Qualla: Murder of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips

Murder of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agência Senado from Brasilia, Brazil, CC BY 2.0. Bruno Pereira had spent his career defending people who did not want to be found. The Javari Valley holds more uncontacted indigenous groups than anywhere else on Earth - peoples who have made an active choice to remain apart from the outside world, and whose survival depends on being left that way. On the morning of June 5, 2022, Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips set out by boat through this territory, documenting the illegal fishing and mining networks that were pushing ever deeper into lands where they had no right to be. They never came home. What happened to them, and why, is a story about the Amazon that Brazil would rather not tell.

Image: Agência Senado from Brasilia, Brazil | CC BY 2.0

Murder of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips: A Valley Most People Will Never See

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cimi - Conselho Indigenista Missionário, CC BY 2.0. The Vale do Javari covers an area larger than Austria - 85,000 square kilometers of rainforest in western Amazonas state, bordering Peru. It is the second-largest indigenous territory in Brazil. Within its borders live at least sixteen distinct indigenous peoples who have been co...

Image: Cimi - Conselho Indigenista Missionário | CC BY 2.0

Murder of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips: Bruno Pereira

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agência Senado from Brasilia, Brazil, CC BY 2.0. Bruno Araujo Pereira was born in Recife in 1981 and spent two decades working with indigenous peoples in the Amazon. He became one of Brazil's leading experts on the isolated groups of the Javari Valley. In 2019 he led the largest FUNAI expedition to contact isolated peoples in t...

Image: Agência Senado from Brasilia, Brazil | CC BY 2.0

Murder of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips: Dom Phillips

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agência Senado from Brasilia, Brazil, CC BY 2.0. Dominic Mark Phillips was born in Bebington in Cheshire on July 23, 1964. A music journalist in the 1990s, he moved to Brazil in 2007 and began covering the country for The Guardian, The Financial Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He lived in Salvador with his B...

Image: Agência Senado from Brasilia, Brazil | CC BY 2.0

Murder of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips: What Was Taken, and From Whom

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agência Senado from Brasilia, Brazil, CC BY 2.0. On the return journey on June 5, Pereira and Phillips were intercepted on the Itacoai. Pereira was shot three times, one of the bullets in the back. Phillips was killed because he was a witness. The men who pulled the triggers were local fishermen working an illegal pirarucu netw...

Image: Agência Senado from Brasilia, Brazil | CC BY 2.0

Murder of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips: The Indigenous Patrols Continue

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agência Senado from Brasilia, Brazil, CC BY 2.0. The Javari peoples did not wait for the Brazilian state to respond. UNIVAJA, the union Pereira had been training, continued its work. Indigenous monitors continued patrolling their territory, armed often only with GPS devices and cameras, documenting incursions that federal agenc...

Image: Agência Senado from Brasilia, Brazil | CC BY 2.0