Continuous Strain: Indigenous Population’s Plight

Posted byhyelimyoon1Posted inUncategorized

Brazilian Indigenous tribes 

Brazilian Indigenous people, mostly inhabiting the northwest part of the Amazon River, make up 0.8% of the Brazilian population. Totaling around 1.7 million people, the government has recognized 690 territories for the indigenous population, covering about 13% of Brazil’s land mass. Nearly all of this reserved land (98.5%) lies in the Amazon where the tribes are in contact or slowly getting into contact with the Brazilian state and capitalist society. 

The Nawa

However, on one’s own will or by force, contact with non-indigenous people has created adverse conditions for the Indigenous people. The tribes are persecuted, driven out of their homes, and even slaughtered by the government and businesses aiming for the land. One of the tribes that face ill-treatment from the government are the Nawa, a tribe that had lived along the border between Brazil and Peru but is currently expelled to Acre, the northern part of Brazil. 

Since the Portuguese colonization centuries ago, the Nawa were forced to move from Estirao do Nawa, where they had lived prior to Portuguese colonization and exploitation of the Amazon, to Serra do Divisor. However, in 1989, the area was designated as ‘the Serra do Divisor National Park’, a restricted-use conservation unit that does not allow for human habitation, not even by those who have lived there for generations in harmony with the forest. As a result, the Nawa were again threatened by rubber tappers and were forced to move to Mâncio Lima and Cruzeiro do Sul (Acre). 

An example of the Nawa’s sufferings is shown by Mariana[Marinuni], a Nawa woman who lived in the 19th century. Back in the 19th century, the Nawa were originally Kapanawas, a name that has disappeared because of being called “Nawa” by European colonizers. Like their name being altered regardless of their will, the Nawa went through violent persecution. It has been recorded that Mariruni managed to escape persecution by European rubber tappers and successive violent colonizers. Yet on one of her escapes down the Juruá River, she was wounded and imprisoned at the behest of Sinhá Geton, a rubber baron whose past is a mystery. There are two versions of Mariruni’s recollection, which was gleaned from oral history, neither with precise dates. The prevailing version states she was alone when arrested; in the other version, she was with a brother. Mariuna was subordinated by white people, imprisoned on rubber plantations, and ultimately married José Peba, who worked for Sinhá Geton. After the two wed, they went to live in the area that now constitutes the national park. The Nawa say that Mariruni and Peba had eight children. Mariruni, survivor and progenitor of the Nawa, was buried in the territory-turned-park, which is why Tarisson’s relatives consider it sacred and ancestral land.

With this repeating history, the Nawa are still marginalized by Brazil, its surrounding nations, and the governments, with their shouts to reclaim their land being ignored.

Not only the Nawa

Shockingly, these stories that seem to have occurred only centuries ago still happen to this day; especially after Jair Bolsonaro served as president from 2019 to 2022. The former president issued regulations that were detrimental to Indigenous people and halted the recognition of their traditional lands. Moreover, the government weakened the federal environmental protection agencies, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) and the Institute for the Conservation of Biodiversity (ICMBio), leaving Indigenous territories even more vulnerable to encroachment. 

For example, the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau people, who live in the state have Rondonia, have received multiple threats from farmers who claim parts of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau-dwelling territories. The farmers hold up their claim based on the government’s support of building massive farms and allowing them to violently wipe out any form of hindrance; even human beings. Ever since, the indigenous people have suffered from the fear of invasion, the death of their families, and the fear of being exterminated from their habitat. 

And recently a policy called The Marco Temporal has been legitimized to reinforce the threats indigenous people are facing. The legal thesis proposed that only territories occupied by indigenous peoples on October 5, 1988, the date of enactment of the Brazilian Constitution, may be legally acknowledged and demarcated. However, the document is a perverse and unconstitutional political and legal interpretation, which ignores that due to centuries of persecution and extermination, many indigenous peoples were expelled from their territories. Therefore, the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court(STF) is re-judging the thesis, drawing attention to the fate of the indigenous people. If accepted by STF, 14% of Brazilian territory and biodiversity living inside the Indigenous Territories would be vulnerable in the face of the expansion of illegal commodity production, land grabbing, illegal mining, and deforestation.

Due to multiple policies and forces against indigenous people, they are continuously exterminated, persecuted, and marginalized in every bit of the world. I hope that this article will be an approach to raising awareness about Brazilian indigenous people and their plight. 

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