Humankind will face its worst period since World War II. Epidemics are terrible for any society, but we know that for indigenous peoples the impact is even greater. Influenza, smallpox and measles were some of the diseases brought to our territories by non-indigenous people, and slaughtered many of our ancestors.
Coronavirus is another threat. With the fast worldwide spread of the pandemic, it is urgent that we focus our attention on indigenous peoples. The effects on us can be can be devastating! Our communal way of live could enable the fast spread of the virus in our territories if any of us get infected.
Donate now to APIB – Coalition of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, with the collected amount we will be able to buy food, medicine and hygiene material for our villages.
Undoubtedly, we, indigenous peoples, are one of the most exposed and vulnerable populations in the face of the current Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout history, we have always been the victims of successive invasions not only by the use of physical violence, firearms and forced labor, but also through the diseases carried by invaders, such as the flu, smallpox and measles, even in the 20th century, particularly during the military dictatorship. Through this day, we suffer from illnesses brought from the outside world to our communities: cardiovascular problems, hypertension, diabetes, gastrointestinal diseases, kidney problems, STDs and respiratory diseases. Coronavirus is another of these threats, another plague produced by capitalist accumulation, therefore, it has a political and an economic origin, and now it has become a public health crisis. We should not have to pay for problems unrelated to our way of life. On the contrary, it is up to the State to provide measures in order to mitigate its historically acquired debts with our peoples and communities.
The Coalition of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil – APIB therefore publicly demands from the current government an Emergency Action Plan, that includes, among others, the following measures:
• Guarantee the protection of our territories, regardless of the regularization phase they are in, thereby guaranteeing the protection of our peoples, especially indigenous groups in voluntary isolation and the recently contacted.
• Prevent the invasion of indigenous territories by land grabbers, illegal squatters, miners, loggers and others who practice illegal activities in our territories.
• Stop any evictions of communities that have taken action to recuperate and reoccupy their traditional lands, as they seek to guarantee their customary rights, ownership and usufruct.
• Strengthen and allocate additional budget to the indigenous health subsystem – the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health – SESAI, the Special Indigenous Health Districts (DSEIs) and the Indigenous Health Centers (CASAIs), equipping them to face the new Coronavirus pandemic, especially as many of them are already over-crowded.
• Prevent access to indigenous territories by people who are not authorized nor performing essential assistance services – including tourists and anyone with any other purposes that have not been authorized by our leaders.
• Improve the health subsystem’s preventative care measures to avoid risks of Coronavirus contamination spreading to the villages, especially those close to urban centers or when hospital assistance is necessary. Any Contingency Plan must be widely discussed with the representative bodies of our peoples.
• Immediately revoke FUNAI’s Ordinance No. 419 / PRES., of March 17, 2020, as has also been recommended by the National Health Council (CNS) and the 6th Coordination and Review Chamber of the Federal Public Ministry / PGR. The Ordinance, mainly its 4th article, removes the responsibility of protect isolated peoples from the General Coordination of Isolated Indigenous Peoples, transferring it to regional offices, despite the fact that regional offices do not have qualified staff or structural conditions for such specific and delicate work. For APIB, FUNAI’s ordinance violates both national and international law, including the Federal Constitution, the Statute of Indigenous peoples, Internal Regulations of FUNAI, determinations of the Ministry of Health and of SESAI, the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and resolutions from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and WHO. It also constitutes an act of irresponsibility as it poses more risk to the integrity of isolated and recently contacted peoples. The Ordinance can only be understood to be motivated by unclear interests, which have already been reported on other occasions by our organization.
Finally, in the absence of political will from the current government to develop a Contingency Plan for disease outbreaks and epidemics, and considering the specificities of our peoples – a communal way of life that facilitates the fast spread of Coronavirus – we request the provision of diagnostic tests for indigenous health units with the utmost urgency from international organizations, especially the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
For the well-being of our elders, the keepers of our wisdom and tradition, and of our children, our future generations, we demand more respect for the specific and differential treatment guaranteed indigenous peoples in the 1988 Constitution.
The undersigned organizations – representing indigenous peoples, anthropologists, social, environmental and human rights defenders – that make up the National Indigenous Mobilization (MNI) network express their categorical rejection of Bill No. 191/20, submitted by the President of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro, to the Federal Congress on February 6 of this year. The bill purports to regulate research into and exploration of mineral resources, hydrocarbons, and hydroelectric power on indigenous lands. The bill fulfills many of this President’s twisted dreams. Since being inaugurated he has defended the economic exploitation of indigenous territories, a policy that represents a nightmare scenario for indigenous peoples.
