 Thank you. Thank you so much. And now we have everybody gathered here. We can start in it in a good way. I am as I said before, please find the icon, the interpretation icon, the bottom of your screen and choose either English or or Portuguese. I'd like to begin this gathering with a land acknowledgement. Before I begin the land acknowledgement, I would like to acknowledge the 215 children. This news of the 250 children who are found at the residential school or former residential school in in Kamala loops, and I'd like to begin by honoring them by morning them and calling for justice for those 250 children. And all the other children at residential schools in Canada who never went home. And who are buried on this land. As an organization that employs indigenous staff. Cairo staff who are directly connected to this history, and some to this school this residential school, whose parents were taken and attended that school. So as the country mourns the lives lost and their spirits honored, we stand in solidarity, and we will continue to support and invest Canadians, knowing and facing the hard truth of our history. And we acknowledge the intergenerational trauma that is faced by our own staff during this time of morning. If you'll join me in a in a land acknowledgement acknowledgement. I'd like to acknowledge that we are meeting today on the traditional territories of indigenous peoples across Turtle Island. We thank them for allowing us to meet and learn on these territories to the original caretakers of the land on which we stand. We acknowledge the land in which I'm on right now. It's historical territory of the here on Wendat the Petun, the Seneca, the Seneca, and most recently the Mississauga of the Credit Indigenous peoples. To all that, to all that was here for thousands of years before us across Turtle Island. We honor the struggles and the lives of those who gave themselves for it. Those here today we acknowledge the ancestors beneath our feet and the land on which we stand. With our ears to the ground we hear them, the Cree Nation, the Metis, the DNA, the Anishinaabe, the Lakota, the Lakota Nations, the Inuit, the Blackfoot, the Inu, and all the nations that came before us, and those yet to come. The affinity of footsteps of those who long, who long called this land home, the unfolding of bundles, the undoing of colonization, and the opening of this land to allow treaties to come alive. We affirm our relationship to each other and to the land. We acknowledge and pay respects to the indigenous nations and the ancestors of this land. Again, I acknowledge the land here, the land governed by the dish with one spoon, Wampum Belt Covenant. Once again, I acknowledge it. This is where I am. And I'd like you to acknowledge wherever you are, the land and the original people and the history of that land. So, greetings everybody. Before we start, maybe a bit of Zoom etiquette. Please keep your microphone muted when you're not speaking. Be mindful that your cameras are on. Please post any questions that you have during the session in the chat. Be respectful of everyone. This event is being recorded in English and Portuguese, and the recordings will be available in a few days. Hey, good afternoon. My name is Rachel Warden and I am partnership manager at Kairos. And it is a great honor to be here today to, to launch to this for the support and event to launch the Brazilian phase of the mayor hub. This is Kairos' living digital hub on the gendered impacts of resource extraction. Mayor hub stands for mother earth and resource extraction women defending land and water. And it was a call it was initiated by women land defenders themselves in November 2019. The mayor hub contains a wide range of materials on women and land defense and water defense and and and the impacts of resource extraction on women and the lives of those who are protecting that land and water. I encourage you to check it out. The materials include background information on the intersection between gendered and and extractivism literature maps maps lots of maps of conflict of concessions and projects, guides on the defense of land and water resources on corporate accountability documentaries videos and everything in between. The mayor hub has been developed in phases and is available in three languages now. The first phase focused on Latin America, and it is in Spanish, the second phase focused on Canada and that was launched in last year in June. And we're here today to celebrate the third phase in Portuguese focus with a focus on Brazil. And you're going to hear much more about that in the next hour. So here this mayor hub really begins with with Fabrizio Tello, who you'll meet shortly. He is the volunteer extraordinaire who who translated much of the material on the mayor hub into Portuguese. As you may already be aware, but you'll learn much more about today Brazil is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a land defender. If you're not harassed or attacked, you're criminalized and you're going to hear more and personal stories about that today. The COVID-19 response is one of the worst in the world in Brazil. And this confirms the government's disregard for human rights and the environment. In terms of resource extraction, there have been three tailing down breaches that ties to Canadian extractive set, which ties to the Canadian extractive sector, the most recent of which was this past March in the Amazon region of the Brazilian state of Brazil and now. No less concerning the Brazilian government is hoping to open indigenous lands to mining with with a new proposed bill 191 2020. And this past weekend, thousands of Brazilians took to the street to protest their government, their government's COVID-19 response. And I'm sure Leah, who you'll hear from shortly we'll