Hundreds of indigenous people demonstrated in Brasilia on Tuesday to protest against a bill limiting the demarcation of their lands, on the eve of a Supreme Court judgment considered crucial for indigenous populations.
“They want to deprive us of our constitutional rights and our lands, to invade our territories,” Jailda Teixeira Braga, from the indigenous land of Barata/Livramento, in the northern state of Roraima, told AFP.
“We can’t let them do this,” added the 56-year-old woman, wearing a crown of feathers, while walking on the famous Esplanade of Ministries in Brasilia.
The judges of the Federal Supreme Court resume on Wednesday the proceedings of this crucial trial for the indigenous populations. They must validate or reject the “time frame”, defended by the agribusiness lobby, a thesis which recognizes as ancestral only the lands occupied by the natives when the Constitution was promulgated in 1988.
The indigenous peoples consider that the Magna Carta recognizes their rights without providing a “time frame” and claim that they have been displaced from their territories on several occasions, in particular during the military dictatorship (1964-1985), which makes it impossible to determination of their presence in 1988.
According to the NGO Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), nearly a third of the more than 700 indigenous reserves already demarcated in Brazil could be affected, precisely those which are the subject of disputes.
Indigenous people from different ethnic groups in the country, some of whom have painted skin and wear traditional costumes, arrowheads and feathered headdresses, marched to the Federal Supreme Court (STF).
Some waved banners against the “Death Framework” or called on the “STF to save the peoples of the Amazon”.
Indigenous Peoples Minister Sonia Guajajara and other members of the leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva government, which has pledged to make the defense of indigenous peoples a priority, joined the procession on part of its route .
Many scientists believe that indigenous reserves play an essential role in the fight against global warming, as a bulwark against deforestation, which has increased sharply under the mandate of the far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro (2019 -2022).
Walter de Oliveira, leader of the Macuxi people of the Raposa Serra do Sol indigenous reserve in Roraima, believes that if the “time frame” thesis prevails “the invasions of loggers, garimpeiros (men working in illegal gold mines), land thieves and farmers” will multiply on indigenous lands, even those already demarcated.
07/06/2023 07:14:37 – Brasilia (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