Once again Bolsonaro has shown his disrepect for democracy, the rule of law, human rights, the Federal Constitution, and international treaties recognizing indigenous rights that Brazil has historically respected. Bill 191/20, recently submitted to the Chamber of Deputies, proposes to open up indigenous territories to the exploitation of minerals, water resources and even agriculture. The law’s proponents claim they merely wish to fulfill the Brazilian Constitution, which clearly expresses the federal government’s duty to protect indigenous territories.
The President and his supporters’ real intent, however is to open indigenous lands up to exploitation by Brazilian and international capital. This project would sentence thousands of indigenous peoples to death. Under this proposal indigenous territories would no longer be recognizable. It would lead to the violation of indigenous peoples’ rights and autonomy, which are secured by law in the Brazilian Constitution and in international treaties. The bill would irreversibly damage indigenous peoples’ exclusive sovereignty over their territory.
Indeed, the project proposes to move indigenous peoples from a state of sovereignty to a state of guardianship, in which they no longer make decisions over how to manage their territory. Instead, the President could move forward with economic development projects on indigenous territories by submitting the action to a purely procedural “consultation.” It also hands the administration of financial resources over to an advisory council that may consist of only three indigenous people and that will be able to decide on its own which groups legitimately represent the interests of affected indigenous communities.
This bill is authoritarian, neocolonial, violent, racist, and genocidal, especially with regard to voluntarily isolated and recently contacted indigenous peoples. The bill resumes an ethnocidal and genocidal perspective against indigenous peoples, contrary to what the Federal Constitution advocates in Articles 231 and 232, because, in addition to eliminating protective policies, it alters the status of currently recognized indigenous territories and points in the direction of no longer recognizing any new indigenous territories. Such policies also contradict various international treaties that Brazil is a party to. We express our utter repudiation and dissent with regard to this bill and its unpredictable impacts. We are united in struggle with the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil in defense of the full extent of their rights as the original inhabitants of this country.
Brasilia, February 10, 2020
Signed:
Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil – APIB
Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Nordeste, Minas Gerais e Espirito Santo – APOINME
Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Sul – ARPINSUL
Associação Floresta Protegida
Associação Indígena Moratu do Xingu – AIMIX
Aty Guasú
Centro de Trabalho Indigenista – CTI
Comissão Guarani Yvyrupa
Comitê Nacional de Defesa dos Territórios Frente a Mineração – CNDTFM
Conselho das Aldeias Wajãpi – Apina
Conselho Indigenista Missionário – CIMI
Conselho Terena
Coordenação das Organizações Indígenas da Amazônia Brasileira – COIAB
Indigenistas Associados – INA
Instituto de Estudos Socioeconômicos – INESC
Instituto Internacional de Educação no Brasil – IIEB
Instituto de Pesquisa e Formação Indígena – IEPÉ
Instituto Socioambiental – ISA
Operação Amazônia Nativa – OPAN
Rede de Cooperação Amazônica – RCA
Greenpeace Brasil
Instituto, Sociedade, População e Natureza – ISPN,
Movimento dos Atingidos pela Mineração – MAM
REJECTION MOTION AGAINST BOLSONARO GOVERNMENT PROJECT TO REGULATE MINING, ENERGY VENTURES AND AGRIBUSINESS IN INDIGENOUS LANDS
The Coalition of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) comes to the public to express its vehement rejection of the displays of visceral hate and racism that the Bolsonaro government has, since its first day of government, routinely and publicly expressed against the indigenous peoples, organizations and leaders of Brazil, in the last few days materialized by the announcement of a bill that aims to define
“specific conditions for search and mining of mineral resources, including artisanal mining and oil and gas, and production of hydroelectric energy in indigenous lands”, an announcement made up with false good intentions and rhetoric that induce the co-optation and division of the peoples, distorting the real sense of autonomy, to actually also authorize the invasion of indigenous territories through other ventures such as extensive agriculture, livestock production and other predatory ventures.
The vile statement that “The Indian is a human being just like us. He has a heart, he has feelings, he has soul, he has desires, he has needs…” repeats the ethnocentrism of European invaders, who more than 500 years ago massacred millions of our brothers, a practice that nowadays constitutes a non-bailable racial crime.
Bolsonaro government’s “dream” is actually the will to serve the economic interests that boosted its candidacy and that support his government, even if it implies total disregard for national and international legislation that guarantees our fundamental rights, our original right, congenital right, to a traditional occupation of our lands and territories, our right to exclusive possession and enjoyment, and our right to consultation, free, prior and informed consent on any administrative and legislative measures that affect us.
