Bruno Pereira buried in his home state after ceremony led by Indigenous tribes

The murdered Indigenous advocate Bruno Pereira has been buried in his home state of Pernambuco in Brazil after a small ceremony attended by family members and local tribes.

Dozens of Indigenous people from the Xukuru tribe paraded around his coffin chanting farewell rituals to the beat of their percussion instruments on Friday.

Topless and wearing headdresses made of palm fronds, they saluted a man who had spent much of his life working with isolated communities in remote parts of the Amazon rainforest.

The 41-year-old father of three died on 5 June when he and the British journalist Dom Phillips were shot deadon the Itaquaí River in the far west of Brazil.

Phillips was writing a book about sustainable development in the Amazon and the two men were returning from a reporting trip when local fishers allegedly attacked their boat. Shots were exchanged and Pereira was hit three times, and Phillips once.

Three men are in custody and more are wanted by police for allegedly helping to dispose of the bodies.

Loggers, prospectors, ranchers and drug traffickers are all encroaching on Indigenous land in the remote Javari Valley, local groups say, and hunters and fishers are known to catch protected species of animal and fish. The locals claim organised crime groups active in the area could have been involved in the killings.

Pereira was working with an Indigenous organisation called Univaja. He helped tribespeople who lived in the Javari Valley to delineate their land and protect it from invaders.