talk more about this this context. I'd also like to acknowledge that as we speak in Colombia, there are partners and and and people throughout Colombia are gathered in public spaces for a national feminist vigil. Cairo supports this vigil and the people's rights to nonviolent public assembly across the Americas in Brazil and in Colombia. And now it is with great pleasure that I get to introduce Fabricio Tello, who is really the instigator of this Portuguese Brazil mayor hub. Fabricio Tello is a newcomer to Vancouver from Brazil, where he completed his PhD in social science from the federal university, a rural university of Rio de Janeiro, investigating investigating land disputes and violence in rural areas. Previously he served as a researcher on a project for the Rio de Janeiro Truth State Truth Commission, entitled conflicts and repression in the countryside and Rio de Janeiro, where he investigated human rights abuses suffered by rural workers during the Brazilian military dictatorship. Fabricio has worked in partnership with several rural movements in Brazil, including the movement of people affected by dams and small farm and the small farmers movement. In addition to volunteer being a volunteer extraordinaire at Cairo, he is currently conducting research on literacy in rural Brazil as a as a consultant with the Inter-American Institute on cooperation of that for agriculture. So Fabricio will be your moderator today in today's discussion with Sonia and Maria Julia in Portuguese. Then Devin Fulterman will give a brief presentation from the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability's new campaign, which was launched today. A short question and answer period will follow thereafter. So please, as I said, please keep your, please, please write your questions in the chat. But that's enough for me. I want to welcome Fabricio. Welcome. Thank you very much, Rachel. I would like to say that I'm currently living in the territory of the people across the country, including the territory of others in other indigenous peoples, which is known as Vancouver. It's a pleasure to be here in this meeting, with Sonia and Maria Julia Desano, and Sonia, which are important community personalities, I'd also like to thank Cairo, specially for the opportunity to be a volunteer here, and strengthen the ties between indigenous peoples. This is an event that's treating a very important thing. Yeah, that's very important event. The first is the mind that we had in the meeting. The violence against the indigenous people that we had as well, as Sonia came out. And the problems that we had. We had a fire in the state of Paraguay. So we're going to have five minutes of Sonia and Maria Julia. And at the end, we're going to have questions of the public. Maria Julia, can you tell us a bit about the movement for currently the greatest part of the national movement? Oh, in my mind. I would like to thank the president of the country. For multiple reasons as well. First, I'd like to thank Cairo's for this invitation and specially Fabricio. He's the one that brought me in. I'd like to thank Cairo's for this effort for translating all this material. This is what's going to connect us so we can share our experiences, even though we speak different languages. First, I'd like to thank Sonia and tell her I'm very happy when I found out she was going to be part of this activity. I've been following Sonia for many years now, and I'd like to tell her that she's a great, she's a great model to everyone. And I'd like to say that I'm very sorry for all the persecution that you're having to go through right now, and all women that are trying to fight mining. I'd like to say that, as Rachel said at first, going through a very different time in Brazil, things that are happening are not news. Brazil has always been a very country that's marked by inequality. We've always been exploited, especially our natural resources. And I'd like to name every indigenous people that's been going through this ever since our president Bolsonaro has been elected things have become even worse. So what we're going through is an intensification and acceleration of structural problems in Brazil, and they've been becoming worse. So it's not been easy to go through the pandemic in the midst of this government. We have a lot of people from MST, which is the movement for landless workers in Brazil were contaminated with COVID, and they're at the hospital so we've been going through a lot. The attacks on indigenous people, the increase on exploitation of natural resources, and in the attempt to make environmental legislation even more flexible. We've had an increase in poverty and social inequality. And there's also the increase in mining in Brazil. Last year, we had a massive increase in licensing for mining projects for new projects and for existing projects. And this becomes a massive boom in illegal mining in the Amazon. This is a no problem but now it's been even incentivated. And in the state of Minas Gerais, we have a lot of things going on. We have a lot of projects that are starting, and we have zoom meetings to approve projects we have one hour zoom meetings. And then projects are approved. And this has been getting even worse in Brazil. So we're trying to follow up on conflicts regarding mining in Brazil. Thank you very much. I will now invite Sonia to introduce herself. Sonia is the executive secretary for a P, which is the articulation of Brazil's indigenous people. She has a degree in special education from the Federal University of Maranhão, where she was born. She's also a teacher. And she initiated her activism in the articulation of Maranhão state indigenous people, which then led her to get her current position as executive coordinator at the articulation of Brazil's indigenous peoples, a PIP. And Sonia has been recently facing political persecution for her leadership, defending indigenous rights from the federal government. So thank you Sonia for being here today. I know this is your third webinar today. You had one in the morning and a second one in the afternoon when I hear with us so thank you very much for your effort. If you could also tell us about the impact of the epidemic on the indigenous people, it would be great. Thank you for the floor. