Brazilian Indigenous researchers take the stage at American Association for the Advancement of Science

For the first time in the history of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Brazilian Indigenous scientists took the stage as speakers at the association’s 2026 Annual Meeting, held in Phoenix, Arizona. The milestone signals a growing and long-overdue recognition — that Indigenous ecologies of knowledge are not peripheral to science but vital to it. The event was both a scientific statement and a call to action to confront the climate crisis and the socio-ecological tipping points threatening the Amazon.

On February 13, Brazilian Indigenous researchers affiliated with Princeton University’s Department of Anthropology and PIIRS’s Brazil LAB — anthropologist Justino Sarmento Rezende (Tuyuka), anthropologist Sílvio Sanches Barreto (Bará), and environmental scholar Bárbara Nascimento Flores (Borum-Kren) — alongside climate scientist Marina Hirota presented their work on the panel, “Indigenizing Conservation Science and Restoration: Collaborative Perspectives from Brazil.”