Tribute to indigenous children buried in Canada after being mistreated, World Press Photo Award

An image captured by photographer

of red dresses hanging on a road in Canada, in memory of

whose remains were found in unmarked graves of a former school residence in Kamloops, run by the Catholic Church, today won the World Press Photo for Photography of the Year.

The work of the Canadian photojournalist,

shows some red dresses hanging on crosses along the road, in memory of students from the Kamloops Residential School, province of British Columbia, and

unmarked graves on the former school grounds.

That boarding school, run by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, was one of many government institutions run by religious orders where Aboriginal children

as part of a "re-education" system. to eliminate indigenous culture.

The president of the World Press Photo jury, Rena Effendi, considered that Bracken's work, winner of the Photography of the Year category, is "

, inspires a kind of sensory reaction, almost leaving hear the quiet, a serene moment of global reckoning for the history of colonization, not just in Canada but around the world."

Saving the forests with fire

Matthew Abbott

In the category of Graphic Report of the Year, the award goes to a photographic work by Australian photojournalist Matthew Abbott, published in National Geographic, and which defends an ancient and cultural practice of indigenous Australians, who strategically burn the bushes to save the forests and control possible fires.

This fire management technique, known in English as "cool burning", consists of burning only the brush, thus eliminating the accumulation of what would be a fuel that feeds larger flames.

The Nawarddeken people of Australia's Arnhem Land region have practiced this technique for tens of thousands of years and understand fire as a tool to manage their 1.39 million hectare homeland.

Rangers today combine traditional knowledge with contemporary technologies to prevent forest fires.

Wear and tear in the Amazon rainforest

Brazilian photojournalist Lalo de Almeida is the winner of the Long-Term Project Award with his photographic work "Amazon Dystopia," which "portrays something that not only has negative effects on the local community but also on a global level," according to Effendi.

Almeida's images seek to denounce how the Amazon rainforest is under "a great threat" due to deforestation, mining, infrastructure development and the exploitation of other natural resources, threats that are gaining momentum under the president's regressive environmental policies of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro.

The Amazon, of extraordinary biodiversity, is home to more than 350 indigenous groups, but the devastation - accelerated since 2019, although it is not new - has a series of social impacts, particularly in the indigenous communities that are forced to deal with the degradation significant part of the environment and their way of life, says the foundation.

seeds and biodiversity

The Open Format Award has been for a photographic documentary on the efforts of scientists and ancestral communities to conserve agrobiodiversity in Ecuador, and has as its author the photojournalist Isadora Romero, who, in an interview with Efe, denounced the risk of "loss of cultural memory" with the reduction of this agricultural diversity.

His photojournalism seeks to underline "how these two communities face the problem in different ways": scientists have a germplasm bank in Quito with more than 28,000 accessions of germplasm to generate strong seeds without genetic modifications, and the communities have been doing this care for generations.

To elaborate "Blood is a seed", Romero worked with the community of Camuendo Chico, in the Ecuadorian province of Imbabura, and with scientists in Quito, to encourage "turning one's gaze to other forms of knowledge" and that there be " a bridge" between the work of science and indigenous communities.

In addition to the cash prize of 1,000 euros that they receive as regional winners, these four photojournalists will also receive an additional 5,000 euros as an award for their work, which will also travel the world in different exhibitions, taking the complaints reflected in their photographs beyond the country where were published.

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