Public prosecutors in Brazil have opened an investigation after reports that illegal gold miners in a remote Amazon river have massacred “more than ten” members of an uncontacted tribe. If confirmed, this means up to a fifth of the entire tribe have been wiped out.
Two miners have been arrested.
The killings allegedly took place last month along the River Jandiatuba in western Brazil, but the news only emerged after the miners started boasting about the killings, and showing off “trophies” in the nearest town.
Agents from Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency, FUNAI, confirmed details of the attack to Survival International. Women and children are believed to be among the dead. FUNAI and the public prosecutor’s office are currently investigating.
The area is known as the Uncontacted Frontier, as it contains more uncontacted tribes than anywhere else on Earth.
Several government teams who had been protecting uncontacted indigenous territories have recently had their funding slashed by the Brazilian government, and have had to close down.
President Temer’s government is fiercely anti-Indian, and has close ties to the country’s powerful and anti-indigenous agribusiness lobby.
The territories of two other vulnerable uncontacted tribes – the Kawahiva and Piripkura – have also reportedly been invaded. Both are surrounded by hundreds of ranchers and land invaders.
Uncontacted tribes are the most vulnerable peoples on the planet. However, when their rights are respected, they continue to thrive.
All uncontacted tribal peoples face catastrophe unless their land is protected. Survival International is doing everything it can to secure their land for them, and to give them the chance to determine their own futures.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “If these reports are confirmed, President Temer and his government bear a heavy responsibility for this genocidal attack. The slashing of FUNAI’s funds has left dozens of uncontacted tribes defenseless against thousands of invaders – miners, ranchers and loggers – who are desperate to steal and ransack their lands. All these tribes should have had their lands properly recognized and protected years ago – the government’s open support for those who want to open up indigenous territories is utterly shameful, and is setting indigenous rights in Brazil back decades.”
A group of Brazilian Indians hailed as heroes for patrolling the Amazon and evicting illegal loggers have occupied government offices, to demand protection for their lands.
It is the first protest of its kind by the Indians, known as the Guajajara Guardians. Their people face an emergency, as much of their forest has been razed to the ground.
The Guardians work to protect their forest in the north-eastern Brazilian Amazon. They share the area, known as the Arariboia indigenous territory, with uncontacted Awá Indians.
The Indians’ forest is an island of green amid a sea of deforestation. Heavily armed illegal loggers are now penetrating this last refuge, and the government is doing little to stop them.
Tainaky Guajajara, one of the Guardians’ leaders, said at the protest in the city of Imperatriz: “We’re occupying FUNAI [government indigenous affairs department] to demand our rights to the land, and protection for the environment. We need help, urgently. Our land is being invaded as we speak. The Brazilian government has forgotten us – it’s as if we don’t exist. So we’ve reached the limit. We will no longer put up with the way they treat us.”
The Guajajara Guardians have taken matters into their own hands to save their land from destruction, and to prevent the genocide of the Awá. They patrol the forest, detect logging hotspots and crack down on invasions.
Kaw Guajajara, the Guardians’ Coordinator, said: “The uncontacted Awá can’t live without their forest. Our work has stopped many of the invaders… As long as we live, we will fight for the uncontacted Indians, for all of us, and for nature.”
Their work is dangerous – the Guardians constantly receive death threats from the powerful logging mafia, and three Guardians were killed in 2016. But they continue courageously and they know that the Awá, like all uncontacted peoples, face catastrophe unless their land is protected.
Their operations have succeeded in drastically reducing the logging, but they urgently need help from the Brazilian authorities: Resources and equipment for their expeditions, and support from government agents who can arrest the loggers and keep them out.
The Guardians are also demanding that the government implement an agreement drawn up by FUNAI, the military police force and the State’s security forces to build base camps to protect the territory, and to carry out joint operations to police the area.
Survival International’s Director, Stephen Corry, said: “The Guardians are protecting one of the last patches of Amazon rainforest in the region. Their determination to keep their forest intact is more important than ever as President Temer’s administration is trying to slash indigenous land protection throughout Brazil. The Guajajara Guardians are unique and an inspiration to all who care for human rights and the environment. The government’s constitutional duty is to help them protect the forest. Its destruction could wipe out the uncontacted Awá. This is another humanitarian crisis in Brazil’s treatment of its tribal peoples.”
Indigenous activists and human rights campaigners around the world yesterday celebrated Brazil’s Supreme Court ruling unanimously in favor of indigenous land rights.
In two land rights cases, all eight of the judges present voted for indigenous land rights and against the government of Mato Grosso state, in the Amazon, which was demanding compensation for lands mapped out as indigenous territories decades ago.
Although ruling on one further case was postponed, this outcome has been seen as a significant victory for indigenous land rights in the country.
An international campaign was launched earlier this month after President Temer attempted to have a controversial legal opinion on tribal land recognition adopted as policy.
The proposal stated that indigenous peoples who were not occupying their ancestral lands on October 5, 1988, when the country’s current constitution came into force, would no longer have the right to live there. This new proposal was referred to as the “marco temporal” or “time frame” by activists and legal experts.
If the judges had accepted this, it would have set indigenous rights in the country back decades, and risked destroying dozens of tribes. The theft of tribal land destroys self-sufficient peoples and their diverse ways of life. It causes disease, destitution and suicide.
In response to the ruling, Luiz Henrique Eloy, a Terena Indian lawyer, said: “This is an important victory for the indigenous peoples of these territories. The Supreme Court recognised their original [land] rights and this has national repercussions, because the Supreme Court indicated that it was against the concept of the time frame.”
