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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Brazil's Indians on Alert as Government Hears Final Land Rights Appeal

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

10/16/96

OVERVIEW & SOURCE by EE

Rainforest Action Network reports in their most recent World Rainforest Report

(at http://www.ran.org/ran/info_center/wrr/wrr_96_10/index.html) on the final

decision on land demarcation of eight contested indigenous areas Brazil. Over

the past year we have covered this threat to indigenous land rights in Brazil

extensively. Though most of the areas originally contested by Decree #1775 have

been rejected, the ones that remain are extremely resource rich and cover

millions of acres.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Summer-Fall, 1996 - Volume XIII, No.2

Brazil's Indians on Alert as Government Hears Final Land Rights Appeals

By Julio Feferman & Beto Borges, RAN Brazil Campaign

This past January, Brazil ratified a constitutional decree that many observers

feared would deal a severe blow to Brazil's indigenous communities. The Decree--

Decree #1775, popularly known as the "Genocide Decree"--allowed private

interests as well as state and local governments to challenge the legality of

indigenous land titles.

Human rights groups observing the situation expected the worst; but in a

surprising series of decisions, government agencies denied most of the appeals

filed under the Decree. However, the eight appeals still under consideration

target some of the most resource-rich of the indigenous territories, the largest

of which covers nearly four million acres.

"I am very happy that the Government of Brazil has upheld its commitment to

protecting indigenous rights," said RAN's Brazil Campaign Director Beto Borges,

"but they need to go all the way. The Government must secure land title for all

of Brazil's indigenous territories, including the eight that are still under

consideration."

By the April 8 deadline, Brazil's National Foundation for Indian Affairs

(FUNAI), which was in charge of processing the appeals, received over 500 claims

from miners, loggers, ranchers, and government officials, targeting 42 different

Indian areas. Among the claims were appeals from the Amazonian states of

Rondonia and Para, challenging all indigenous territories within their borders

whose land-title demarcation was incomplete--even though Rondonia had received

$167 million from the World Bank earmarked for Indian land protection and land

use-zoning.

Based on the claimants' lack of anthropological data, FUNAI rejected all of

these challenges out-of-hand. According to challenge criteria, claimants had to

prove that the land in question had not been ancestral Indian territory.

According to Marcio Santilli--former President of FUNAI, and executive secretary

for the Socioenvironmental Institute--not a single filed challenge included the

necessary studies.

FUNAI forwarded the claims to Brazil's Minister of Justice, Nelson Jobim,

recommending that he deny them all. Jobim accepted FUNAI's recommendations on 34

of the territories, denying all challenges, but ordered FUNAI to carry out

further investigation of the remaining eight territories. After receiving

FUNAI's supplementary evaluation, Jobim will render a final decision by October

10.

Local and international human rights and environmental organizations fear that

these remaining indigenous territories may be reduced in size, and that

squatters and gold prospectors may take advantage of the regions' unresolved

status and move onto the land. The German Parliament's International Cooperation

Commission issued a resolution urging Brazil to drop all Decree #1775

challenges, and recommended that the German Federal Government cut off financial

aid to Brazil if any of the territories are reduced in size.

About 330,000 indigenous people live in Brazil, representing 215 ethnic groups

and 170 different languages. They live in 526 territories nationwide, which

together comprise an area of 190 million acres--twice the size of California.

About 188 million acres of this land is inside the Brazilian Amazon, in the

states of Acre, Amapa, Amazonas, Para, Mato Grosso, Maranhao, Rondonia, Roraima,

and Tocantins. There may also be 50 or more indigenous groups still living in

the depths of the rainforest that have never had contact with the outside world.

The political climate generated by the signing of Decree #1775 led to a wave of

conflicts on indigenous lands throughout Brazil. Since January, the Alto Rio

Guama indigenous reserve was invaded by land squatters who took 70 Tembe Indians

and 3 FUNAI agents hostage. Also, area groups report that up to four thousand

gold-miners have re-invaded Yanomami territory. Abetting this problem, the

Federal Government suspended Operation Jungle, a helicopter surveillance program

there, taking away a valuable element regulating the flow of settlers into the

region.

The eight contested areas are the lands of the Macuxi in the state of Roraima,

the Guarani/Kaiowa in Mato Grosso, the Krikati in Maranhao, the Kampa in Acre,

the Paracana and Kayapo in Para, and two Tikuna areas in Amazonas.

Justice Minister Jobim, author of Decree #1775, argued that the law will

expedite the demarcation of Indian land by addressing objections to the process.

Article 231 of Brazil's constitution guarantees indigenous people control of

their traditional lands, and rights to secure their cultural identity.

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