Emancipation which means Destruction

Declarations and Demands of the Assembly of Native Leaders (27 December 1978)

Ch. 16 - The Land is Not for Sale

Brazil's 1973 Indian Stature had as its main purpose "preserv(ing) (Indian) culture and integrating them, progressively and harmoniously into the national community."  Apart from the implicit contradiction in this aim, FUNAI, the main body set up to protect the country's indigenous communities during this process, was itself "subordinated to the overall policy of economic development for the country."

In the last fifteen years the world's biggest colonisation projects have taken place on the Indian lands of Brazil, and FUNAI has quite clearly become a prime agent in the process.  Even the vestige of protection for native Brazilians which FUNAI has been able to afford is now threatened, with the promulgation of new Decrees allowing other state bodies and mining companies access to indigenous lands.

In 1978 the tribal people of Brazil were faced with a Draft Emancipation Decree which, in many respects, was the very opposite and was intended to be the rubric for the final integration of the Indian. An Assembly of native leaders forcefully rejected a form of "emancipation" which would finally rob them of their land rights.

As we are on the verge of seeing the new draft for the Decree for Emancipation which will "regularize" the Statutes respecting the Indian signed by Your Excellency, we would inform The President of the problems which have been raised, studied and resolved in this Assembly.

Having sent to your Excellency the Draft Decree for Emancipation, we are hereby setting forth our opinion - the opinion of the Indian, the only individual who was not invited to give his opinion with regard to the emancipation which he is about to attain.

In the first place, we would like to call to mind a passage from the letter by Andila Inacio Kaingang, with which Your Excellency must be acquainted. We have in this Assembly today repeated the same things and have merely adopted some of his thoughts as our own.

We are taking the liberty of sending this Document in the name of the Indians who inhabit the immense territory of Brazil.

Mr. President, it would not perhaps be possible for our people merely to speak and understand their mother tongue without their understanding these cries for peace, love and understanding. No, Mr. President, we are sure that our people will understand this message, even though it be in other languages, as it has understood the word "patience" which has up to now been shouted in our ears - a patience which has now reached its limits, as would happen with any nation whatever might be the stage of its civilization.

Mr. President, Your Excellency, you must agree that the passions of our people can no longer be contained within limits when they look at the lands remaining to them in comparison with the vast territories of Brazil over which we used in the past to have full dominion and which have been unlawfully taken from us by the White Man.

What puzzles us most is that it is in these conditions that the Draft Decree for Emancipation is being launched, when we know that various Articles of our Law, the Statutes respecting the Indian, have not been included.

What most calls for attention and which has been the subject of arguments and complaints within the various organisations with a Brazilian National field of action is the following: "The Executive Authority will carry out, within the period of five years, the demarcation of the Native Territories which have not yet been demarcated". (Article 65.)

Just as public opinion condemned this emancipation, so we, in the name of the Native Brazilian Community, reject this emancipation. May it be dismissed by your Council and may our demands be taken into consideration. May that article of the Law be fulfilled, that article appearing to be one of the vital points which the new Law avoids. May the Indian be acknowledged as the heir to and lawful owner of his own lands and may the reservations be recognised as the collective property of the Native Communities. Any omission or lack of concern regarding this aspect of the matter will constitute an attitude which will lead us to conclude that the emancipation proclaimed by the Minister of the Interior forms nothing more or less than a hostile attitude and ill-intentioned as regards the Native Communities, and therefore worthy of censure.

Another Article in the Statutes respecting the Indian states the following: "The native lands may not be subject to leasing or any legal Deed or transaction which might restrict the full exercise of immediate tenure by the Native Community or by the forest-dwelling aboriginals". (Article 18.)

Mr. President, we are well aware of the grave problem which confronts the Native Communities who have had their lands leased out by the FUNAI itself and who now find themselves unable to move intruders which the FUNAI has allowed into our zones. Other lands are encroached upon in a peaceful manner, although without the opportune support of the Post Chiefs or of the regional representatives of the Organisation for the protection of the Indian. A concrete case is that of Roraima, where the representative of the FUNAI permitted interlopers to encroach upon the native areas, according to the statements of the Native Leaders who met in the Assembly of Surumu.

The Statutes for the Indian, in Article 66, states: "The Organisation for the Protection of the forest-dwelling aboriginals will make public and observe the regulations of Convention 107." This Convention protects our most elementary rights and, as Brazil is one of the signatories of this Convention, it is under the obligation of carrying it out, especially as regards our freedom of communication and expression. This is to the point, because we are now complaining about the police activities which the FUNAI is exercising over the Native Communities, forbidding the Indians to take part in meetings and assemblies. It seems that the FUNAI is afraid of what is said at these meetings, where we do nothing more than report on our struggles and failures and the crimes carried out by the White Man in the communities of which every one of us forms a part. A fact which is deeply imprinted on our memory came from the breaking up of the Assembly of Surumu in Roraima, which is in contradiction to special Law No. 5.371 of 5th December, 1967, which authorises the founding of the National Institution for the Indian, as stated in Article 1, sub-clause I thereof, which empowers the FUNAI "to establish the policy and guarantee the fulfillment of the policy for the natives based on the following principles:- respect for the person of the Indian and for the tribal institutions and communities."

Mr. President, we are not seeking to lay down regulations and laws because we are neither pedagogues, jurists nor theologians, but we simply wish clearly to state our immediate demands, as guaranteed to us by the Statutes respecting the Indian.

We are not impressed by the statements made by the Minister on behalf of the President of the FUNAI, in the Press, in defence of the emancipation, because we, who are the victims of this policy, are the only ones who can give a sincere opinion as to what this emancipation represents; for if fine words could solve our problem, we should not today be in a situation which is so different from that which the Statutes respecting the Indian upholds, since the emancipation desired by the Minister will bring about the destruction of the tribal system for the Native Communities, and consequently to the collective and individual destruction of its elements, in as much as the Indian must live in his own community, with the full liberty to continue his cultural traditions and with the freedom to own his own land.

Mr. President, the period for the demarcation of the native areas having expired, we wish to inform Your Excellency that the Native Communities believe that they have every right to defend and rid their zones of interlopers should the competent body, the FUNAI, not complete the demarcation of the native zones. As we conclude that it is on this date that the period for the demarcation of the native areas expires, we demand that what you have ordered should be carried out and that the proposed law for emancipation, for which the Minister, Rangel Reis, is responsible, should be scrapped.

These are the opinions of the Brazilian Indian, expressed through their representatives present this day: Karipuna, Palikur, Galibi, Dessana, Apurina, Jamamadi, Tapirape, Xavante, Rikbaktsa, Pareci, Kaiwa, Kaingang and Guarani, at the meeting held in Goias on the 17th and 19th of December, by the native representatives of Amapa, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Espirito Santo, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.

Goiás, 19 December, 1978.

Source: Moody, Roger ed. The Indigenous Voice: Visions and Realities. 2nd Edition. Utrecht: International Books, 1988. p.357-359. Taken from Survival International Review (London) 1979.