April 23, 2022

09:04

Déborah Arruda – From Cenarium

MANAUS – Widely publicized as Brazil’s Discovery Day, this April 22nd is not a day for celebrations. After all, can the arrival of the Portuguese in soils already inhabited by indigenous people be called discovery? Despite what is stated in the history books, historian Cleomar explained that Brazil was not discovered.

“The discovery of Brazil, in fact, was a discovery. The people with original rights over these lands are the indigenous peoples. But the Constitution of 1988, the Statute of the Indian, of 1973, and FUNAI [National Foundation of the Indian], however, especially in recent years, find that these rights are being violated. Economic interests, of logging companies, gold miners, do not respect this constitutional right”, explained the historian.

Cleomar affirmed that the indigenous people represent a group of people that already lived and live in established areas, that “are not recognized by the authorities, despite being guaranteed by law”. There are more than 200 undemarcated Indigenous Lands (TI) in the Brazilian territory, according to data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The lack of recognition of the Indigenous Lands facilitates invasions, putting at risk the survival of indigenous peoples and the environment.

“The struggle for demarcation of the lands is violent”

In 1973 the Statute of the Indian was promulgated, which established a deadline for the conclusion of the demarcation of all the Indigenous Lands, but the five-year deadline, which was extended, was not met. Anthropologist Tarisson Nawa, of the Indigenous Land in the Serra do Divisor National Park, in Mâncio Lima, Acre, pointed out that the struggle for the demarcation of the lands is violent and has already resulted in the death of many indigenous people.

“Before the invasion, all of Brazil was indigenous. There was no jurisdiction to recognize Indigenous Lands because we lived in our ancestral territory, without needing the backing of a strange and different culture that gave legitimacy to the existence of our territory,” he said.

Earlier this month, more than six thousand indigenous people from 172 different ethnic groups participated in the 18th Free Land Camp. On the occasion, they protested against the Temporal Landmark, which defends the thesis that indigenous peoples can only claim lands where they were already on the day of the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution, on October 5.

Tarisson explained that Indigenous Lands are important because they are preserved by the peoples who inhabit these areas, in addition to their religious importance. “It is from the forest that we take our blessings, our protections, coming from the sacred beings of the forest.”

In addition, he demystified about the real ownership of the Indigenous Lands, which is important for the population to understand and defend the rights of the original peoples to those lands. “A mistake and a confusion that people have is that the ITs are recognized as collective property, in fact, of the indigenous peoples. Today, the ratification of an Indigenous Land says that it belongs to the Union and recognizes the indigenous people as squatters. This means that the Indigenous Lands belong to the Brazilians and it is up to us, the indigenous peoples, to protect this land”, he explained.