Attacks on indigenous rights generated a humanitarian crisis – 01/27/2023 – Politics

The last few years have been marked by the emergence of the indigenous issue as an urgent debate in Brazil. On the one hand, because of the forcefulness and acceleration of threats to the original Brazilian peoples, on the other, because of the resistance movement that was articulated in an unprecedented way in the country, from the camps to elections, from the superior courts to the international ones.

The subject has been in the political debate even more intensely in recent days due to the declaration of a health emergency in the Yanomami indigenous land, which is located in the states of Roraima and Amazonas.

Newly created by the Lula (PT) government, the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples claims that 99 children died in 2022 due to the impacts of illegal mining on land. More than half of the children are malnourished, according to the Federal Public Ministry. An inquiry was opened to determine the responsibilities.

Across the country, according to IBGE data from 2010, there are 305 native peoples, in a very diverse universe. Most of these people inhabit the country’s 1,290 indigenous lands (TIs) that are in different stages of legal recognition.

Of these lands, 417 were ratified, according to Funai (National Indian Foundation). This means that their demarcation processes were submitted to the Presidency of the Republic and made official by decree. More than 800 other territories have been claimed or are already in the process of regularization, according to data from Cimi (Indigenous Missionary Council) and Funai.

Elected with the promise not to demarcate “a square centimeter” of indigenous land, Jair Bolsonaro (PL) has barred all demarcations in progress in his four years in office.

The pace of these demarcations had already been slowing down in recent presidential terms, but Bolsonaro is the first to reset both the definitive demarcations and the so-called declarations of possession, which precede the approvals.

“The environmental emergency and the climate crisis are linked to the indigenous issue because these indigenous peoples are the main ones responsible for protecting the forests and their biodiversity from loggers, miners and other economic exploiters who see nature as a way to earn money”, says Maurício Terena, lawyer at Apib (Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil) “Indigenous peoples see nature and its biodiversity as part of their existence, of their body.”

The low institutionalization of indigenous lands in Brazil and the toxic rhetoric of the former chief executive were accompanied by the escalation of threats to these territories and their inhabitants.

Among them is the invasion of these areas by miners, loggers, land grabbers, fishermen and hunters, in illegal practices that promote a spiral of vulnerability, violence and death, further aggravated by the precarious handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The process of dismantling Funai and the proposals to grant amnesty and encourage land grabbing (PLs 2633 and 510), release mining and hydroelectric power plants on indigenous lands (PL 191) and create a time frame for the demarcation of indigenous lands (PL 490).

Two weeks before the end of the Bolsonaro government, a normative instruction on logging in indigenous lands was edited. The DPU (Defensoria Pública da União) issued a technical note deeming the measure illegal and recommending its immediate suspension.

Against these threats, a strong articulation of associations of indigenous peoples emerged.

Activists mobilized hundreds of indigenous people in camps and vigils before the Chamber and the Federal Supreme Court (STF) in 2021, while other indigenous activists, lawyers, filed lawsuits in court (ADPF 709) and complaints against Bolsonaro at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and genocide.

Brazil is the deadliest country in the last decade for land and environmental defenders and accounts for 20% of the murders of these activists in the last ten years. In 2021, the country was the scene of 342 lethal attacks on activists. One in three was indigenous or of African descent. And 85% of these lethal attacks took place in the Legal Amazon region, according to data from the British organization Global Witness.

What are Brazil’s main challenges in relation to its indigenous peoples? Some challenges are fundamental to the nation itself, such as those linked to the idea that indigenous people are not subjects of rights like other humans.

This notion, expressed in Bolsonaro’s comment that “increasingly, the Indian is a human being just like us”, is at the base of part of the violations suffered by these original peoples, either in the paralysis of land demarcations, or in the stimulus mining, logging, livestock and land-grabbing activities, which threaten indigenous territories and their inhabitants, unprotected by state security forces.

According to a study by MapBiomas, from 2010 to 2020, the area occupied by mining within indigenous lands grew by 495%. More than 91% of the Brazilian prospecting area is concentrated in the Amazon. And the expansion of drug trafficking in the Legal Amazon region, a Brazilian territory that encompasses the North region, Mato Grosso and a good part of Maranhão, formed a network of criminal dynamics that led to a 55% increase in murders in the region between 2020 and 2021.

This context increases the vulnerability and risk to the lives of indigenous people, including those considered isolated, who were not officially contacted by Funai or who chose not to have this contact.

