EMPOWERING INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN GLOBAL POLITICS

EXPERIENCES FROM BRAZIL

Andrey Cordeiro Ferreira and João Pacheco de Oliveira Filho

Indigenous peoples are ‘native’ and ‘original’ communities who inhabited lands across the earth prior to their absorption into modern empires and states. Around the world today there are some 650 million indigenous people spread across 6,800 groups. In most cases these populations face substantial cultural repression, ecological displacement, economic marginalisation and political subordination.

In Brazil native peoples are formally categorised as índio. Across the country over 230 indigenous groups between them speak over 130 native languages. Demographic estimates are controversial, but the population of the Terras Indígenas (officially reserved Indigenous Lands) is today around 450,000 people. after several centuries of steep demographic decline the indigenous population of Brazil has grown again in the last 30 years. Tens of thousands or even more native people have moved to urban areas.

Experiences of oppression have varied considerably across the many indigenous communities in Brazil. For example, in the Amazon region and areas of Mato Grosso State, the main demands of indigenous peoples relate to protection of their existing territories, maintenance of their autonomy, and survival of their distinctive social practices. However, in other parts of Brazil (such as Mato Grosso do Sul, the North East, the South East and the South), the main demand is to create additional Terras Indígenas, since current native lands in these regions normally measure between 2 and 2000 hectares, for populations that can number into several thousands. Demands of indigenous peoples for social rights (e.g. of education and health) tend to be more similar across Brazil. However, the ways and extents that social rights are actually obtained varies quite a lot between different parts of the country.

Given this diversity of experiences and aims, indigenous peoples in Brazil have not formed a single and homogeneous political mobilisation. Indeed, the state can increase divisions between the indigenous communities by applying particularistic policies to different groups.

Still, some native peoples in Brazil have aimed in the past two decades to forge a unified political mobilisation around the general category of ‘indigenous’. One major example of such an association is the Coordenação das Organizações Indígenas da Amazônia Brasileira (COIAB – Coordination of Indigenous Organisations of the Brazilian Amazon), launched in 1989. Another prominent example is the Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Nordeste, Minas Gerais e Espirito Santo (APOINME – Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of the Northeast and Minas Gerais), created in 1990. Many other associations of native populations, formal and informal, are limited to a local scope, though they may also maintain links with wider groupings such as COIAB and APOINME. The larger organisations perform many functions, but especially promote national meetings and the participation of indigenous peoples in governmental forums.

At the same time COIAB, APOINME and other mobilisations do not limit their activism to Brazil alone. After all, the powers that marginalise indigenous peoples in Brazil are also partly global in reach. Large works of regional infrastructure (such as transposition of the São Francisco River and the Power Plant of Belo Monte), which present some of the most symbolic threats to indigenous peoples, cannot be viewed as isolated actions. They are part of long-term strategic projects such as the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA) since 2000 and the Puebla-Panama Plan (PPP) since 2001. In turn these regional projects are part of larger processes of restructuring global production and trade. In this new global division of labour agribusiness in Latin America – and its many encroachments on indigenous communities – has a specific and significant position.

Hence indigenous peoples in Brazil also take their struggles to regional and global forums. For example, COAIB is part of the Coordination of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon River Basin (COICA). In addition, indigenous peoples in Brazil have taken complaints of violations of human rights and international conventions to multilateral forums.

Watch video footage of Andrey Cordeiro Ferreira and João Pacheco de Oliveira introducing their paper on 'including indigenous peoples in global poltics' at our international workshop in Rio de Janeiro.

The workshop brought together academics, activitists and policymakers from around the world and generated lively debates and new understanding on how to understand and overcome exclusion.

Read more about:

including the exluded | rio workshop |   workshop findings

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