A decade after Brazil’s deadly dam collapse, Indigenous peoples demand justice on the eve of COP30

A week before what the Indigenous Krenak people now call “the death of the river,” they say they could feel it coming. The birds stopped singing, the air grew heavy, and an unusual silence settled over their village in Minas Gerais, a southeastern Brazilian state where forested hills give way to the winding Doce River. A mining dam owned by Samarco — a joint venture between Brazilian company Vale and Anglo-Australian giant BHP Billiton — burst upstream near the town of Mariana, unleashing a to