Indigenous leader calls for strong indigenous policy in Brazil

Just like millions of Brazilians, indigenous leader Marcos Terena watched the session which saw the lower house vote to impeach President Dilma Rousseff on Sunday (Apr. 17). After hearing the speech of lawmakers who dedicated their votes to family members and even military officials convicted for crimes of torture, Terena said he feels concerned. “All of them behaved as if they were before a stage that had been lit so they could give vent to their nonsense. We were thinking: When is it going to be possible for us indigenous people to trust these politicians, who don't seem to understand the demands of the white, much less the demands of the indigenous peoples,” he says.

Today, April 19—Indian's Day in Brazil—Terena talked to Agência Brasil about the main claims of the people he represents. He complains about the lack of solid indigenous policy, arguing that land demarcation is still a major concern, and that the National Indigenous Foundation, or FUNAI, should be made stronger, and calls for the creation of a state-of-the-art indigenous university aimed at preserving and enhancing the knowledge of the native Brazilian peoples. “We're able to promote the indigenous themselves, and also large-scale events, reach the public as well as government authorities, but the action, the proposal for strong indigenous policy, doesn't materialize,” he criticized.

Terena, a member of a work group on indigenous identity at the Ministry of Education, believes the greatest difficulty is to be found in the National Congress, where, he maintains, conservative lawmakers are not very keen on addressing the concerns of the indigenous and believe they get in the way of development. “We don't have indigenous congresspeople, deputies. The alliances we manage to forge don't amount to much in Congress. We've been dealt blows in a dispersive manner, like the notorious PEC 215 [a constitutional amendment bill], which is an attempt to take the prerogative to demarcate land from hands of the government, and also the proposal for mining in indigenous areas, where we've always been the victims,” he said.

For the indigenous peoples, land demarcation is a crucial issue. “The demarcation of territories is proof that we want peace with the neighbors approaching our villages, and, above all, proof that we want to get involved. We want to devise a means for land management which must not be limited to hunting and fishing. We have to be realistic on this topic. Technology has advanced significantly, and we can't be thrown basic food baskets, which once again thwarts the initiative of the indigenous in their sovereignty and their means of growth,” he argued.

The indigenous leader regards education as a tool for empowering the identity, culture and also sovereignty of the indigenous. “In this new millennium, for the upcoming years, our number one goal is to found the first multicultural indigenous university in Brazil. Why can't Brazil's first nations have their own state-of-the-art university, an indigenous university, in which the knowledges of our traditional pajés are given its due importance,” he questions.

Regarding FUNAI, Terena explains that the lack of a clear indigenous policy turned the foundation into the ugly duckling of the Ministry of Justice, to which it is linked. He argues no one was interested in taking the presidency of FUNAI because of its large number of duties and tiny budget: “FUNAI works with over 300 nations in Brazil, with a [linguistic] demand of 240 languages in Brazil, and it has the equivalent of nearly 15 percent of Brazil's territory to administer. It's considerably larger than any of the government's ministries. It has no budget, no money for seeds, no money for monitoring its territory,” he said.

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira