Brazil’s Indigenous communities depend on the land they occupy. Their whole way of life depends on the natural resources it provides – food, medicinal plants, building materials and the materials to make many of the everyday objects they use. But it also depends on their spiritual connection with the land, the air, the rivers, the forests and the earth, all of which have a spiritual identity as well as a material one.
The Brazilian government Attorney General’s office last month issued a decree, number 303, which effectively removed most of the rights the Indians enjoy as the original owners of Brazil and as citizens of the country, and demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of the spiritual nature of the indigenous people’s reltionship to the land they occupy.
There is no democratic mandate for them to do this, and there is no justification for the dictatorial powers the government is claiming by this instrument. It would allow them to reduce the size of indigenous territories, permit the installation of infrastructure projects – roads, hydroelectric dams, army bases, for example – without leaving the indigenous peoples any recourse to the Brazilian judicial system, and with no prior consultation, let alone any idea of obtaining ‘prior informed consent’, as required by the United Nations International Labour Organisation Convention 169 – of which Brazil is a signatory.
The Attorney General’s staff arrived at this breathtakingly absurd decree by a perverse and twisted process. They took the conditions imposed by the Supreme Court on one specific decision, on the exceptional case of the Raposa-Serra do Sol in the extreme north of Brazil, and tried to apply them indiscriminately to all indigenous territories throughout Brazil, using an explicitly anti-indigenous interpretation of each point. Those conditions were never intended to have any application other than in the very restricted circumstances of Raposa Serra do Sol. Even a cursory reading makes it very clear that to attempt to apply them more widely would be completely at odds with the thinking of the court. Yet that is exactly what this decree set out to do.
Thankfully we quickly discovered that there remain some people in authority in Brazil with some sense of balance. It was quickly accepted that the decree was flawed, and it has now been suspended until the 24th September, pending consultations. We are hopeful that it will now be quietly dropped, but we must remain aware that it could rear its ugly head again next month.
If this decree is not withdrawn completely it will make it very much harder for Tribes Alive to continue our work with the communities we support. We are passing this on to you at the specific request of two of our partner organisations, Instituto Kabu and Instituto Raoni. We’ll keep you up to date through the website and through Facebook.