Temporal framework is a climate dispute, says Mauricio Terena – 05/30/2023 – Environment

Maurício Terena took over the legal coordination of Apib (Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil), one of the largest indigenous organizations in the country, four months ago, replacing Eloy Terena, current executive secretary of the newly created Ministry of Indigenous Peoples.

In the next few days, one of the priorities of the indigenous lawyer will be to accompany a definitive and historic process for the future of the indigenous peoples of Brazil, the vote on the judgment of the time frame.

The thesis, currently being discussed at the STF (Federal Supreme Court), establishes that indigenous peoples only have the right to demarcate lands that were in their possession on the date of promulgation of the Federal Constitution, October 5, 1988, or that on that date were under proven physical or judicial dispute.

The STF is due to resume the judgment, stopped for two years, on June 7.

Maurício Terena defines the timeframe as a climatic dispute. “The impacts of the time frame judgment will not only affect the lives of us, indigenous peoples, they will affect the lives of all men and women”, he says. “Both in Brazil and in humanity, considering that indigenous lands are a very important asset for facing the climate crisis we are experiencing in this century”, he adds.

To justify his statement, the lawyer reiterates data from scientific studies that show that indigenous territories are essential for the country’s climate goals and the areas with the lowest deforestation rates in the Amazon. “Brazil’s environmental policy needs to be thought of from the indigenous lands, with the indigenous peoples”, he defends.

Before the judgment in the STF, however, he will have to face PL (bill) 490, approved to be voted urgently by the Chamber of Deputies last week. The merit of the text should be voted on this Tuesday (30).

PL 490 transfers the competence to demarcate indigenous lands to the Legislature and opens loopholes for the construction of highways, hydroelectric plants and other infrastructure works within indigenous lands.

In the lawyer’s view, this attempt by the Chamber to vote on the matter quickly, before the STF, does not respect the legislative rite.

“When you want to change rights like this, you need to do it by amending the Constitution, because you are making a change, you are mitigating, reducing fundamental rights. They are doing it through an ordinary law. This is surreal and technically wrong.”

How does the indigenous movement intend to react to the urgent vote on PL 490? We called an extraordinary meeting with all the regional organizations that make up Apib, present throughout the national territory, understanding that it is the first cannon shot against indigenous peoples.

Within Congress, there is a ruralist group that is very resistant to seeing the rights of indigenous peoples advance. They withdrew the demarcation of the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples [por meio da medida provisória 1.154, aprovada em comissão na semana passada, que dá essa atribuição ao Ministério da Justiça] and approved an urgent request with a vote that caught our attention.

The National Congress does not pay attention to the correct legislative rite. When you want to change rights like this, you need to amend the Constitution, because you are making a change, you are mitigating, reducing fundamental rights. They are doing it by ordinary law. This is surreal and technically wrong.

So, let’s mobilize and denounce, both nationally and internationally. There will be indigenous struggle.

Apib was at the beginning of the year with the president of the STF, Minister Rosa Weber. How was that meeting and what were, let’s say, the indigenous movement’s recommendations for her? Rosa Weber was an extremely sensitive minister during her administration with regard to indigenous peoples. We brought her the need to guide the judgment of the timeframe.

She asked us if it was in the interest of the indigenous movement to reach an agreement or not in that process. We, as Apib, said no, because there is a rule in law: that fundamental rights are not subject to negotiation. Our territories are not negotiable.

You are part of a group of indigenous and non-indigenous lawyers who defend indigenous peoples in the judgment of the time frame in the STF. What is the focus of this group’s work at the moment? On the next 7th, what will be decided is the continuity of the existence of indigenous peoples, considering that traditional territories are fundamental for us to exercise our cultures.

The outcome of the trial is extremely in dispute. We consider that in our favor we have Minister Cármen Lúcia, Luís Roberto Barroso, Edson Fachin, Rosa Weber. And contrary Gilmar Mendes, Alexandre de Moraes, Kassio Nunes and André Mendonça.

There are two ministers who are a little undefined, Dias Toffoli and Luiz Fux. So, we are precisely putting together strategies to sensitize these two ministers, showing that they will not want to bear the burden of precisely enacting the end of an extremely effective policy against the fight against climate change.

