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- Category: Tribe
There are currently around 305 Indigenous peoples in Brazil, numbering some 900,000 people, or 0.4% of the Brazilian population.
The government has recognised 690 territories for its Indigenous population, covering around 13% of Brazil’s land area. Almost all of this reserved land (98.5%) is in the Amazon.
However, although roughly half of all Indigenous people in Brazil live outside the Amazon, these peoples occupy only 1.5% of the total land reserved for Indigenous peoples in the country.
The peoples who live in the savannahs and Atlantic forests of the south, such as the Guarani and the Kaingang, and in the dry interior of the north-east, such as the Pataxó Hã Hã Hãe and the Tupinambá, were among the first to come into contact with European colonists when they landed in Brazil in 1500.
Despite hundreds of years of contact with the expanding frontier society, in most cases they have fiercely maintained their languages and customs in the face of the massive theft and continuing invasion of their lands.
The largest people today are the Guarani, numbering 51,000, but they have very little land left. Over the last 100 years almost all of their land has been stolen from them and turned into vast, dry networks of cattle ranches, soya fields and sugar cane plantations. Many communities are crammed into overcrowded reserves, and others live under tarpaulins by the roadside.
The people with the largest territory are the relatively isolated Yanomami, who number 19,000 and occupy 9.4 million hectares in the northern Amazon, an area roughly the same size as the US state of Indiana and slightly larger than Hungary.
The largest Amazonian Indigenous people in Brazil are the Tikuna, who number 40,000.
Many Amazonian peoples number fewer than 1,000. The Akuntsu, for example, now consist of just four people, and the Awá of only 450.
The Awá are the most threatened people in the world.
Uncontacted peoples
Uncontacted Indigenous people in the western Brazilian Amazon.
Brazil is home to more isolated peoples than anywhere else on the planet. More than 100 such groups are now believed to live in the Amazon.
Some number several hundred and live in remote border areas in the state of Acre and in protected territories such as the Vale do Javari, on the border with Peru. Others are scattered fragments, survivors of peoples all but wiped out by the impact of the rubber boom and the expansion of agriculture over the last century. Many, such as the nomadic Kawahiva, who number just a few dozen, are fleeing loggers and ranchers who are invading their lands.
As the pressure to exploit their lands increases, all isolated Indigenous peoples are extremely vulnerable both to violent attacks (which are common) and to diseases that are widespread elsewhere, such as flu and measles, to which they have no immunity.
Livelihoods
Most communities live entirely from the forests, savannahs and rivers through a mix of hunting, gathering and fishing. They grow plants for food and medicine and use them to build houses and make everyday objects.
Staple crops such as cassava, sweet potatoes, maize, bananas and pineapples are grown in gardens. Animals such as peccaries, tapirs and monkeys, and birds such as curassows, are hunted for meat.
Some peoples, such as the Matis, use long blowpipes with poisoned darts to catch their prey. Most use bows and arrows, and some also use shotguns. Nuts, berries and fruits such as açaí and pupunha (peach palm fruit) are harvested regularly, and wild honey is enjoyed.
Fish, especially in the Amazon, is an important food. Many Indigenous people use fish poison, or timbó, to stun and catch fish. The Enawene Nawe, who do not eat red meat, are famous for the elaborate wooden fishing dams called ‘waitiwina’ that they build across small rivers every year to catch and smoke large quantities of fish. Their Yãkwa ceremony is linked to these fishing dams and has been recognised as part of Brazil’s national heritage.
A handful of peoples – the Awá, the Maku in the north-west and some isolated groups – are nomadic hunter-gatherers. They live in small extended family groups and have few possessions, which allows them to move quickly through the forest. They can put up shelters from saplings and palm leaves in just a few hours.
Like all Indigenous peoples, they carry incredibly detailed mental maps of the land and its topography, fauna and flora, and the best hunting spots. The Awá sometimes hunt at night with torches made from the resin of the maçaranduba tree.
Ethnobotanical knowledge and the role of conservation
Indigenous peoples have unrivalled knowledge of their plants and animals and play a crucial role in conserving biodiversity.
According to scientific studies, Indigenous lands are “currently the most important barrier to deforestation in the Amazon”.
In some states, such as Maranhão, the last remaining stretches of forest are found only in Indigenous territories (the Awá are a good example of this), and these are under enormous pressure from outsiders.
Their role in conserving the rich biodiversity of the cerrado (or savannah) and the Amazon rainforest is vital.
The Yanomami cultivate 500 plants for food, medicine, house building and other needs. They use nine different plant species just as fish poison. The Tukano recognise 137 varieties of cassava.
Guaraná, the cola-like fizzy drink found everywhere in Brazil, was known to the Sateré-Mawé Indigenous people long before it was sold commercially. They roasted the seeds, ground them into a powder, mixed it with water and drank it before going out hunting. The guaraná ensured that they did not feel hungry and had enough energy to keep hunting.
Many Indigenous peoples in Brazil, such as those of the Xingu Park, the Yanomami and the Enawene Nawe, live in malocas – large communal houses – that are home to extended families, who sling their hammocks from the rafters and share food around the family hearths.
The Yanomami live in large communal houses.
Spiritual worlds and shamanism
Like Indigenous peoples elsewhere in the world, the Indigenous peoples of Brazil have very deep spiritual connections with their land. This is reflected in their rich oral history, cosmology, myths and rituals.
