Indigenous Peoples Indigenous peoples are those who are native to an area. Throughout the world, there are many groups or tribes of people who were conquered by Europeans in their early conquests throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, by groups of immigrant individuals, and by greedy corporate enterprises seeking to take over their lands. Indigenous peoples in Australia, Brazil, South America and Hawaii are currently fighting for their rights as people: the right to own land, to be free from prejudice and to have their lands protected by society. Indigenous peoples of brazil and south america the indigenous people of brazil and south america are an extremely noteworthy group. The Brazilian population originally derives from four ethnic sources. From the beginning, the country has been a mixture of many "races" of people. Of these, there are native Indians, colonizing Portuguese, enslaved black Africans, and various immigrant groups from Europe and Asia. Many indigenous tribes are in conflict with Brazilian officials and businesses. The rainforests are depleting rapidly and, as they are home to many indigenous tribes, this is causing great disruption. Although the 1988 Constitution claims to give Indians "original land rights to the lands they traditionally occupy" and promises that these lands will be "demarcated" and "protected", the government agency Funai is responsible for the delimitation of almost fifty percent of the lands (PeaceNet). The report states that "in reality, most Indian lands, demarcated or not, are targeted for some form of development." This claim is supported by the fact that "mining concessions have been made on fifty-eight percent of all Indian demarcated lands, while thirteen percent are affected by hydroelectric projects" (PeaceNet). The link between global environmental change and the rights of indigenous peoples results from the close relationship between the cultural and economic situation of indigenous peoples and their environmental context. Therefore, if the environment of the native Indians of Brazil continues to be modified and removed, the people born in these lands will be exterminated and disappear. Furthermore, many social opinions about indigenous people are killing them. The Amnesty International report, commented on by PeaceNet, cites an occasion when a thirty-five-year-old Macuxi Indian named Damiao Mendes was found lying face down on the muddy bank of a river, shot in the neck. Nearby lay his nineteen-year-old nephew, murdered by the same means.