We are articulating, mobilizing partners and artists. We are also putting together international strategies with the human rights mechanisms to which Brazil is a signatory.

We are in a war operation precisely to try to state the obvious to the Federal Supreme Court.

In February, it was announced that the AGU (Attorney General of the Union) would create a specific team to act in the defense of indigenous peoples. What are your first observations about the performance of the AGU in the new government? The AGU, without a shadow of a doubt, has been an instance that we have looked at with great distrust. First, because there is an opinion, 001, which establishes the time frame, which was created within the Temer administration and bound the entire public administration, including Funai, to the obligation to apply the time frame through administrative means.

As soon as Minister Sonia [Guajajara] arrives at the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, she pulls a meeting with the minister of AGU [Jorge Messias], requesting the revocation of this opinion. But so far it has not been revoked, and behind-the-scenes information we have is that the agribusiness caucus has systematically met with the minister to ask for its non-repeal.

The trial of the temporal framework thesis has taken you and other indigenous lawyers to debates in different law schools in the country, such as Fundação Getulio Vargas. What has this exchange generated in terms of new perspectives? In a predominantly white institution, which serves the interests of the São Paulo elite, when we lead the debate on the rights of indigenous peoples, led by an indigenous lawyer, we have an impact in several dimensions.

First, within the symbolic field. Whenever I am in these spaces, I make a point of wearing a headdress, for example. Beyond the symbolic field, we have a change in the way of thinking about law, because law is a hard, positivist science, which will sometimes maintain power relations, domination, in an ambivalent logic: right, wrong; condemn, release.

When indigenous peoples appropriate this technical knowledge and promote debates like this, they cause an epistemological and consequently political shift.

We start looking at legal mechanisms as mechanisms that must serve subjects who historically have not even been recognized as subjects of law.

How to solve disputes that drag on for decades in territories, like in your state, Mato Grosso do Sul? Without a doubt, what I would choose to be resolved would be the policy of demarcating indigenous lands. We need to move forward in the demarcation of territories outside the Legal Amazon.

The demarcation policy is a structural problem in the country. This can only be done with resources, people and political will.

It would be essential to have a great pact within the Republic, in which what it did with indigenous peoples for centuries was recognized: the process of genocide, extermination, colonization.

It seems to me that Brazil has not overcome this. How are we going to change a political position of extermination, violence, segregation of human rights, non-demarcation of indigenous lands if we don’t even understand ourselves as a country that has indigenous origins? It is also necessary that there be a cultural and epistemological turn in the minds of Brazilians.

How to promote this change in the mentality of Brazilian society? I think this goes through the sieve of politics. Politics is an instrument that constitutes the subjectivity of a country.

President Lula could speak out in a public way much more incisively against the timeframe. Do you think if President Lula, for example, sits down, records a video explaining what the timeframe is, puts it on national television? Do you think the impact this would have within the political narrative of formatting, informing people?

Do you think if the Ministry of Education gives new guidelines to tell the story of indigenous peoples in universities, in schools?

Ensure that the Republic is a Republic. We are not a Republic at all. We are not as long as there are indigenous people dying in the countryside.

How best to contain the crescents threats and ensure the protection of indigenous territories? It is essential to restructure the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples [Funai]recompose Funai’s budget, guarantee servants for that institution, so that it has enough personnel to carry out studies for the identification and delimitation of indigenous territories.

In addition, the return of a fundamental policy for managing indigenous territories, where indigenous people themselves can think about the protection and development of their territories.

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Mauricio Terena, 27

Graduated in law and master in education, he is a doctoral student in social anthropology at USP (University of São Paulo). He acts especially in cases involving the criminalization of indigenous leaders and territorial conflicts. He is the legal coordinator of Apib (Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil) and member of the Observatory System of Criminal Justice and Indigenous Peoples, which in March launched the dossier “Interfaces of Indigenous Criminalization”.

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UNDERSTAND THE SERIES

Planeta em Transe is a series of reports and interviews with new actors and experts on climate change in Brazil and worldwide. This special coverage also accompanied responses to the climate crisis in the 2022 elections and at COP27 (UN conference held in November in Egypt). The project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.