It’s three years since the murders of the journalist Dom Phillips and the Indigenous activist Bruno Pereira, who were both killed on a visit to the remote Javari valley in the Brazilian Amazon.
Dom was a Guardian contributor based in Brazil, whose reporting often appeared in the Guardian Weekly. Last week his widow, Alessandra Sampaio, came to visit our London offices along with Beto Marubo, an Indigenous leader from the Brazilian Amazon.
From the other side of the world it’s easy to feel far removed from the activities of criminal gangs that threaten the Amazon’s Indigenous people and plunder its natural resources. But hearing Beto and Alessandra speak so powerfully about the impact of Dom and Bruno’s work reminded me why we need to stay focused on a region that defies easy scrutiny.
With that in mind, for this week’s big story, Tom Phillips (no relation), our Latin America correspondent who worked closely with Dom, made a perilous return to the Javari valley to learn how Indigenous defenders are continuing to try to protect their communities and environment.
I’d also like to draw your attention to two other projects that continue Dom and Bruno’s legacy. First is the Guardian’s new audio podcast investigation series Missing in the Amazon, in which Tom for the first time tells the full story of what happened to Dom and Bruno.
The second is the book Dom was working on at the time of his death, How to Save the Amazon, which has since been completed by a team including writers and editors at the Guardian. (In this extract, published in the Weekly last month, Dom explains why protecting the Amazon and its people is so important.)
Reporting from the Amazon is a costly and dangerous business, but subscribing to the Guardian Weekly magazine is a great way to support our investigative journalism. For more details and to give the Weekly a try, click here.
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Five essential reads in this week’s edition
Spotlight | The story of a Gaza mother killed in search of food
A family is reeling from the killing of a woman who walked for hours to an Israeli-backed distribution point with her son and daughter. Malak A Tantesh and Emma Graham-Harrison report
Science | How the ‘evil twin’ of the climate crisis is threatening our oceans
In seas around the world, pH levels are falling. Scientists fear the problem is not being taken seriously enough, as Lisa Bachelor finds at a seawater testing station
Interview | Bernie Sanders on Biden, billionaires – and why the Democrats failed
The senator and former Democratic presidential hopeful talks to Zoe Williams about why he and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are trying to build a new progressive movement
Opinion | Want to live to 100? It’s not just diet and exercise that will help
Every time her mind goes down the ‘optimisation’ route, Devi Sridhar is reminded of her job as a public health scientist, looking into the factors that affect how long we will live
Culture | CMAT: pop’s gobbiest, gaudiest star
The Irish singer-songwriter is going supernova – and whether opining on trans rights, body shaming or capitalism, she’s more forthright than ever, as Alexis Petridis found
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What else we’ve been reading
• This evocative picture essay had everything to whet my appetite: decaying buildings beautifully photographed by Oscar Espinosa and a story about the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union that took me back to a 1990 trip along the Abkhazian Black Sea coast when the guide proudly named all the sanatoria visible from the boat and which Soviet workers they were designated for. Isobel Montgomery, deputy editor
• Streaming fraud is a growing concern, undermining fairness and transparency in the creative industry. Technology plays both sides — enabling fraud but also offering tools to fight it. As trust, safety and privacy become more critical in the industry, we must guide it in the right direction, because how we use technology ultimately defines what it becomes. Hyunmu Lee, CRM executive
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Other highlights from the Guardian website
• Audio | Inside Australia’s mushroom murder trial
• Video | The Bone Hunter: unearthing the horror of war in Okinawa - documentary
• Gallery | Pigeons, hats and naps: the best photos from the French Open
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