It has to be said, the majority of indigenous peoples and communities in Brazil do not share the desires of a minority of indigenous individuals who delude themselves and bend to the camouflaged evil intentions of this government.
The APIB, therefore, denounces Bolsonaro Government’s manipulation of our right to autonomy and repudiates this death project that is planned in indigenous territories at any cost, with irreversible impacts particularly on isolated and recently contacted indigenous peoples, and calls to all its base and movements, organizations and supportive segments of national and international society to join us in this battle for life and wellbeing not only of indigenous peoples but of all humanity and the planet.
In 2019, the first year of Bolsonaro government, we felt in our skin the cruel dismantling of the State, of social rights and of public policies achieved hroughout the past 31 years, since the 1988’s constitutional pact.
The year was marked by the exponential increase in intencional fires and the deforestation of protected areas in the Amazon and the Cerrado, affecting mainly indigenous territories and conservation units – with interference of land grabbers, loggers, miners, large livestock farmers, among others. Such crimes have been added to the burst of Brumadinho dam, as well as to the murders of environmentalists, quilombola and indigenous leaders, guardians of the forest, and also to the oil spill on the northeast beaches, under late reaction by the government. In the cities, black children and youngsters, and women keep on dying by actions of police force. And the underemployed people reached 24 million, accompanied by 12 million unemployed and 4 million people in a state of misery.
On the indigenous peoples situation, there was a outright affront to national and international legislation that ensures the rights to territory and identity as well as differentiated public policies. Towards the same direction, the government took a stand against environmental legislation and national environmental policy, configuring an ethnocidal, genocidal and ecocidal government profile.
Social organizations and movements, however, endured. Indigenous peoples and organizations have been mobilized throughout the year, including participations in spheres of international influence.
It is within that context that, on January 20 and 21, APIB scheduled a meeting for further enhancing the analysis of the national context and of the indigenous policy that is threatening the existence and fundamental rights of the peoples of the country.
Throughout the meeting, there will be discussions on struggle strategies, the planning of an anual schedule of actions, and the analysis of the main current threats. Coordinators and leaders of APIB from all regions of the country will take part on the meeting.
Another Guajajara was murdered. Erisvan Soares Guajajara was 15 years old. Son of Luécia Guajajara and Luzinho Guajajara, he was murdered in Amarante where Atibóia indigenous land is located.
The impunity keeps on runnig over many lives and racist speeches on courts keeps generating new victims.
Besides using national force as an emergencial measure, urgently of accurate public policys to access this persecution is needed. We urge for proper public policies and punishment to the deforesters, land grabbers, gold miners and to all kinds of criminials who now feel empowered to invade our territories, lands of our own by right, assured by the Federal Constitution.
We need efficient policys for inspection and the fortification of Indigenists Bodies on the contrary of this set of measurements that awards instead the invasors and land grabbers as the Provisional Measure, which is about landholding regularization in the country – published on the last 10th, or yet this set of measures which dismantles the Indigenists’ and environmentals’ organs.
We need health care policies for the ills and to prize scientific knowledge, our traditions and our tradicional knowledges. We need a singular education for the young people, children, sons and daughters, nephews and grandchildren, more Indigenous schools in our villages. We need investments in PNGATI (National Policy on Environmental and Territorial Management of Indigenous Land) and in policies developed under leaderships of our own Indigenous people.
We will stand fighting until the last Indegenous person stands, that’s how we are doing since 519 year ago. Our lives are public service for humanity. We are the ones who guarantee the air you breath, the water you drink and the balance of the planet’s climate. Without us there will not exist future for humankind. Therefore fighting for Indegenous lives is to fight for those who you love too. This fight is for all of us, it is a fight of gender, race, it’s an environmental fight, class struggles, for human rights for life.
Earlier this year we held a national campaign called Red January. With the motto Indigenous Blood: Not a Single Drop More, we denounced the start of the offensive against indigenous peoples that began as soon as Jair Bolsonaro was inaugurated President. Immediately on taking office, he turned policies in support of Indigenous Peoples over to the worst agribusiness interests, as well as fanning the flames of hate speech and prejudice against Indigenous Peoples.
Last Saturday, December 7, another two Indigenous leaders were murdered: Firmino Silvino Prexede Guajajara, Chief of Silvino Village (Cana Brava Indigenous Land), and Raimundo Guajajara, Chief of Descendência Severino Village (Lagoa Comprida Indigenous Land), both in Maranhão state – where just 35 days ago the Forest Guardian Paulo Paulino Guajajara was also killed.
