Mauro Oliveira (AKA Red Sun, Mauro Martins De Oliveira, Love To Bleed), has been an activist his entire adult life. This includes human rights, animal rights, environmental rights, Native American rights, Palestinian rights, and the anti-war (peace) movement. Much of his endeavors over the years have been under the name Mauro Oliveira. He has been arrested nearly two dozen times in front-line direct actions at Creech Air Force base, Beale Air Force base, a “Mega-Load” transfer in John Day, Oregon, and the Monsanto GMO facility in Woodland, California. Although many times Mauro has added his activism talents to groups and actions led by others, much of his work comes under the banner of SOL Communications Inc., a federally recognized non-profit that Mauro created in 1997, and remains the executive director to this day (2025-28 years). SOL is an interesting character as far as non-profits go, with a history of bold leadership and direct, sometimes aggressive confrontation. SOL has litigated anti-clearcutting strategies nearly a dozen times against the timber industry and the state of California as well as monitoring a regional watershed for contamination and wildlife disruption. The non-profit also is the umbrella for multiple Native American projects, and a wildlife rescue.
As an activist, Mauro has produced many video projects to increase public awareness. In 1997, he created GRANDMOTHERS AND THE BOMB, a documentary filmed at the Nevada Test Site during the annual Shundahai mass arrest event led by Shashone leader and medicine man, Corbin Harney. A few miles from the test site, at the notorious drone assassination specialized Creech Air Force base, Mauro participated in the annual mass arrest direct actions where he produced the documentary DRONE STRIKE, UNITED STATES TERRORISM. During the filming, Mauro found himself unfairly arrested while wearing press credentials (KFOI 90.9 FM Redding, California). His arrest was one of about 30 that day that were later dismissed in Las Vegas courts when the judge ruled the military had failed to properly transfer the chain of command from the base commander to the officiating officer for the county sheriff deputies running operations at the base gate. After another action at Creech, Mauro was INTERVIEWED BY HUFFINGTON POST live (New York) about the activists breaching the base at night and gaining access to the interior.
Oliveira’s children were themselves seasoned activists at an early age. His eldest, Mahai’a pushed the limit of protest often and was arrested, along with Lt Col Ann Wright, and Friar Father Jerry Zawada at Creech, and then held in Las Vegas metro where Col Wright demanded her expedient release after jail supervision stalled the process.
Perhaps the most interesting and bold video production Mauro Oliveira made at Creech was the ANGELS CARRYING A COFFIN FULL OF MOCK DEAD BABIES to the drone gate. During this action, Mauro’s children Mahai’a, Ciyin, Rize and Aren, and two of their friends, Cheyenne and Ashley Smith, dressed as angels, carried a coffin to the base gate and then portrayed what is known as a triple tap, where the military drone strikes victims with a missile, then returns to strike the rescuers then returns to strike the funeral. The action had been prepared before the week-long actions, but at the encampment of the 150-plus activists, many adults longed to participate after watching rehearsals. Members of Code Pink, Veterans For Peace, the Catholic Workers, and the Nevada Desert Experience joined the action as angels and were arrested upon completing the mock funeral procession, while the Oliveira children escaped arrest.
Mauro Martins De Oliveira and his children were also filmed at Creech by director Nico Colombant for his award winning documentary BATTLES BEYOND THE HORIZON.
In the early 90s, while working with his rock band, The Mind, in his Los Angeles studio, Lightfield, Mauro created the image 21st Century Child. In a bizarre twist, Oliveira received a call from Dr Noel Brown, the head of the United Nations Environment Program, who was based out of Geneva, Switzerland. Brown somehow had seen the image and asked to use it for the cover of the first annual UN PEACE PRAYER DAY being hosted at the UN Hall in New York. Mauro granted that right and the image graced the invitation and assembly booklet that was sent to all the world’s government and religious leaders. The event also launched the global Peace Prayer Pole program.
In another interesting twist at Lightfield, was the introduction Martins De Oliveira had with the producers of the United Nations Children’s singing group that was to perform at the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the UN charter in San Francisco in June 1995. Mauro wrote the music, also titled “21st Century Child,” for the group, and it was performed at the event. The recording of the song with the children was at Lucas’ Sound Studio in Santa Monica.