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Thank you very much for inviting me. I'd also like to thank you for being here tonight. I'd like to thank Maria Julia for what she said. She was very informative very strong. This is a difficult moment we're going through. We're having to surpass a few barriers that are very harsh and very dangerous. There's a pandemic amidst everything that's making everything that we were going through even worse. So right now the scenario for indigenous people and all the peoples that are in these territories which are exploited are is a very difficult scenario. We're suffering attacks and invasions from every side that are lost that exist but are not followed. And we're trying to find a safe haven to protect ourselves, but we're not being able to find them. Even the Freeland camp this year brought as a thing that our fight is still for our lives. It's not only a virus. We're not fighting the pandemic only. We have the pandemic which is our federal government, our political scenario, and they want at every cost, not only to strip us of rights that we already have, but also strip us of our identity of our way of life. So there's the virus of mining there's the virus of illegal expectation environmental of the measures that are on the federal grover is bringing in. So we're always fighting against this lack of accountability in cities like Brumadinho and Mariana, where we had issues and the waters are still contaminated after the tailing dams bursted. So now we're having to check this bill that's on National Congress and they're trying to approve. And there's mining companies such as the Canadian mining company bellows on and our companies such as valley and they're pressuring our government and our executive powers. They're trying to approve bills in the Congress to make mining Leo. And this is very serious because we already know the consequences of this type of mining. We've been suffering attacks on our territories. We've been prosecuted our leaderships prosecuted. So it's persecuted sorry. So, if this is already happening right now with small groups of minors, imagine when large corporations start invading our territories. Everything that arrives our territory is a direct threat to the lives of our people, like diseases and invasion. We had recent attacks with machine guns to the young money people. And this was not only a decision of the minors that were mining our land. This is also a demonstration from the federal government, they're inciting this invasion. So this fire that happened in the house of women who do Roku of who do Roku women. This is also a way of trying to make us step down in our fight they're trying to. They're trying to silence us. They're trying to make these bills pass on the executive. of legislation for sale. So we're women who are trying to fight against this. The pandemic unfortunately makes it hard for us to get to the capital of Brazil and big numbers but we're still fighting we're trying to articulate with together with international organizations we're using the media we're using alternative press, trying to bring visibility on all these attacks. And this has already killed around 1054 indigenous peoples, indigenous in Brazil. And this has been confirmed. And if we also consider all the people who have died as a consequence of COVID, this number is way larger. 163 people have been contaminated with just over half of the peoples in Brazil. So this is a very serious issue the Amazon is the most affected vision. And this is still very, very serious. We're talking about a third wave, but we're, this is only a continuity because this pandemic hasn't gone away at any time. The vaccine has arrived bringing some hope but it hasn't arrived for everyone. And even though indigenous peoples are a priority group, at least 42% of the indigenous population is not being serviced by this federal government immunization program, because a lot of us are not part, not living in the marked lands are living in human in her but sorry in urban areas, or are not registered in the census so 42% around 42% of our indigenous population is being executed, excluded from this vaccination plan. So we're here to talk about all these mining programs that are trying to destroy our environment and our lives. And we're going to fight this with our unity of the force of our ancestrality. And all this force that's been with us with for 521 years. Thank you very much Sonya. This is very inspiring. Thank you for sharing your story with us. I would like to ask you to please tell us a bit more about this bill one on one. What are the powers that are trying to approve this bill, and what's the impact that's going to have on the communities connected to a pig. And other indigenous communities. So, do the indigenous community see this bill one like one thing that I'd like to bring forward is that indigenous people indigenous peoples have their own organizations and own leaderships. And our effort is trying to support the initiatives coming from these organizations. This is actually a PIP, which has been suspended due to the pandemic, and a PIP is the articulation of indigenous peoples of Brazil. And last March, we had an articulation with a PIP and other NGOs, popular movements. And we're trying to bring these groups together so as to bring forward