These crimes reflect the escalation of hate and barbarism inflamed by Jair Bolsonaro’s government, which is attacking us daily, denying our right to exist and promoting the historical illness of racism, which Brazil still suffers from.
We are adrift without protection from the State, which is not fulfilling its constitutional duties. The current administration is acting outside the law, criminal in its political practice and is operating in a genocidal way, seeking to expel us from our territories, killing our culture, making our roots bleed.
The tension, persecution and lack of safety felt by Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples is increasing. We are being attacked, wiped out and criminalized. An attack on Indigenous life is an attack against humanity, as we Indigenous Peoples of the world defend 82% of global biodiversity. In Brazil, we are almost a million Indigenous People. We protect 13% of Brazilian ecosystems. We are in the whole country. We are among the planet’s richest cultures, represented by 305 peoples and 274 languages, and over 180 cases of peoples in voluntary isolation.
Much is said about fighting climate change, but it must be understood that our survival will guarantee the preservation of what is most important to the future of humanity. Mother Earth cannot handle another 50 years of the current predatory economic model. We know that we are in danger and that there is no more time.
We demand Justice, and that measures are taken immediately! We demand that the government authorities investigate the facts and punish the criminals who perpetrated these murders strictly, so that the feeling of impunity doesn’t motivate more criminal actions against our people, brutally culling Indigenous lives.
Here at COP25, where we’re participating with a delegation of over 20 Indigenous People from across Brazil, we demand that Indigenous Peoples’ rights are respected in fully implementing the Paris Climate Accord.
To our friends and allies from civil society around the world, we also ask for help. This will be Red December! We call for a global mobilization. Our people in Maranhão state occupied BR 216 Highway, seeking justice for all of the murders, and we need everybody to join the fight, make it a collective struggle.
This will be the Red December for Indigenous Peoples and peoples of the planet, and our right to exist. Indigenous Blood: Not a Single Drop More!
It is with profound sadness and outrage that I express my deepest and most sincere condolences to the family members of Firmino Silvino Prexede Guajajara and Raimundo Guajajara who at this moment are feeling the pain and sadness of losing a loved one to such cruelty, that made victims among the Guajajara People today. The Indigenous People lived in the villages Silvino (Cana Brava Indigenous Land) and Severino Descendência village (Lagoa Comprida Indigenous Land), both in the state of Maranhão, where, 35 days ago had already gone through the murder of Paulo Paulino Guajajara, who acted as a guardian of the forest.
I feel a mix of pain and anger toward yet another crime that hovers over my Guajajara people. This crime is a reflection of the escalation of hate and cruelty incited by the nefarious political spectrum of Jair Bolsonaro’s perverse and racist government, which continues to attack us daily, denying our right to exist and inciting the historical sickness that is the racism the Brazilian people still suffers.
We are adrift, without the protection of the Brazilian state, whose constitutional role is being neglected by the current authorities. The federal government is an outlaw government, criminal in its political practice, and operates in a genocidal manner to expel us from our territories, butchering our culture, bleeding our roots.
The state of tension, insecurity and persecution against the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil only increases. We are being attacked, decimated, and it is always worth remembering that an attack on Indigenous life is an attack on humanity itself, since, Indigenous Peoples from around the world, are the defenders of 82% of all global biodiversity.
No more bloodshed!
Enough of impunity!
We demand action be taken immediately and justice to be enforced!
We demand that the right authorities clarify the facts by rigorously punishing these criminals so that the sense of impunity no longer motivates criminal actions against our people, brutally striking Indigenous lives down.
The indigenous women from the most diverse peoples of Brazil make a call for everybody to join in this great global action for climate and life on the planet. On this Friday, December 6th, social movements, activists, environmentalists, young people and all those whounderstand the climate emergency will march together at the Climate March that takes place during COP 25, in Madrid . Take part at it too, organize your collectives, call friends, activists and social movements to speak up wherever you are on Friday.
Greed is killing our forests, our woods, our rivers; attacking our right of being and existing in our diversity. The world needs other models of development, we have to put a stop on this killing! Indigenous women are at the forefront of this struggle for the defense of mother earth and the preservation of their traditional ways of life! Join us!