SOL COMMUNICATIONS
In 1997 Oliveira filed the papers to create the 501c3 non-profit organization SOL Communications, which was a reluctant response to a LA based pastor’s request that had been providing Mauro with pallets of food that he was distributing to the Dine’ (Navajo) and Hopi reservations in the black mesa area where Native Elders were resisting relocation by the federal government due to activities by north america’s largest strip mine run by Peabody Coal. The pastor had insisted that to maintain the flow of supplies from his church, Oliveira would need to provide the legal paperwork for the church’s obligations as a charity. The flow of supplies was part of a strategic operation in which Mauro was organizing caravans from Los Angeles to the Black Mesa region every other week with supplies and manpower to assist the Native movement of resistance.
The Big Mountain Project, as the Black Mesa caravans and surrounding activism were known as, has been with SOL since the beginning. Mauro led the caravans from Los Angeles with animal rights activist Julia Orr for 5 years, and Julia continued for another two. She went on to write the Big Mountain Diaries, a book about the adventures there. In that time, SOL delivered hundreds of thousands of pounds of food, building supplies, solar energy materials, electronics, and a long list of special requests from the Big Mountain Elders. The elders had formed a coalition, then known as the SDN, the Sovereign Dine’ Nation.
Their activist representative was (is) Marsha Monestersky, who has been involved with the Dine’ grandmothers for many decades, and Marsha guided SOL to the necessities and locations of specific homesites that were then “targeted” by SOL to locate the supplies, then make the deliveries. Years later, the SDN transformed into the Forgotten People, and the project then fell under SOL as the fiscal agent and was managed by Marsha Monestersky. This form of the project is active to this day.
The caravans normally left Los Angeles on a Friday afternoon, arriving on Black Mesa at a specific Elders’ homesite in the early morning hours, where the team would bunk down and rise at sunrise to begin the two day treks across the reservation making deliveries and performing the many other duties that were presented to us. It was not unusual that a caravan would provide transportation to other activists who had specific instructions to perform on the reservation and others who would be dropped off on one caravan and picked up, sometimes months later.
The largest of the caravans was a 17-vehicle supply mission that included a semi truck of supplies donated by Paramount studios in Hollywood, thanks to the efforts of Marty Hornstein, a major motion picture producer who also went on the mission. A FOX News satellite van and team were also on that mission. Over 100 people participated in SOL caravans, including teams from Action Resource Center (ARC), Earth First, The American Indian Movement (AIM), Harmony Keepers, the Bahai Church, Scientology (LA), United Methodist Church, and the controversial rocket scientist David Adair.
During the caravan runs, Mauro became aware of the uranium and radioactive contamination that was on the Navajo Nation. Using Geiger counters and information relayed to Oliveira from Native Elders, SOL began to locate and document radioactive contamination. The locations were then published on an early internet website known as “the Dorman List,” which apparently was being monitored by the government as cleanups in some form or the other would take place after the locations were published. The contamination sites were videotaped with the Geiger counter, and the location and video tapes were compiled for a vault of materials that was soon presented to Abdelfattah Amor, a then Special Rapporteur on the issue of religious intolerance, who was also a human rights expert. Amor has submitted reports to the UN on the issue of religious extremism and its impact on human rights.
The peak of SOL activism on Black Mesa during the 1990s was what activists referred to as The UN Summit. SOL primarily funded the entire event which was hosted by Dine’ grandmother Glenna Begay at her homesite within a short distance of the Black Mesa Mine. Over 200 Dine’ and 3 Hope Elders participated. The United Nations Rapporteur arrived with International Indian Treaty Council represents via small aircraft that SOL arranged to have land on Peabody coal’s own airstrip. The event included meetings between the Dine’ and Hopi Elders and Amor and individual testimonies recorded by SOL in an adjacent shelter. It was an incredible time, with honoring celebrations by the Dine’ including a large feast. The entire event was during a very difficult blizzard that had blanketed northern Arizona in snow. The logistics of travel also fell upon SOL. Afterwards, Oliveira co-produced with Kim Kindersley, the documentary Vanishing Prayer (here is part 2) about the Big Mountain decades long movement and the UN Summit. The narration was performed by the Native American activist and actress Irene Bedard. The soundtrack was recorded by Hollywood film score musician Fritz Heede. An early release of Vanishing Prayer was used to inform the United States Congress of the ongoing struggle as well as to get the interest of Mr Amor at the UN, who then decided to come to Black Mesa. At that time, SOL decided the summit “was in order”. Some of the footage for Vanishing Prayer was donated by the producers of the Academy Award winning documentary Broken Rainbow.