our fight against the president. And we even bought plane tickets but then right after that the pandemic happened and all this has been suspended. So these attacks, and attacks to the Unduruku villages and women and the Yanomani. This is something that our president has been saying throughout his whole campaign has been incentivizing mining throughout the Amazon. And in parallel has been also trying to assure that big projects, big mining projects, as Sonia said, projects that are of industrial scale, massive scale, Bolsonaro is trying to approve these projects. Currently, it's not legal to mine in the marked indigenous lands. In the past few years, even before the current president, the fight for the fight from miners and from other industries that need that type of land is to try and avoid that new indigenous lands are the marked. We are trying to use the geological diversity of the Amazon to bring in new investments. And as Sonia mentioned, we have Bello Sun, which is a mining company from Canada and they're trying to mine in one of the indigenous the marked lands called Chingu. We also had the Bello Monte industry and during the Governor Bolsonaro and before it, we've been looking at the Amazon trying to extract our geological resources. So what's happening now is a more coordinated approach. Bello 191 is not the only one that's that they're trying to approve. This is not the only project that's trying to approve industrial mining in the Amazon and this is the saddest part. So many of these investments that are coming with full force now, they had already been around before, even in previous governments. This attack is not new. In our democratic period post dictatorship. We've had many projects, many bills that they're trying to approve to so we can have mining in the indigenous lands. Making these projects are not go forward that fast this international pressure pressure and people like Sonia who've been speaking and trying to make noise about what's going on. So we have the situation now the industrial scale mining is on hold, but small scale mining is going on at full force. And it's not what you think with people trying to find gold nuggets by the river we're talking about huge machines and heavy metals, causing massive destruction, which is also reversible. Thank you very much Maria Julia. Can you please compliment on a peeps perspective on this. We're totally against this bill. And we want to stop it. Before we had project or bill 1610, which was which they were trying to approve for a while. Bill one one one was brought forward by the government themselves. They're trying to regulate the exploitation of mineral, hydric and organic resources in land marked sorry in marked indigenous territories in Brazil. So this initiative is from the federal government and they're trying to bring forward what our president Bolsonaro has been defending for a long time because they want to leverage indigenous territories economically. So, we have mining. And we also have every business. They've been trying to approve the use of land. And one of Bolsonaro strips to our state of Rima he said there's three trillion realists in our lands, and that indigenous peoples have the right to exploit this because they should not remain keep on being poor on top of very rich lands. And what they think is that all they think about is profits, they want to profit on exploiting the land, what they value is what they're going to get out of it in terms of money. They don't care how they're going to affect our identities or the environment, because they don't really care about the future. They don't care that this is going to bring irreversible issues for future generations. So this bill brings forward specific conditions for exploiting gold and iron ore and hydrocarbonates oil natural gas, and also to leverage rivers for the use of hydro electrical power plants. This bill encompasses every type of exploitation that they can. So for this, everything, they can do everything. They are trying to divide and conquer our indigenous populations, they're trying to get our support. And today we had good news. There's 27 requests for mining on the Anglo American. And we've been trying to, we've been trying to take out these requirements because all these mining requests are within the marked indigenous lands. And today we got this information from the Anglo American Association that these 27 requests have been reviewed. And they are now withdrawing these requests, which is great news for us. This is being now formalized. And out of these 27 requests, 13 were requests to exploit the Wunduruku lands. And this is great news to us. Now we can try to take the federal police back there to take the invaders and the miners out of our land. So our fight now in the Wunduruku territories from our leaderships is to try and pressure and have the federal police back in our land so they can complete their operation. The Ministry of Defense did not assure the logistics needed for federal police to stay in our territory. We are sure that this was, this was orchestrated by the executive powers, because President Bolsonaro defends invaders, he defends miners. They defend all these miners and agribusinesses. So due to this, we have these daily fights, and we try to do this on the courts or on the lands everywhere. So when we're doing this, we're persecuted and even killed unfortunately. We had data from violence on the feud in 2020 and we had 18 murderers. Out of them seven were indigenous people. So this is a very tense moment. We keep fighting to try and protect our way of life and our territories. Thank you very much Sonia this is really great news. That Anglo America this association is trying to take away these mining requests in indigenous lands. The last questions I have is, what are the main