Brasilia – Federal District, August 9 to August 14, 2019
Respect our existence or expect resistance
We, 2,500 women representing 130 different indigenous peoples from every region of Brazil gathered in Brasilia (Federal District), from August 9 to 14, 2019. We conceived this mass meeting collectively to be punctuated by the First Indigenous Women’s Forum and March. As Indigenous Women, our message to the world is that we are waging a constant struggle in defense of “Territory: our body, our spirit”. So that our voices may echo around the world, we reaffirm the commitments we made over the past days.
As women, leaders and warriors, bearers and protectors of life, we will stand and struggle against the issues and violations that afflict our bodies, our spirits, our territories. By spreading our seeds, our rituals, our language, we seek to guarantee our existence.
The Indigenous Women’s March was conceived as part of a conversation that began in 2015 to support the development and empowerment of indigenous women. Throughout these years we engaged in dialogue with women across movements and realized that our movement stands out in ways we would like to be better understood. The gestures of our combat dance contemplate the need for a return to mutual support between the feminine and the masculine, without, however, essentializing men or women. Machismo is yet another epidemic brought to us by European settlers. Thus, what non-indigenous women consider to be violence may not be what we consider to be violence. This does not mean that we will close our eyes to the violence that we recognize in our villages, but rather, that we need to consider how it developed in our communities in order to counteract, problematize and bring critical reflections about our everyday practices and contemporary forms of political organization. We need to engage in dialog and strengthen the power of indigenous women, reclaiming our matriarchal values and our historical memory so that we can advance social rights in our territories.
We are totally opposed to the narratives, proposals, and actions of the current government, which has made its intention to exterminate indigenous peoples explicit. This government has made the genocidal exploitation of our territories by capital its aim. This manner of governing is akin to pulling a tree from the ground and exposing its roots until everything dries out. We are grounded in the earth, because that is where we seek our ancestors, and the earth provides our nutrition and life. That is why for us, territory is not a good that can be sold, traded or exploited. Our territory is our life, our body and our spirit.
The fight for our territorial rights is the fight of our lives. Life and territory are one, for the earth gives us our food, our traditional medicine, our health and our dignity. To lose our territory is to lose our mother. Whoever has territory, has a mother, has a lap to rest their head on. And those who can rest their head on their mother’s lap have a cure for what ills them.
When we care for our lands, which is a natural part of our culture, we are guaranteeing the good of the whole planet, because we care for the forests, the air, the waters and soils. Most of the world’s biodiversity finds shelter on indigenous lands. That is our contribution to sustaining life on earth.
Freedom of expression in our own languages is also fundamental to us. Many of our languages are still living. They resisted the colonial violence that forced us to use a foreign language and to erase our own ways of expressing our existence. We women play a significant role in passing on the power of our ancestral knowledge by passing on our language.
We want our unique way of seeing, perceiving, being and living on our lands to be respected. Know that for us the loss of territory brings a loss of feeling, a deep sadness that harms our spirit. The feeling of our territory being violated is like that of a mother losing her child. It shows disrespect for life itself. It shows disrespect for our culture and is a disgrace to our ancestors who were responsible for creating it all. It shows disrespect to those who have died for the land. It brings the loss of the sacred and the meaning of life.
Everything that this current government stands for and has accomplished is a direct assault on our protection and care for Mother Earth, annihilating the rights that we won over centuries of struggle. The government’s non-recognition of indigenous lands, its encouragement of mining and leasing on our territories, its attempts to make environmental regulation more flexible, its moves to finance the purchase of weapons in the countryside, its dismantling of indigenous and environmental policies all demonstrate this.
Our duty as indigenous women and leaders is to strengthen and give value to our traditional knowledge, to ensure our wisdom, ancestry and culture survive, to know and defend our rights and to honor the memory of those who came before us. Our duty is to know how to wage our struggle, to give potency to our spiritual practices and to banish all that threatens our existence.
To fulfill our duty, and with the strength of the web of life and the connections that we have weaved at this meeting, we tell the world that we will fight tirelessly:
To ensure the recognition and demarcation of indigenous lands, for the attacks on our mother earth are attacks on our own body and our life;
To ensure our right to the full possession of our territories. We will defend our land and demand that the Brazilian state prohibit mining on our territory, which is poisoning us with mercury and other toxic substances. The Brazilian state must stop attempting to lease our lands to agribusiness and it must punish illegal invasions of our territory driven by greed. These interests want to rob us of our natural resources and use them only for profit. They have no concern for maintaining life on the planet;
To guarantee the unrestricted right to differentiated, culturally-sensitive health care for our peoples. These services must be maintained as part of the Subsystem for Indigenous Health Care of the federal Unified Health System under the qualification of the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (SESAI). We fight and we will continue fighting for the public services offered by the federal United Health System (SUS) and for the maintenance and continuous qualification of the National Health Care Policy for our peoples, whether in our territories or in urban contexts.
