October 28, 2025
By Claire Biason,
Coalitions & Engagement Program Manager
The Amazon Basin is home to immense cultural and ecological diversity, where Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, and local communities play a central role in defending territories that are vital for the planet’s future. Recognizing the urgency of strengthening territorial rights and governance in the region, Tenure Facility has convened Yutzu Group, a collective of people designed to bring together diverse leaders to reflect, advise, and generate innovative strategies on the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Yutzu, in Amazonian cultures, is a plant valued not only for its medicinal properties but also for its vital role in sustaining watersheds and protecting riverbanks from erosion. Inspired by this symbol of knowledge and resilience, the Yutzu Group brings together 15 Indigenous leaders from Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, Bolivia, and Brazil. United by their diverse backgrounds and experiences, they form a plural and collective voice from the Amazon Basin.
At its core, the group is guided by two objectives. Strategic guidance involves offering input and reflections on Tenure Facility’s work in the Amazon, helping to shape approaches and intervention strategies that are responsive to the realities of the region. Reflection and learning serves as a space to collectively analyze regional trends, advances, and challenges—identifying best practices and lessons learned in land management, autonomy, and the defense of the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, and local communities. Together, these goals ensure Yutzu Group functions both as a compass for action and as a forum for continuous exchange.
The first meeting of Yutzu Group was held in September 2025 in the Tapajós River region, southern Brazilian Amazon. Over five days, participants engaged in deep exchanges about territory (such as mapping, titling, and protected areas); community funds and financing; gender and youth inclusion; and opportunities to strengthen collective capacities.
The gathering was organized by Tenure Facility in collaboration with TINTA, a strategic partner in designing and facilitating the Yutzu Group´s learning process. TINTA played a central role in shaping the methodology, communications, language coordination and logistics – ensuring that simultaneous interpretation in Spanish, Portuguese, and English allowed participants to engage fully and inclusively, so linguistic diversity enriched rather than limited the dialogue.
The meeting also included valuable encounters with local leaderships, offering the chance to connect directly with communities whose daily lives embody the challenges and strengths of Amazonian territorial governance.
The Tapajós region is a historically significant region. Birthplace of the Tapajonica Civilization, the Cabanagem revolution, and, more recently, the renewed struggles for land and territory during the democratic resistance of the 1970s and 1980s.
The region has become a mosaic of Indigenous lands, reserves, agro-extractive settlements, and quilombos, showing enormous territorial diversity in land use and ownership.
At its first meeting, the Yutzu Group learned from local leaders about governance experiences in the Tapajós River region.
In the Vista Alegre do Capixauã village, located within the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractivist Reserve, participants learned about how this protected area has become key to conserving socio-biodiversity, strengthening traditional ways of life, and promoting sustainable development. Later, the experience of Tierra Curi, part of the Lago Grande Agroextractivist Settlement Project (PAE), which since 2005 has guaranteed collective land use to traditional communities across 250,000 hectares. Finally, in Quilombo Arapemã, on the banks of the Amazon River near Santarém, participants got to know a community whose recent history is marked by a pivotal achievement: the 2020 delivery of collective property titles by the municipality, officially recognizing their quilombola land rights.
The launch of Yutzu Group marks the beginning of a long-term process of learning and collective dialogue. With the Amazon facing unprecedented pressures and opportunities, this group embodies a commitment to listen, learn, and act in partnership with those most directly connected to the land. By bringing together voices from across the Basin in a trusted and creative space, Yutzu Group aspires to strengthen the foundations for territorial governance that secures rights, sustains cultures, and protects one of the world’s most vital ecosystems.
