Indigenous Brazilians protest ahead of land rights ruling
August 25, 2021
Thousands of Indigenous people have gathered in the Brazilian capital ahead of a landmark land rights ruling. Miners and farming groups want land protections removed.
About 6,000 people from scores of different native groups assembled in protestImage: Adriano Machado/REUTERS
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Several thousand Indigenous people marched in the Brazilian capital of Brasilia on Wednesday ahead of a major land rights ruling.
Organizers said it was the biggest Indigenous protest in the country's history, as about 6,000 attendees carried bows and arrows and wore traditional headdresses.
Indigenous people protest land restrictions in Brazil
With feather headdresses and body paint, thousands of indigenous demonstrators camped out in Brasilia to protest President Jair Bolsonaro's policies and an initiative that could take away their ancestral lands.
Image: Carl de Souza/AFP
Fight for Life
Women from the Krenak tribe are part of the "Fight for Life" protest camp, which opened Sunday and will hold a week of demos and other activities against what the organizers, the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), call Bolsonaro's "anti-indigenous agenda," seeking to exert pressure ahead of a crucial Supreme Court ruling on native lands.
Image: Carl de Souza/AFP
Protecting their lands
Protesters hold a banner that reads "Genocidaires, your fate is the Hague court" during a protest outside the Supreme Court building. Indigenous groups in Brazil accuse Bolsonaro of systematically attacking their rights and trying to open their lands to agribusiness and mining.
Image: Carl de Souza/AFP
Different tribes, one aim
The latest camp opened peacefully. Organizers said there were 4,000 indigenous protesters from 117 ethnic groups. The protests have peaked with a Supreme Court case opening Wednesday on the issue of how indigenous lands are protected.
Image: Carl de Souza/AFP
Staying hopeful despite setbacks
Women of the Huni Kuin tribe attend a ceremony at the protest camp. Brazil is home to around 900,000 indigenous people. They make up less than 0.5% of the population of 212 million, but their reservations cover some 13% of the country.
Image: Carl de Souza/AFP
Bill could weaken land claims
The agribusiness lobby says Brazil's constitutional protection of indigenous lands should only apply to those whose inhabitants were present in 1988, when the current constitution was adopted. However, indigenous rights activists say native inhabitants were often forced off their ancestral lands, including under the 1964-1985 military dictatorship, which wanted to develop the Amazon rainforest.
Image: Carl de Souza/AFP
Case of the century
Having now returned, the indigenous people should have the right to benefit from the protected status of official reservations, their lawyers argue. The case centers on a reservation in the southern state of Santa Catarina, but will set legal precedent for dozens of similar cases throughout Brazil. Protest organizers have called it "the most important court case of the century."
Image: Carl de Souza/AFP
Destruction of the Amazon
Environmentalists say protecting the indigenous reservations is one of the best ways to stop the destruction of the Amazon, a critical resource in the race to curb climate change. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has surged since Bolsonaro took office in 2019.
The agrobusiness lobby has argued that protection should only apply to native populations who can prove they have lived in an area since at least 1988, when the constitution was adopted. This is a legal argument known as Marco Temporal.
Indigenous groups have argued that there is no cutoff date in the constitution, and that native inhabitants have often been forced to move from their ancestral lands.
The Supreme Court case specifically looks only at a reservation in the southern state of Santa Catarina, but it will set a legal precedent for dozens of similar cases.
The government of Santa Catarina has filed an eviction notice for the Indigenous territory of Ibirama-La Klano, where the Guarani and Kaingang peoples live in addition to the Xokleng.
The court is expected to rule on Wednesday.
Why do groups want the land?
Business groups want to use these lands for mining and industrial agriculture.
President Bolsonaro has long called for the economic exploitation of the Amazon region, and said in his 2018 election campaign that not one inch of the region would be classified as a protected area under his rule.
Bolsonaro warned on Tuesday that if the court did not rule in favor of the 1988 cutoff there would be "chaos."
Syrata Pataxo, a 32-year-old chief of the Pataxo people from the northeastern state of Bahia, told the AFP news agency at the protest that the government was "attacking indigenous peoples."
"Today all humanity is calling for the Amazon rainforest to be protected. But the government wants our rainforest, the lungs of the planet, to be replaced by soybeans and gold mining," he said.