We do not accept the privatization of our peoples’ health care services or their devolution to municipal or state governments.
We fight and we will continue to fight for the management of SESAI to be performed by professionals who have the technical and policy qualifications to understand the specificities involved in providing health care to indigenous peoples. It is not enough to have an indigenous person at the head of the agency. We need to ensure the sensitive management of all the issues that are important to us under this topic, including respect for our traditional health care practices, our traditional medicines, our midwives and ways of performing natural birth, and the knowledge of our spiritual leaders. According to our indigenous sciences, health comes not only from prescribing active ingredients, healing is the result of subjective, emotional, cultural and fundamentally spiritual interactions.
To demand the Supreme Federal Court (STF) not to allow or legitimize any retrograde or restrictive reinterpretation of our original right to our traditional lands. We hope that, in its decision on Final Appeal 1.017.365, related to the case of the Ibirama Laklanõ Indigenous Territory of the Xokleng people, which is considered to be a precedent-setting case, the STF will reaffirm the interpretation of the Brazilian Constitution in accordance with the “Indigenato” thesis, affirming our original right to our lands. The STF must definitively exclude any possibile of acceptance of the “Indigenous Occupation” thesis that only recognizes our right to the lands occupied by indigenous peoples when Brazil’s most recent constitution was approved;
To demand that the judiciary, which, in keeping with the principle of equality before the law, asserts our specific rights laid out in the Constitution and, accordingly, defends our right to access the justice system. Ensuring a fair and democratic society means guaranteeing the rights of all peoples, as is also provided for in the Constitution. We demand that the international treaties signed by Brazil be respected, which include among others: Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), the UN Conventions on Cultural Diversity, Biological Diversity and on Climate Change, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the American Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;
To promote the increased representation of indigenous women in political spaces, inside and outside our villages and in all environments that are important for securing and implementing our rights. Recognizing our narratives is not enough, we must recognize our narrators. Our bodies and our spirits must be present in decision-making spaces;
To combat discrimination against indigenous people in decision-making spaces, especially women, who are victims not only of racism but also of machismo;
To defend the right of all human beings to a healthy, pesticide-free diet nourished by the spirit of mother earth;
To ensure the right to a differentiated, culturally-relevant education of quality for our children and young people that respects our languages and values our traditions. We demand that the 25 proposals of the Second National Conference on Indigenous School Education, including proposed Ethnoeducational Territories be implemented. We demand that institutions such as the General Committee on Indigenous Education within the Ministry of Education be reformed to ensure our participation in forming education policy. These institutions must meet our other demands, which include improving the infrastructure of indigenous schools, training and hiring indigenous teachers, and developing culturally-relevant instructional materials;
To guarantee public policy on indigenous matters that effectively contributes to the promotion, inspiration and guarantee of our rights. These policies must design plans, implementation and monitoring in a participatory manner, in dialogue with our organizations, and take actions that reflect the diversity and the priorities of the Indigenous Movement;
To reaffirm the need for specific legislation to combat violence against indigenous women, culturally oriented to the reality of our peoples. Public policies need to be based on the specifics, diversity and the social context of each of our peoples, respecting our conception of family, education, age, work, and poverty.
To continue empowering indigenous women by informing, training and raising awareness about our rights, ensuring full access for indigenous women to formal education (at the primary, secondary and university levels) in order to promote and give value to the indigenous knowledge of our women;
Strengthen the indigenous movement by bringing together our wisdom across genders and generations;
To combat, without compromise, racist and anti-indigenous sentiment. We demand an end to violence, criminalization and discrimination against our peoples and our leaders, including by public agents, ensuring the punishment of those responsible and reparation for damages caused. The government must commit to protecting our lives.
Finally, we reaffirm our commitment to strengthen alliances with women from all sectors of society in Brazil and around the world, from the countryside to the city, from the forest to the sea. All of our rights and all of our livelihoods are under attack.
We have a responsibility to sow, transmit, transcend and share our knowledge just as our ancestors and all those who preceded us did. They helped to strengthen us together and on an equal footing with men, who we bore as sons. They gave us the strength to fight, make decisions and care for our land.
We are responsible for fertilizing and maintaining our sacred soil. We will always be warriors in defense of our peoples’ existence and of Mother Earth.