impacts of mining to the people's health and security in the communities that are near the mines. I'm here right now from the state of Minas Gerais, I'm from here. I live in a city called Oro Preto which is very near a city called Mariana, where the one of the greatest tailing them bursts happened. This was not the first ever but was definitely the greatest we had a deep environmental impact. And it's also the same state where the city of Brumadinho is placed, where another tailing them first in 2019. And there's, and we had like hundreds of people affected. And 73 people died in the past few weeks. We've had around 2000 people die every day in Brazil. And quote, this has improved because a month ago around 4000 people were dying every day. And this was news that were all over the world. This is the most public view on mining in Brazil, while we had in Mariana when the tailing them burst. Because a lot of people found out about mining in Brazil, and its impact when they saw the images of Mariana and how the, and how the mud destroyed the cities around it. And when they saw that mud getting to the sea and flowing through the river all the way to the sea. And this destruction that was caused in seconds from these two bursts on the tailing dams is insane. In Minas Gerais we had over 2000 people taken away from their homes. And family members of mine, because of the impact of mining. We had the tailing them burst that caused this massive impact, but we also have the everyday impacts, for instance, risks of blows and the, and the dust and the contamination of water and the noise. And the contamination of the water that's in the rivers or under the earth. A large iron ore mining dries all the water sources around it on a radius of six kilometers. What I brought up is something that I've been seeing in my state for a long time when they announced that mining is coming they say it's progress it's going to bring wealth and bring job opportunities. So they announced it as something great. And I'm saying this from a region that's been mining for almost 300 years. So here is there's no possibility of agriculture in our state, because there's no clear water clean water for us. So it affects mining effects, the way a lot of people live, for instance farmers and people who depend on the land, because there's no possible conciliation. It's like people who live in indigenous lands, or other types of protected land to have a good relationship with mining. What also comes with mining is violence, and the impact in violence is a violence is not the same for everyone. It's worse for women. So it's something we've been trying to, to bring attention to, and mom, for instance, which is the movement for popular starting team mining. In the fight of the people, there's no way we don't think of women. We have letters of people and these letters come in and they bring testimonials of what's going on. There's no way that we don't think that most people who are trying to take a stance on this issue are women. And women are the ones who are exposed to most of this violence and violence, including domestic violence, including rape. Mining is an industry with temporary contracts, with, with odd jobs, and men who work in mining in Brazil, unfortunately, are very harsh men. They're more rude and unfortunately they discount this on their women and on their children, their daughters. Another thing that affects people is the dirt. So there's more dust in, in people's clothes and people's houses, and the weight of taking care of people who are ill also goes on to women. So there's this mountainous region in Ministerize called Sarado Espinoso and it's been destroyed by mining. And I don't know one woman who's involved in these fight against mining, who has not suffered a type of violence, because they're out there trying to speak out they're trying to do something against it. And every day we're having to help a woman or bring her from A to B to protect her from their companion, we're trying to protect them and whore these women they're indigenous. They're African-Brazilian they're trying to come forward their journalists. And we have many of these women here now, and I want to bring forward Judith Marshall, and I like to thank her a lot. She's been helping us, especially at the beginning of MAM. She's trying to bring to us the understanding of what it is to be a woman in this fight against mining. The fight against mining in Brazil has a has the face of a woman. So I'm asking for Brazil to, to put up a video of a fight from 2016 from when women from the landless peoples of Brazil and MAM, occupied a dam that ended up bursting in 2015. And it was the first time in that region that's been suffering from mining for a long time that we had a direct fight, a direct conflict. It was the first time in the history of that region in which we had a fight and this fight was started by women. And I'd like to thank everyone here and thanks, Sonia, saying that it's a pleasure to be here today. Thank Fabricio, thank Gabriela, thank Rachel as well. Thank you very much for this moment that we're having here. And now, and by showing you this video. Women fighting against the mud that's violent and kills. I was a mother. When the mud arrived, my boy who was here with me, he was four years old. And he was daring. And as if he wasn't enough, the one that I had with me is now blood and mud. How much does the life of a person mean? How much is a person worth? They transform the heat and all this disgrace involved in this battle into a fight. Here we are with a lot of mixed feelings. We have feelings of, of hate. We're here trying, we're here wanting to cry and we're here sad. But especially, we're here today to say that a South Eastern region of Brazil is showing the greatness of what women has been trying