<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">Dancing around a campfire in bright feather headdresses, a group of Indigenous eco-warriors prepares the painstaking process of planting the Brazilian pine tree, fighting to save the critically endangered species -- and their way of life.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Xokleng Indigenous group, who live on a threatened reservation in south Brazil, depend on the Araucaria angustifolia tree for food, use its medicinal properties to treat illness and consider it a central element of their spirituality.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But the majestic evergreen, also known as the candelabra tree, is dangerously close to extinction: just three percent of the forests where it was once found survive today, according to the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Without the araucaria, the Xokleng do not exist," says Carl Gakran, a 32-year-old resident of the Ibirama-Laklano reservation.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He is helping lead the effort to save the Brazilian pine by planting tens of thousands of seedlings.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If the tree goes extinct, "our people and our culture are at risk of extinction, too," he says, wearing a traditional headdress of red and blue feathers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Standing up to 40 meters (130 feet) tall, with sweeping branches that fan out from the top, the tree lives to be about 400 years old on average.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Its seeds, which resemble large pine nuts, are a staple food for the 2,200 Xokleng.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But it is also prized by loggers for its quality wood -- helping drive it toward extinction, along with the clear-cutting of forests for farmland.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Alarmed by its decline, Gakran and his wife, Gape, founded an organization to save it: the Zag Institute, after the Xokleng word for the tree.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This is our mother, our sacred tree," says Gape, 36, wearing a headdress similar to her husband's and nursing her baby daughter.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"And we are its guardians."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">- Protection ritual -</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">They estimate they have planted more than 50,000 seedlings so far.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is a delicate, time-consuming and highly ritualized process.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The seeds take around a year to germinate. Once planted, a young tree takes 12 to 15 years to produce seeds of its own.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Before planting them, the Xokleng perform a ritual, singing and dancing around a campfire to call for the seedlings' protection.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Like many Indigenous peoples in Brazil, the Xokleng have suffered decades of persecution and the encroachment of farmers and loggers on their land.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Their reservation, which they share with the Guarani and Kaigang peoples, is at the center of a massive legal dispute in Brazil.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The territory partly lost its protected status when a court ruled the Indigenous groups did not have the right to claim territory where they were not present in 1988, the year Brazil's current constitution was ratified.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Indigenous groups argue they were forced to leave by Brazil's military regime (1964-1985), and still have rightful claim to their ancestral lands.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The case became top news under far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), who left office in December having followed through on his vow not to allow "one more centimeter" of Indigenous reservations in Brazil.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It has been appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, whose ruling could establish a precedent for all Indigenous lands in Brazil.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Xokleng see planting araucarias as another form of resistance.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I learned from my grandparents that Indigenous peoples are born to protect the land. We're the guardians of the Earth, the forests and the araucarias," says Carl.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We need everyone's help to protect them." AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>