Newsletter no. 668

 

KAINGANG SUFFER PREJUDICE FROM MUNICIPAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR PORTO ALEGRE, STATE OF RIO GRANDE DO SUL

 

“Today I’m going to get this bugrada (band of Indians) out of here”. These were the words that the Municipal Secretary for the Environment used when he came here on Friday, June 4. For a long time, they have used this term to say that we are forest dwellers, that we are animals and that they can kill and eliminate us. But we don’t accept this. We demand respect, and we want justice to prevail against all this discrimination and prejudice. And we are certain that the population of Porto Alegre does not think in this way and does, indeed, respect us.” This was the protest of the Kaingang who live on the hill called Morro do Osso, in the city of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, after an attempt by the Head of the Municipal Secretary for the Environment, Beto Moesch, to remove the shacks where the indigenous people live without a court order. Some of these shacks were built within the Morro do Osso Park, but the large majority lies outside its boundaries.

The community, of around 20 families, is made up of indigenous people from various villages in the state. They reoccupied the hill on 9 April 2004 and are demanding that the National Foundation for Indigenous People (Funai) studies the area, which the Port Alegre City Hall has been promoting as a tourist attraction, to search for the presence of archeological sites and indigenous burial grounds there. Funai representatives visited the indigenous people in February 2005 and promised to send a report stating the conclusions drawn from the visit. According to the Cimi team in Porto Alegre, the Foundation has not yet sent anything. 

 

As for Moesch’s attitudes, the indigenous people are petitioning for those responsible for the physical violence and the crime of racism to be punished. They have also petitioned the Public Prosecutor’s Office to take legal action against the Municipal Seretary for the Environment charging him with slander and defamation, as a consequence of what he has said to newspapers and on television, namely, that the indigenous people camping on Morro do Osso are criminals and drug dealers.

 

The Kaingang have also asked Funai to immediately set up a technical group to carry out studies to identify and define the boundaries of the Morro do Osso indigenous land.

 

 

IN THE STATE OF RIO GRANDE DO NORTE, THREE GROUPS PUBLICLY ASSERT THEIR RIGHT TO THEIR INDIGENOUS IDENTITY

 

A Public Hearing on the presence of indigenous groups in the state of Rio Grande do Norte took place yesterday (15 June) in the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Norte, in Natal. After more than a century of official silence concerning the existence of indigenous peoples in Rio Grande do Norte, three ethnic groups have publicly asserted their right (before the State and society) to recognition. In spite of being locally recognized by their non-indigenous neighbors as clearly being socially differentiated groups, these peoples had not yet politically brought their existence to the knowledge of society at large.

Leaders of the three indigenous peoples handed over petitions asserting the right of their communities to be included in the official public protection and welfare programs. The peoples are known as the Catu community (that lives in the municipalities of Goianinha and Canguaretama), the Mendonça do Amarelão (from the municipality of João Câmara) and the Caboclos do Assu (from the municipality of Assu). At yesterday’s meeting, they were supported by leaders of the Potiguara from the stste of Paraíba, representing the Association of Indigenous Peoples of the Northeast, Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo (Apoinme).

 

The Funai representative who took part in the hearing asked for the studies that have already been carried out by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) on these peoples to be sent to the Foundation’s Department of Land Affairs, which would then include the lands being claimed in the list of lands to be identified. Nevertheless, he pointed out that there were another 120 lands that were still waiting for Funai to take measures with respect to their identification.

 

Some classical scholars from Rio Grande do Norte, including Câmara Cascudo and Nestor Lima, had already mentioned the existence of these communities of descendants of indigenous people several decades ago. These references have sparked the interest of a number of researchers, whose investigations have ended up motivating more detailed studies by the Anthropology Department of UFRN. Ethnographic studies, involving life histories and social memory reconstruction, have also stimulated members of these communities to search for “their roots” – as the indigenous people themselves say – in a movement which is positive for finding the reference points of their social boundaries.

 

Based on ILO Convention 169, which lays down that ethnic self identification is the only valid criterion for the recognition of the rights of indigenous people, at the Public Hearing the indigenous people of Rio Grande do Norte positioned themselves as collective political subjects, demanding the immediate incorporation of their legal rights as set out in the Federal Constitution. To do this, they took the reinterpretation of their past as discriminated groups as a basis and positioned themselves as the bearers of collective future projects, whose main aims are to recover their ethnic territories and to make their social and cultural reproduction situations feasible by focusing attention on differentiated health services, indigenous school education and sustainable economic production projects.

 

Brasília, 16 June 2005

Cimi – Indianist Missionary Council

www.cimi.org.br