to do. It's only possible to build a new life if we fight the capital. We can only redistribute land if we fight a company like the mining, the minor valley. We can only build a life of equality between men and women if we fight the capital directly. When we transgress the order, the future becomes breathable. When we transgress the order, the future becomes breathable. It's a very impacting video. Thank you very much Maria Julia for bringing forward. When we transgress the order, the future becomes breathable. Sonia would like, would you like to add the perspective of the indigenous people on the impacts of mining on your health and safety? I think this video is a very clear picture of all the consequences of mining and what it causes to our lives. It leaves a trace of destruction behind and I'd like to remind everyone that these audio files from the miners that have been going around in the month of April. They're trying to organize a mobilization in the capital of Brazil, Brasilia, and these audio files reveal how much they're trying to invest in keeping exploring the land. April, which is a month that's always been considered by us as the month of indigenous peoples and resistance and the freelance camp. This month they tried to hack the month of April. These audio files have been going around and people are trying to raffle and to have auctions to see who gives more money so they can get money to get indigenous peoples to the capital of Brazil. These people who they were calling allies, they were trying to bring in front of the Supreme Court of Brazil so they could be in favor of the bills that are pro-mining and against indigenous populations. The miners were trying to bring some indigenous to Brazil who they were called allies to get the government to rush their approval on mining projects. And on these audio files that they're trying to gather money for this, they were saying, come to mining, there's room for everyone. Women can be cooks, women can wash their clothes, and there's other types of services in case they're single. So it's really open, it's insane the way in which they try and exploit women. Women go there to be abused, exploited, and they even do public advertising to try and lure people into this. So I'd like to bring forward these audio files to reinstate how much mining is as bad as evil for the land and for people on top of all the land and river contamination, all the diseases that it brings into the indigenous lands. It also leaves this trace of destruction that's totally reversible. So we have to be against this distorted progress logic that they have, which is this progress that's based on destruction that's based on death, which is what mining leaves behind this trace of destruction and death. Thank you very much, Sonia. Before we move forward to the audience's questions, I'd like to bring in Devin Holterman. He's the communications and fundraising coordinator at the Canadian Network Incorporated Accountability. He holds a PhD in human geography from York University, and he has long been involved in social justice and environmental activism in Canada and around the globe. Today Devin is going to bring us the proposal of the Canadian Network of Corporate Responsibility. So thank you very much, Devin. You now have the floor. Thank you so much for organizing this very important event this evening and for inviting me to participate. I am very honored to be with you all tonight, and I have certainly learned a lot already this evening. As you said, my name is Devin Holterman and I work with the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability or the CNCA. And today I'll very briefly be speaking about some of our network's efforts in working to ensure that Canadian companies operating overseas are held accountable. For those that don't know, the CNCA is the national coordination body for civil society groups and labour unions advancing business and human rights in Canada. The organization was formed in 2005, and the CNCA unites 39 environmental and human rights NGOs, religious organizations, labour unions and solidarity groups, including Kairos. Together we call for Canadian law and policy reform to ensure that communities impacted by Canadian companies overseas can access remedy in Canada. Canadian companies respect human rights in their global operations, and if companies are involved in overseas abuses, they face real consequences in Canada. I'll start today by simply stating that it is long known that some Canadian companies are implicated in human rights abuses and environmental damage around the globe. And despite knowing about the seriousness of corporate abuse for many decades, Canada has failed to establish rules that require Canadian companies respect human rights in the environment in their global operations and throughout their supply chains. Instead, Canada relies on what are generally referred to as voluntary mechanisms for business and human rights. And these mechanisms we know after many decades do not work very well in protecting human rights and the environment. Corporate abuse is of course not a problem unique to Canada. So to ensure corporate accountability, several countries have enacted or are in the process of adopting laws that actually require companies to review all of their business activities and relationships. Identify actual and potential risks to people on the planet that stem from these activities and relationships. Take steps to mitigate mitigate and address these risks and to ensure remedy for those that are harmed by corporate activity. This is often referred to as human rights and environmental due diligence. And you'll see this term used in discussions in international corporate accountability discussions quite frequently. On some of these international proposals that