Some communities take power plants or teacher plants, which allow them to reach altered states of consciousness in order to connect with the spirits and heal illnesses.
Yanomami medicine men inhale yakoana or yopo, a snuff, to call on their shamanic spirits, or xapiri. The xapiri play a crucial role in healing ceremonies and during the reahu, or funeral feast, when communities come together to consume the ashes of the dead.
The “pajé” (healers) of peoples such as the Huni Kuin, Ashaninka, Puyanawa, Yawanawa and others drink ayahuasca, a brew made from the caapi vine, during healing sessions.
Some, such as the Awá, do not take stimulants or drugs, but go into a trance through the power of rhythmic dancing and clapping to travel to the iwa, or dwelling place of the spirits, where they meet the souls of their ancestors and the spirits of the forest, the karawara.
The transition from childhood to adulthood is often marked by ceremonies and seclusion. When a Tikuna girl menstruates for the first time, she is painted black with genipapo dye and adorned with eagle feathers. She sings, dances and jumps over fires for up to four days with almost no sleep, and is then secluded for several months, during which she is taught about the history of her people and told about her future responsibilities.
The peoples of the Xingu are famous for their funeral ceremonies in honour of dead leaders, who are represented by decorated wooden trunks called kwarup.
History
The history of Brazil’s Indigenous peoples has been marked by brutality, slavery, violence, disease and genocide.
When the first European colonists arrived in 1500, what is now Brazil was inhabited by some 11 million native people, living in around 2,000 peoples or nations. In the first century of contact, 90% were wiped out, mainly by diseases brought by the colonists, such as flu, measles and smallpox. In the centuries that followed, thousands more died as slaves on the rubber and sugar cane plantations.
By the 1950s the population had fallen so low that the eminent senator and anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro predicted that none would be left by 1980. On average, it is estimated that one people became extinct every year during the last century.
In 1967 a federal prosecutor named Jader Figueiredo published a 7,000-page report cataloguing thousands of atrocities and crimes committed against Indigenous people, from murder to land theft and slavery.
In one notorious case known as “The massacre of the 11th parallel”, a rubber baron ordered his men to throw sticks of dynamite into a Cinta Larga village. Those who survived were killed when the rubber tappers entered the village on foot and attacked them with machetes.
The report made international headlines and led to the dissolution of the government’s Indian Protection Service (SPI), which was replaced by FUNAI. This remains the government’s Indigenous affairs department today.
Survival International was founded in 1969 in response to an article by Norman Lewis in the Sunday Times Magazine about the genocide of Brazil’s Indigenous peoples.
The Indigenous population gradually began to grow again, although when the military opened up the Amazon to development in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, a new wave of hydroelectric dams, cattle ranching, mines and roads meant that tens of thousands of Indigenous people lost their lands and their lives. Dozens of peoples disappeared for ever.
In 1985, twenty-two years of military dictatorship came to an end and a new constitution was drafted. Indigenous peoples and their supporters campaigned hard for greater rights.
Much has been achieved, although Indigenous peoples still do not enjoy the collective land ownership rights to which they are entitled under international law.
Threats and challenges today
Since Europeans arrived in Brazil more than 500 years ago, Indigenous peoples have suffered genocide on a massive scale and the loss of most of their lands.
Today, as Brazil presses ahead with aggressive plans to develop and industrialise the Amazon, even the most remote territories are now under threat. Several hydroelectric dam complexes are being built near isolated Indigenous groups; they will also deprive thousands of other Indigenous people of land, water and livelihoods. The dam complexes will provide cheap energy for mining companies, which are poised to carry out large-scale mining on Indigenous lands if Congress passes a bill being pushed by the mining lobby.
Two hundred representatives of the Mebengokre Kayapó people met for five days to discuss the Belo Monte dam and four other dams that will devastate their lands.
Kayapó dance at a protest against the dam, Piaraçu, Mato Grosso, Brazil, 2006. Two hundred representatives of the Mebengokre Kayapó people met for five days to discuss the Belo Monte dam and four other dams that will devastate their lands.
In the south, many peoples, such as the Guarani, live in appalling conditions in tarpaulin shacks along the roadside. Their leaders are systematically attacked and killed by private militias of gunmen hired by ranchers to stop them from reoccupying their ancestral land. Many Guarani have taken their own lives in despair at the lack of a meaningful future.
Resistance and Indigenous organisations
Today there are more than 200 Indigenous organisations at the forefront of the battle to defend their hard-won rights. Last year hundreds of Indigenous people took to the streets to protest against the government’s plans to weaken their rights. Many have their own projects, health clinics and bilingual schools. The Tikuna set up a museum to show their technologies, art, culture and language to non-Indigenous people.
Some peoples have made videos and DVDs to record rituals and ceremonies for their descendants and to increase understanding of their ways of life. The Indigenous Council of Roraima runs projects on animal husbandry, fishing and seed banks for genetic diversity to ensure the people’s self-sufficiency.
Despite these achievements, racism towards Indigenous people remains endemic in Brazil. In law they are still regarded as minors. The most important goal for Indigenous peoples in Brazil is control of their lands; Brazil is one of only two South American countries that do not recognise collective Indigenous land ownership.
