April 7, 2022
09:04
Yusseff Abrahim – from Cenarium Magazine
BRASILIA – More than six thousand indigenous people from 172 different ethnic groups carried out the ‘Demarcation Now’ march this Wednesday afternoon, as part of the 18th Terra Livre camp. The march left the Cultural Complex of Funarte, heading to the Ministry of Justice and the National Congress. The lawyer of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of the Northeast, Minas and Espirito Santo (Apoinme Brazil), Weibe Tapeba, said that the lack of land demarcation generates brutal conflicts.
“We have a repressed demand for land regularization here in Brazil. In terms of indigenous territories there are 495 Indigenous Lands without any type of action and this generates land conflict, legal insecurity, much violence, criminalization of leaders and a data of 119 Indigenous Lands, still in the first phase of demarcation”, he explained. According to Weibe, the numbers indicate that more than 50% of the Indigenous Lands in Brazil are in legal insecurity. And it is crucial to return to the demarcation agenda.
From the Tapeba ethnic group, Weibe explained the situation of the indigenous territories in Ceará. “It is perhaps one of the worst scenarios in Brazil. We have 22 Indigenous Lands and only one homologated. To ensure territory is to ensure our physical and cultural reproduction,” he said.
Insecurity
Insecurity and violence are in the history of the Xokleng ethnic group, of the law student Italo Monconan, from Santa Catarina. A people that until the year 1910 had 42,000 indigenous lands. “Our ancestors were massacred, they worked for free, planted for free, religion came in to destroy our culture, but we resisted and managed to preserve our culture. Today, we are only 2.5 thousand Xokleng”, he explained.
Italo warned about the Unconstitutionality of the Temporal Landmark, a lawsuit in the Federal Supreme Court (STF) that defends the thesis that indigenous peoples can only claim lands where they already were on the day of the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution, on October 5.
“It is an unmitigated betrayal of the Brazilian Constitution itself. My message is to the Bolsonaro government: that we are here claiming what is ours, what is guaranteed in article 231, which speaks of our beliefs and our lands, customs and traditions that we must preserve, and this government has to respect”, she protested.
The fight for the rights of ‘relatives
In a country where insecurity and violence prevail over the indigenous peoples, two ethnic groups in Acre can feel privileged. The Katukina/Kaxinawa Indigenous Land, in the municipality of Feijó, has its 26,426 hectares duly demarcated.
“Our reality is different, our ethnic groups live in peace and we are together in this struggle to join the other peoples who need demarcation”, says Wasa Nawa, a teacher from the Kaxinawa ethnic group, who is a member of the Organization of Indigenous Teachers of Acre. According to Nawa, the Kaxinawa population is 1.5 thousand individuals.
“Our coexistence there is very peaceful, in spite of the fact that other people from other states are being killed and attacked almost every day. We ask for demarcation because we, the indigenous people, depend on the land. Without the land we are nothing.