have been coming forward over the last number of years, the CNCA has worked with legal professionals, subject experts, our membership and global partners to draft model legislation that provides a blueprint for lawmakers to write into Canadian law, the corporate respect for human rights and the environment. Actually, earlier today we released this draft model legislation that will be guiding our networks campaigning efforts into the near future. And so, if adopted this, the CNCA's legal proposal would require Canadian companies to prevent human rights and environmental harm throughout their global operations and supply chains. Under this model legislation, if a company causes harm or fails to do its due diligence, it could be subject to legal action in Canada. In my remaining few moments, I don't want to take too much time this evening. I will discuss three core elements of the CNCA's proposed law. So first in this proposed model legislation, the law actually establishes a duty on Canadian companies to prevent human rights and environmental harm. So if this law was adopted companies would have to take steps to ensure that they are respecting human rights and the environment throughout their operations and supply chains. Secondly, the model law again if adopted would require companies to conduct due diligence and publicly report on the steps taken to prevent human rights and environmental harms. So companies would have to consult with rights holders, identify risks and stop contributing to harm throughout their operations and their supply chains. And finally this model law, it also includes significant consequences for companies that cause harm and or fail to conduct their due diligence. Communities and workers who suffer would have access to remedy and would have the statutory right to sue companies in Canadian courts. If a company does not develop, implement and or report on its due diligence, it could also face legal action if this model legislation was adopted by Canada. So I will just finish by saying that our network will be actively campaigning for this law to be enacted in Canada in the coming months and years. And we are calling on Canada to catch up to global leaders in Europe and other countries who have adopted similar laws and ensure that Canadian companies respect human rights and the environment, and that those harmed have access to remedy. Thank you again for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much, Devin. This is a very interesting law. This will be interesting to society. Thank you to everyone involved having these companies being held responsible for their actions, especially the mining companies and all the companies that violate human rights. We have two questions. So we can finish first of all is how do you Maria Julia and Sonia think that we could build more solidarity ties between Canadian and Brazilian organizations and how we in Canada. Can we contribute to the fight for land and water in Brazil. The second question is the behavior of mining company companies during the pandemic. How would you characterize the presence of these mining companies in indigenous communities since the pandemic started. So starting with the last question. So on Viviana's question at the beginning of the pandemic, there was a decree from the president of Brazil Bolsonaro classifying several economic activities as being essential. So on this decree of March 2020, he said that mining was an essential activity. So this was good for the mining companies because this protected then them judiciously. This helped them to continue operating and to continue licensing the environmental projects. So we have several levels of environmental licensing and these projects have a few steps, and now they're the governments being able to bring down these several steps and trying to simplify everything into one single bill that's now passed to the Senate. The licensing in all levels have kept on happening last year. So if you have a small scale mining, for instance, a query or something like that. It's been licensed, it's been approved in a one to our online audience. And just a reminder books communities don't even have access to the internet. So sometimes they have mobile data or they don't really have Wi Fi or optic fiber. And there are also large scale projects in which this continue to happen. So, we're now in 2021, and we had a lot of approvals in the world of mining, especially in iron ore and box site. So we have the possibility in the short term to have a massive increase in conflicts related to mining, because we keep on approving new minings, and the ones that already existed also keep on happening. So we have a map that we did for two regions, two states minister rise and para. We have the mine of Karajas, which is the biggest iron ore map of mine in the world. And you can see on the map. The map shows the level of contamination on the land and it's sky rockets near the mine. So we have a lot of deaths related to it. And in the neighboring cities or the neighboring communities you see that this net death rate goes down a bit compared to where the minus the biggest project of Anglo America outside of Africa is also located on my state which is minister rise. And you can see the increase, which is on the, the terms compared to the municipalities around it, which live on farming and agriculture. So the death rate near these massive mining projects is way higher than the ones around it. So if we can get more support, it would be great because the indigenous peoples of Brazil are under attack. We need more letters and more and more testimonials and we need them translated and we need them the word spread, because this helps the pressure. This work is very important translating the files and the books, we have this website which is a repository