Indigenous demonstrators take over downtown Brasília
Thousands of indigenous protesters from across Brazil are marching this Tuesday (Apr. 7) down Brasília’s Esplanade of Ministries, where a number of government buildings are located, including the National Congress. The demonstration is part of the 22nd edition of the Free Land Camp, an event that began on Sunday (5) and is considered the movement’s largest and most significant mobilization in the country.
Under the scorching sun, representatives from some of the 391 indigenous peoples camped out walked the six kilometers to the National Congress – the main focus of the movement’s criticism. The group accuses the majority of federal representatives and senators of proposing and passing laws that violate the constitutional rights of indigenous peoples, putting their territories and ways of life at risk.
The demonstrators also accuse lawmakers as well as federal and state officials of yielding to pressure from agribusiness, mining, and large-scale development projects, thereby allowing non-indigenous people to exploit traditional territories for economic gain.
Painted and wearing the traditional attire of their ethnic groups, the protesters carried six large banners bearing the slogans “Congress enemy of the people,” “Our territory is not for sale,” “The future belongs to indigenous peoples,” “The Time Framework is a coup,” “Demarcation is the future,” and “Down with the Time Framework.”
To comply with an agreement with the Federal District’s security forces, the indigenous groups left their bows, arrows, clubs, spears, and blowguns at the camp and occupied three of the six lanes and part of the lawn of the Eixo Monumental, the avenue that cuts through central Brasília from east to west.
“Our march is peaceful, heading toward a Congress that is not peaceful. It is an enemy of indigenous peoples,” said one of the members of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), the entity organizing the demonstration.
The Time Framework
A recurring target of criticism from indigenous communities is the Time Framework – a legally established doctrine that holds that indigenous people are only entitled to the territories they occupied in October 1988, when the Brazilian Constitution was enacted.
In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled the Time Framework unconstitutional. Nevertheless, in 2025, the Senate approved a constitutional amendment that imposes the same time limit on indigenous claims for land demarcation.
Since the senators modified the text that the lower house had approved in 2023, the amendment was sent back to federal representatives for reassessment, which has not yet occurred.
Protesters are also demanding that the federal government recognize more indigenous territories.
According to movement leaders, after a four-year period (2019–2022) during which no new areas of traditional occupation were officially recognized, the federal government validated 20 new territories from January 2023 to November 2025.
Brazil’s national indigenous agency Funai reports that the new territories amount to approximately 2.5 million hectares of protected land across 11 states.
“But we continue this struggle, this fight for territorial guarantees,” APIB Executive Coordinator Dinamam Tuxá told Agência Brasil on Sunday (5).
“We have a really high backlog of demarcations and a situation of widespread violence and vulnerability on indigenous lands that no government has managed to overcome. This has been a motivating factor for indigenous people to come to Brasília to stand up for our concerns,” Tuxá said.
He also noted there are currently about 110 new areas under review that have been claimed as federal lands for indigenous use.
