We, the indigenous peoples and organizations of Brazil, more than four thousand leaders from all the regions of the country, at this time of the XIV Free Land Encampment, held in Brasilia/DF from 24 to 28 April, 2017, in the face of the attacks and measures adopted by the Brazilian State aimed at suppressing our rights, as guaranteed under the Federal Constitution and through international treaties ratified by Brazil, have come together to demonstrate and galvanize national and international public opinion.
We denounce the most serious and imminent offenses on the rights of indigenous peoples since the 1988 Federal Constitution, orchestrated by the three branches of the Republic in collusion with national and international economic oligarchies in order to usurp and exploit our traditional territories and destroy natural goods, essential for the preservation of life and the well-being of humanity, and to devastate the socio-cultural heritage which we have preserved for millennia.
Since it took office, Michel Temer’s government has adopted serious measures to dismantle all public policies aimed at serving our peoples’ specific needs, such as the indigenous health subsystem, indigenous schooling and the identification, demarcation, management and protection of our indigenous lands. Furthermore, it has promoted the scrapping of already weak public bodies, with unacceptable budgetary and human resource cuts to the National Indian Foundation (Fundação Nacional do Índio: FUNAI) and the blatant nomination of the enemies of indigenous peoples to positions of trust, as well as the return of the assimilationist and custodial policies adopted during the military dictatorship, responsible for the ethnocide and genocide of our peoples, directly insulting our autonomy and dignity, which are expressly guaranteed by the Constitution.
There are increasingly aggressive attacks in the legislature on the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples, orchestrated by a National Congress dominated by private, immediate interests, contrary to the public interest, such as agri-business, mining, contractors, industrial sectors and other national and international oligopolies. We vehemently repudiate the proposed constitutional amendments, draft bills and other legislative propositions that violate our originary rights and the rights of other traditional and rural populations, which have proceeded without any consultation of or debate with our representative bodies, such as PEC 215/2000, PEC 187/2016, PL 1610/1996, PL 3729/2004 and other openly anti-indigenous initiatives.
We equally emphatically oppose the decisions adopted by the Legal Authorities to annul already constituted and definitively demarcated indigenous lands, favouring the illegitimate interests of invaders and promoting violent repossessions, all without any respect for the most basic rights of access to justice. The adoption of harmful legal measures, such as the temporal landmark (which questions the demarcation of indigenous lands), serves to annihilate our originary rights to traditional lands and to validate the serious history of the persecution and killing of our peoples and the invasion of our territories, constituting unacceptable injustices, which have to be nationally and internationally denounced in order to achieve reparation for all the violence we have suffered up to the present day.
Added to this serious wave of attacks on our rights is the exponential increase of institutional racism and the criminalization, around the country, of our leaders, organizations, communities and partners.
Under these drastic circumstances, we reassert that we will not accept the violence, setbacks and threats perpetrated by the Brazilian State and the economic oligarchies against our lives and our rights, and we call on all Brazilian society and the international community to join the struggles of original peoples for the defence of their traditional territories and of mother nature and for the well-being of all forms of life.
Unite in the fight for the defence of Indigenous Brazil
For the guarantee of the originary rights of our peoples
ASSOCIATION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF BRAZIL – APIB
NATIONAL INDIGENOUS MOBILIZATION