for materials. And if we can have the support from this network of translators this would be great. Because we have many minors in Brazil, and specially Canadian minors this helps us have, it helps us to have more information on them. The biggest tailing them in the state of ministerize is from Canadian company. It's in the state of ministerize but it's two hours away from our capital, Brazil. Sometimes it's hard to realize the, the path that money follows. So this information is very important. And we, and we also have some urgency in the project involving the mining company from Canada called fellow son, we, we can have it installed in the indigenous land. And I'd like to thank Kairos for inviting us. Sonia, please. I'd like to add something. I'd like to add something about the levels of mercury contamination, especially in the money and the cool lens. At some point, and then we do a cool lens. We had 70% of our people contaminated by mercury. We also had a person who was working, trying to defend the indigenous lands and they died because of mercury contamination. In the end of money land at some point we had 90% of our children contaminated by mercury. So this is the result of mining in near our lands. What we can do is this promote events have these discussions, put pressure on these mining companies. We've been doing these campaigns against Anglo and against black, which is one of the greatest investors on these companies. And in 2019 we had this informative campaign in Europe and we talked to people up in the parliament, we talked to the society, so we could create these national laws in each country. What we want is to track these products, we want to track gold, we want to see the path that the gold takes. And by tracking the gold, we're trying to bring sanctions to the companies that are involved in this and are not following human rights and environmental rights. And what we ask on the part of society is to keep pressuring their governments and their companies. So this international support is very important because it brings visibility on what's going on. We should also pressure the companies on their companies to try and create these laws. So the companies have control and take and are held accountable on what they're exploiting and commercializing. We need products to arrive at their destination in a clean way. We don't want them tarnished in blood. Thank everyone. Thank you everyone for this opportunity. Thank you very much for Julia and Sonia for your participation. I know you've done a great effort to be here with us tonight. We know especially now with all this demand, your schedules are probably full. Before we're finished, I'd like to reinforce the invitation to all those who have not yet accessed. I'm sorry guys, I muted myself by accident. So I'd like to start again. Thank you very much for Julia, Julia and Sonia. I know you have very busy schedules, so thank you for being here tonight. And before we finish, I'd like to invite you again for you to access the Mirror Hub. I've added the link to our chat. We have the link in both English, Portuguese and English and Spanish. We have a wide range of materials on mining, including maps, podcasts, videos, documents. So a lot of resources that's going to help in our defense of water and land. So now I'll have Rachel speak. Thank you very much. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for that. It's my pleasure to give the final thank yous. I think what we've heard this afternoon about the environmental, the human rights, the gendered health impacts of mining in Brazil about how COVID has exacerbated that about all the other. That have been identified the pandemic of mining of resource extraction and of lack of accountability of gender, gender violence. I think all of these are real strong evidence for the need for the Mirror Hub, a Brazil in Portuguese focused Mirror Hub, as well as the mandatory human rights due diligence, and the work of the CNCA. So again, I really encourage you to visit the Mirror Hub as Fabrizio was outlining and I also encourage you to follow the campaign of CNCA. I believe next week there is actually a training if you want to become a corporate accountability advocate. So finally, I want to thank you. I want to thank Sonya and Marihulia for your, for your, for your interventions for your all your work in defense of land and water and life for your courage and tenacity and strength for being that face of the struggle, I want to thank you. You're an inspiration. And Fabrizio I want to thank you for moderating and coordinating this event, helping to coordinate this event, and thank you for initiating and catalyzing and being bringing into existence the the Mirror Hub Brazil. Yeah, the Mirror Hub Brazil. Thank you for making it happen. I want to thank Rebecca for your fabulous translation. I don't know if you want to put your camera on just so people can can see, see you but but thank you for making this this communication possible and for allowing us to share this, this information with with each other. Kevin, for your such a clear presentation of CNCA's work and your campaign. Thank you Gabriella for making this possible for being behind the scenes for doing all the tech. And also for the Mirror Hub I just to tell you that the Mirror Hub was it's free years. It had been something that women land offenders particularly have been calling for for years. And Gabriella has made it happen in a very profound and beautiful way so thank you Gabriella for that. Yeah, that's then thank you everyone for being here tonight thank you for for joining us please please yeah check out the Mirror Hub, and please continue to to to follow to follow our work, and the work of these amazing amazing women. So thank you and have a good evening. So that's just see you.