APIB, Brazil’s pan-indigenous organization, led a protest movement, under the slogan “our history didn’t start in 1988.”
The measure is being opposed by Indians across Brazil. Eliseu Guarani from the Guarani Kaiowá people in the southwest of the country said: “If the time frame is enforced, there will be no more legal recognition of indigenous territories… there is violence, we all face it, attacks by paramilitaries, criminalization, racism.”
Survival International led an international outcry against the proposal, calling on supporters around the globe to petition Brazil’s leaders and high court to reject the opinion. Over 4,000 emails were sent directly to senior judicial figures and other key targets.
While the ruling does not end the possibility of further attacks on tribal land rights in Brazil, it is a significant victory against the country’s notorious agribusiness lobby, who have very close ties to the Temer government.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “If the judges had accepted this proposal it would have set back indigenous rights in the country by decades. Brazil’s indigenous peoples are already battling a comprehensive assault on their lands and identity – a continuation of the invasion and genocide which characterized the European colonization of the Americas. We’re hugely grateful for the energy and enthusiasm of our supporters in helping the Indians fight back against this disastrous proposal.”
Brazil’s Supreme Court will next week deliver a historic judgement on tribal territories which could strike the greatest blow to indigenous land rights since the country’s military dictatorship.
The judgement will be delivered on Wednesday, August 16. Large-scale indigenous protests are anticipated, as the judges decide whether to incorporate a proposal on indigenous land rights drafted by the attorney-general’s office.
The proposal states that indigenous peoples who were not occupying their ancestral lands on or before October 5, 1988, when the country’s current constitution came into force, would no longer have the right to live there.
If the judges accept it, this would set indigenous rights in the country back decades, and risk destroying hundreds of self-sufficient tribes, who depend on their land for autonomy and survival.
Brazil’s pan-indigenous organization APIB: is organizing several events and protests in the capital Brasilia and across the country in the lead up to the ruling, with the slogan: “Our history didn’t start in 1988. No to the time limit.”
Activists have speculated that the proposal is being pushed by President Temer to secure his political position. His period in office has seen single digit approval ratings, instability, and widespread protest, after the government he leads was installed in April 2016 following the impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff.
If it becomes policy, this measure would be beneficial to Brazil’s ruralista agribusiness lobby, who regard land protections for indigenous peoples as an unnecessary barrier to profit.
The Guarani Kaiowá people in southwestern Brazil are just one of the many tribes who would be affected. They will never recover most of their land if this measure is approved.
Eliseu Guarani, a spokesman for the tribe, said: “This is very hard for us… there will be no more legal recognition of indigenous territories… there is violence, we all face it, attacks by paramilitaries, criminalization, racism.”
Survival International is actively campaigning against the measure, which is illegal under international law, and has urged its supporters to take action.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “Land theft is the biggest problem that tribal people face, and this proposal is little more than a land grabber’s manifesto. It’s a blatant shredding of tribal land rights, selling them out to ranchers, loggers, soy barons and other vested interests.”
Featured image: Munduruku warriors gather at the São Manoel hydroelectric dam site. Courtesy Caio Mota/Centro Popular do Audiovisual/Forum Teles Pires via internationalrivers.org
Munduruku await for government to comply with their promises or they will return to halt construction again
Indigenous activists shut down construction of a massive dam project in Brazil for four days in July and received assurances from officials that their demands for halting construction of the dam, prior consultation, land rights and return of sacred funerary urns would be met.
The Munduruku activists had occupied the São Manoel hydroelectric dam site on the Teles Pires River that borders the states of Pará and Mato Grosso in the Brazilian Amazon. The São Manoel project is part of a larger effort to create a complex of five hydroelectric facilities in Brazil.
Lead by women warriors, a group of 200 Munduku men, women and children occupied the site on Sunday, July 16. The Munduruku and their allies stated that the project had already destroyed sites sacred to the Munduruku and other Indigenous Peoples. They chose to occupy the site to halt construction after previous protests and outreach failed to stop the project or cause the officials to return funerary urns which had been stolen during the building process.
The activists agreed to leave after a meeting with representatives from FUNAI, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF), and the São Manoel and Teles Pires dam consortiums on July 19. The officials agreed to meet the demands presented by the Munduruku.
On July 21, Munduruku leaders announced that they would leave. “We Munduruku are returning to our villages, with the protection of the spirits of our ancestors. FUNAI [Brazil’s federal agency for Indigenous issues] has heard our demands and the companies made a commitment to our agenda. We will continue our movement. If they do not fulfill the commitment they made, FUNAI and the company can expect our return,” according to the Munduruku press statement titled We Are Made of the Sacred.
The list of demands that the government and corporate officials acceded to include the following:
The completion of land titling for the Munduruku territories of Sawre Muybu, Pontal dos Isolados, Sawre Jaybu and Sawre Apompu.
Independent studies on the socio-environmental and cultural impacts of dams on the Teles Pires River, with active participation of indigenous communities and experts indicated by them.
That any approval of the São Manoel dam be based on the rule of law and independent technical evaluations of impacts on rivers, fish and the livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples.
That the mitigation and compensation plans for the Teles Pires and São Manoel hydroelectric dam projects be revised to guarantee transparency and full participation of Indigenous Peoples.
That future projects protect the collective historical and cultural heritage of Indigenous Peoples of the Teles Pires, and that funeral urns be returned to a sacred site, determined by the Munduruku people, for permanent storage and protection.
Guarantee of Free, Prior and Informed Consent, in accordance with the Munduruku consultation protocol, for future proposed projects that directly or indirectly impact upon Indigenous Peoples.
