April, and came to public attention when a teenage Yanomami boy was diagnosed with COVID-19. The boy, Alvaney Xirixana, had been in and out of local hospitals but did not receive a Coronavirus test until his fourth visit, when he had reached critical condition. Three days after testing positive, the boy died in the only ICU in the area. Since then, according to the New York Times, more than 80 indigenous Brazilian people have tested positive for COVID-19 – and those are just those who were able to access tests – and seven have died. Though it has released statements condemning the spread of COVID-19 within its indigenous areas and it has pledged to send more resources to combat it, the government of Brazil has yet to create more intensive care units in the area, leaving the singular ICU in the Amazon state overwhelmed with bodies and patients.

Letting the indigenous people of the Amazon succumb to the Coronavirus is letting extensive history, culture, and a remarkable effort to save the Amazon rainforest, disappear. Time will tell if the open letter and petition created by Sebastião Salgado and Lélia Wanick Salgado and co-signed by major celebrities from important industries will be the fuel the Brazilian government needs to commit to the prevention of COVID-19 in the area before it is too late. In the meantime, other leaders in the Amazon area are also taking a public stand against the inaction by their government; the mayor of the capital city of the Amazon rainforest region, Arthur Virgilio, reached out to world leaders demanding support and action: “We need medical personnel, ventilators, protective equipment, anything that can save the lives of those who protect the great forest.”