The Brazilian State recognizes 114 records of the presence of isolated indigenous people, today the target of policies to encourage forced contact both through PL 430 and by law 14,021, sanctioned in July 2020 and which allows missionaries to remain in the lands of isolated peoples, provided that it is approved by medical teams.

Indigenous peoples also suffer from a lack of health care, which has aggravated cases of malnutrition, worms and other diseases, in addition to the lack of medication.

How these peoples have been affected by violence and markets illicit? The flow of people linked to criminal activities to indigenous territories carries with it violence and diseases that affect these groups. According to Cimi, the first three years of the Bolsonaro government had an average (157 cases) of murders of indigenous people 30% higher than the average (121 cases) of the three years that preceded it.

Anthropologist Lúcia Helena Rangel and missionary Roberto Antonio Liebgott described in the report “Violence against the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil”, released by Cimi in August, with data from 2021, some of the violence that these groups are subject to: “raped girls, raped boys, poisoned drinks and food, attacks on villages, fires in Houses of Prayer and lacerated bodies”.

The document records 355 cases of violence against indigenous people in 2021, the highest number recorded since 2013, when the method of counting cases was changed. In 2020, 304 such cases had been catalogued. Children are particularly affected in this scenario.

Because the Land demarcation is important for indigenous? The centrality of the demarcations is related to guaranteeing the rights of indigenous peoples in the preservation of their identity, culture and ways of life, which are deeply connected to the land.

The demarcation of lands is provided for in Article 221 of the 1988 Constitution, which states: “Indians are recognized (…) the original rights over the lands they traditionally occupy, and it is incumbent upon the Union to demarcate them, protect and ensure respect for all your possessions”. Since 2016, however, Brazil has not demarcated any indigenous lands, in a process that came to a complete standstill during the years of Jair Bolsonaro’s government.

“We understand that the absence of demarcation was a command of the Presidency of the Republic that exploded deforestation and mining in indigenous lands in recent years”, points out Terena.

For him, without land, the dignity of indigenous peoples is impaired. “We need to reaffirm at all times that this is a Constitutional command and when the Union does not do it, it is violating fundamental rights and the Constitution.”

The federal government under Bolsonaro also instituted Normative Instruction 09/2020, which released the certification of private properties on non-homologated indigenous lands, further weakening this constitutional right, also threatened in recent years by the temporal framework thesis, barred in some states by actions of the Federal Public Ministry.

what is landmark temporal? According to the thesis of the temporal framework, indigenous people only have the right to land if they can prove the occupation of the territory at the time of the promulgation of the Constitution, in October 1988. This parameter of recognition emerged with an opinion from the Michel Temer (MDB) government in 2017, and took shape during the Bolsonaro government.

The thesis ignores the legacy of expulsions and exterminations since colonial times in Brazil and has been debated within the scope of the STF, having been refuted by the rapporteur of the case, Minister Edson Fachin. The trial is suspended.

How Funai has acted in this context? Since the beginning of his term, Bolsonaro has emptied Funai, reducing staff and budget. Only 4 out of 10 positions in the body were occupied at the end of the mandate. Funai had the smallest permanent staff since 2008. An additional 600 temporary workers were hired only following a Supreme Court order.

The dossier “Anti-indigenous Foundation: a portrait of Funai under the Bolsonaro government”, published in 2022, brings reports of intimidation of employees through administrative and criminal proceedings against servers, among other measures.

If emptying was not enough, the Bolsonaro government operated the militarization of Funai. Of the foundation’s 39 regional coordination offices, according to the report, only 2 heads were employees of the body. In 27 of them, those chosen were from outside Funai’s staff, including members of the Armed Forces and military and federal police.

How are ILs linked to the preservation of biomes? Indigenous lands have been guaranteeing protection to Brazilian biomes over the last three decades. Only 1.6% of the deforestation recorded in the period took place in these areas —which, according to Funai, correspond to 12% of the national territory. On the other hand, 68% of the loss of native vegetation occurred in private areas, according to data from MapBiomas.

“For us all, planet Earth is one. And it is very important not to take gold or precious stones, not to pollute or poison rivers, not to kill fish,” said Yanomami shaman and leader Davi Kopenawa in an interview with Sheet. “The white man’s word is that the land is heritage. But it is the universe’s heritage and needs to be preserved, not just for me or for the indigenous peoples, but for everyone.”