#funai

Some 300 people reunited at the headquarters of Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency, Funai, in Brasília to mark a “new era” for the institution and its “reopening” under the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Under the government of former president Jair Bolsonaro, Funai’s officials said they were “forced to not fulfill our mission” regarding Indigenous peoples’ rights.

Joenia Wapichana, who was the first ever Indigenous woman elected to Brazil’s Congress played a central role thwarting Bolsonaro’s bid to undermine Funai, has been appointed the president of the institution.

Funai’s formal name has also been changed from the National Indian Foundation to the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples — a request from Native peoples leaders accepted by Lula and issued on his very first day in office.

Comunidades indígenas e quilombolas estão sendo invadidas com o avanço das monoculturas de dendê nos municípios rurais amazônicos próximos a Belém, no Pará. Os movimentos locais já denunciaram grilagem em território demarcado que deveria ser protegido e a existência de um cartório-fantasma na região. Sem proteção do governo, lideranças estão sofrendo ameaças de morte. 

 O Ministério Público Federal pede a federalização do caso e explica que o dano ambiental gera extrema preocupação, com desmatamento, uso de agrotóxicos e resíduos agroindustriais com metais pesados sendo lançados nas águas.

 Milícias rurais têm acirrado os conflitos, encurralando moradores por seguranças armados e encapuzados contratados pelas fazendas. Essas milícias chegaram a cavar valas de 2 metros de profundidade no entorno da Vila Palmares, como ameaça. As populações nativas dessas comunidades  pedem urgência. A Funai, a Fundação Palmares e o INCRA não fizeram nada.

 Companhias invasoras:

*BBF, antiga BioPalma* - invadiu terras indígenas da etnia Tembé em Acará e Tomé-Açú. A área somada das fazendas produtoras da BBF na região já soma 535 mil hectares, o equivalente a 535 mil campos de futebol.

*Agropalma* - invadiu cerca de 13 mil hectares do território quilombola, nos municípios de Tailândia e Moju.

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‘Uncontacted’ Amazon Tribe Members Are Reported Killed in Brazil

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — They were members of an uncontacted tribe gathering eggs along the river in a remote part of the Amazon. Then, it appears, they had the bad luck of running into gold miners.

Now, federal prosecutors in Brazil have opened an investigation into the reported massacre of about 10 members of the tribe, the latest evidence that threats to endangered indigenous groups are on the rise in the country.

The Brazilian agency on indigenous affairs, Funai, said it had lodged a complaint with the prosecutor’s office in the state of Amazonas after the gold miners went to a bar in a near the border with Colombia, and bragged about the killings. They brandished a hand-carved paddle that they said had come from the tribe, the agency said.

“It was crude bar talk,” said Leila Silvia Burger Sotto-Maior, Funai’s coordinator for uncontacted and recently contacted tribes. “They even bragged about cutting up the bodies and throwing them in the river.”

The miners, she said, claimed that “they had to kill them or be killed.”

Survival International, a global indigenous rights group, warned that given the small sizes of the uncontacted Amazon tribes, this latest episode could mean that a significant percentage of a remote ethnic group was wiped out.

“If the investigation confirms the reports, it will be yet another genocidal massacre resulting directly from the Brazilian government’s failure to protect isolated tribes — something that is guaranteed in the Constitution,” said Sarah Shenker, a senior campaigner with the rights group.

With land disputes on the rise in many remote areas of Brazil, indigenous groups, rural workers and land activists have all been targeted by violence. More than 50 people had been killed as of the end of July, compared with 61 in all of 2016, according to the Land Pastoral Commission.

Activists worry that the country’s indigenous groups — and especially the uncontacted tribes — are the most vulnerable when it comes to land disputes.