Ivaneide Bandeira Cardozo, Neidinha, 57 years old, is an Indigenist who has been leading the Kanindé Ethno-environmental Defense Association (Associação de Defesa Etnoambiental Kanindé, in Portuguese) since 1992, whose work extends to 52 indigenous ethnic groups. In charge of the organization, she has been on expeditions to arrest land invaders and illegal loggers and has carried out several approaches with hitherto isolated peoples.
For inconveniencing powerful people, she was repeatedly threatened to death. When she is not deep in the forest – on some occasions she spends more than 40 days in the woods – she lives in Porto Velho, state of Rondônia in Brazil, where she studied History at the Federal University of Rondônia and completed her master’s degree in geography. She married the chief Almir SuruÃ, with whom she had two of his five offspring.