The first official donation transaction with SOL Communications was a donation that supported the creation of the UWA Defense project with a SOL volunteer, Terence Freitas who petitioned the board of directors to implement a national awareness program to expose the plight of the Indigenous UWA peoples in Columbia who were threatening mass suicide over Occidental Oil’s (OXY) attempts to drill into the rainforest in their territorial homeland. Oliveira had introduced Freitas to the spokesperson for the UWA at the Earth Trust organization in Malibu, California. A two-year campaign ensued, and then tragically, Freitas and two other Native American Activists, Ingrid Washinawatok and Lahe’ena’e Gay, were murdered while in Colombia. The attention given to the crimes was a major factor in OXY’s pullout of the drilling project.
In 1999 Mauro observed the first signs of aerosol geoengineering and became one of the first activists in the field. He first created skylies.org and then americanskywatch.org, then when he observed that government and private scientists had coined the word “geoengineering”, Martins De Oliveira created geoengineeringwatch.org. (and shut down the previous sites). At the time he was working alongside northern california activists that included Dane Wigington. After two years Mauro transferred geoengineeringwatch.org to Wigington who aggressively runs the operation to this day. Mauro had many research revelations, including Monsanto being involved in jet fuel production and the genetically modified aluminum resistant seeds that were entering the market. Both of those revelations are believed to be directly related to the global geoengineering operations in play.
RADIO
Oliveira became deeply involved in radio in the early 2000s. While sitting on the board of directors of Hill Country Community Clinic, the clinic decided to build a radio station, KKRN 89.5 in Round Mtn, California. Mauro joined the inaugural lineup with his show SMALL WORLD RADIO (SWR). Some of the shows were also uploaded to YouTube where many episodes became censored and labeled as conspiratorial, although years later were vindicated by mainstream publications of the very same facts Oliveira had released. Later in Redding, California, he sat on the board of directors of Alta California Community Media and helped design, then build the studios of KFOI 90.9, the most powerful community radio station in northern California. At KKRN, Mauro produced SWR and an action-packed 1-minute Public Service Announcement called the Extinction Diaries that aired on over 250 stations in 5 countries and was also embedded in the Children’s Radio Hour out of New Mexico. The extinction diaries utilized the narration skills of his four children, who gained a “radio celebrity status” in areas where the broadcasts were heavily used.
STOP TANC
In the early 2000’s the Transmission Authority of Northern California (TANC) decided that major high-power transmission lines and towers would be built across Northern California to facilitate a “proposed” green energy initiative. The project affected over 25,000 landowners who would have to cede land to the project and live with the resulting RF and other dangerous radiation. The uproar was unprecedented after it was revealed that not only were there zero green energy projects yet proposed to be built, but the network would actually facilitate the transmission of coal energy from western Nevada into California. Martins De Oliveira and a small group of “seasoned” activist landowners were able to organize the resistance and eventual defeat of the initiative. Oliveira is credited with creating the main information and action website, “stoptanc.org” (no longer active), and organizing with a core group from Round Mountain, California.
STANDING ROCK
In 2016, Mauro joined up with the Akicita (warrior society) at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation during the NO DAPL water protectors direct action encampment. In the capacity of camp security, Oliveira worked sometimes non-stop shifts in the winter Dakota conditions. He remained at the Oceti Sakowin Camp for 5 weeks and during that time found himself twice tear-gassed at the Cannon Ball river skirmishes with state law enforcement and hired mercenary security forces employed by the governor. SOL also funneled thousands in donations from Californians seeking to get funds directly to camp kitchens at Oceti.
Tree sit John Densmore
Monsanto
One of the projects under the SOL Communications umbrella is the Defiance Canyon Raptor Rescue, managed by Marily Woodhouse. Mauro volunteers to the project by performing rescues and transport in response to downed or wounded raptors.
Clearcutting
Much of Mauro Martins De Oliveira’s music in the Love To Bleed music project he considers to be a form of artistic activism. Songs like COUNTRY STORE, RUN, I’LL TAKE YOU HOME TO GAZA, AMERICAN MAN, OPEN YOUR EYES, ON YOUR HOMESCREEN (adult content), and PALESTINE are all factual compositions related to specific causes, in the cases above, with the anti-war movement. HUMAN is a song about homelessness.
Mauro is a veteran Sundancer and Sacred Pipe Carrier. His native roots (Cherokee, Cree, and Oliveira’s father believed to be Guarani) are through both mother and father lineages. He feels a close relationship with the Sweat Lodge ceremony and has written a book, STONE HOUSE, on how to build and manage a sweat lodge for a family or community. This book is available for free here. It is while sundancing that Mauro received his name ‘Red Sun’.