BRASILIA, BRAZILIA (AP) –Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday officially recognized nearly 800 square miles of indigenous land, keeping the important Amazon rainforest from commercial exploitation. Fulfilling the campaign’s pledge to protect.
Lula recognized his six ancestral lands. Two of the largest he are in the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical forest and an important carbon sink that helps mitigate climate change. The total land area recognized by the biome is 161,500 hectares (620 square miles).
Although the land is under federal jurisdiction, the designation gives indigenous peoples the right to use the land in their traditional ways. Mining activities are prohibited, and special permits are required for commercial farming and logging. In addition, non-indigenous peoples are prohibited from engaging in economic activities on indigenous lands.
Lula’s actions were welcomed by the indigenous movement, but they were not without dissatisfaction with their limited scale.In January, his government promised to create 14 new territories in the short term.
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At his week-long Aboriginal camp in his annual capital, Brasilia, Lula addressed a packed crowd, including officials from the federal government’s Department of Indigenous Peoples, chanting and holding banners during the ceremony. The camp itself has hundreds of tents on the city’s main promenade, where indigenous people of various ethnic groups gather to dance, sing, sell crafts, and hold political demonstrations. “We will legalize tribal lands. That is the promise I made to you.”
Kléber Kalypuna, executive coordinator of the indigenous organization Apiv, said the demarcation was a welcome change after four years of threats and encroachments on indigenous lands under Lula’s predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. said.
“For us, it’s a very important process for reopening. Of course, there are other countries that can move forward,” he said.
Among the countries missed was the Barra Velha Territory of the Pataxo tribe in southern Bahia. Pataxo leader Renat Achuab said “this government that we have supported and helped build” needs to demarcate the country as soon as possible to prevent invasion by outsiders. rice field.
He said there was already a conflict between agribusiness and land acquisition, and that drug dealers were getting involved.
Atxuab said he had met with the newly created Indigenous Peoples Minister under the Lula government but had not been given a date to demarcate his land. The largest new territory is in Amazonas. His Uneiuxi Aboriginal territory in Nadöb has been expanded by 37% to his 554,000 hectares (2,100 square miles) of primeval rainforest. It takes four days from the main villages to the nearest town by low-power motorboat, the most common mode of transportation in the region.
“This boundary will allow the people of Nadob to feel safe and secure in our territory, where we live, fish, hunt and gather fruit. We want to stay there, just like our ancestors did,” 45-year-old Mayor Eduardo Castelo told the Associated Press in a telephone interview. “We don’t want white influence on our territory.”
