One condition of the loan was that the lands of certain Indigenous peoples, including the Awá, would be demarcated and protected; this held particular importance for the Awá, whose forests were being increasingly invaded by outsiders, with many cases of tribespeople being killed by settlers, and the forest on which they depended being destroyed by logging and land clearance for farming.
It took 20 years of sustained pressure from campaigning organisations such as Survival International and, earlier, the Forest Peoples Programme before, in March 2003, the Awá's land was finally demarcated.
In April 2012, Survival International launched a worldwide campaign, backed by the actor Colin Firth, to protect the Awá people.
[8] In July 2021, it was confirmed that one of the tribe's members, Karapiru Awá Guajá, had died of COVID-19 earlier in the month, at an estimated age of 75.
Guajá, who campaigned against the destruction of Awá land and for the rights of Indigenous Brazilian peoples, had been vaccinated against the virus.