Anything and anyone in the way would be removed. The construction of the BR-163 highway was part of the National Integration Plan implemented by Brazil’s military dictatorship - a project designed to bring Indigenous groups under government control, occupy the Amazon, and take over the land. And the Kambiwá, Pataxó, and Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe in the state of Minas Gerais, who lost their land in the 2019 Brumadinho dam disaster, continue to confront land grabbers trying to take over their new territory. In Mato Grosso do Sul - a state that encompasses the tropical savanna known as the Cerrado and the world’s largest tropical wetland, called the Pantanal - the Guarani Kaiowá are trying to take back land lost to ever-advancing farming, facing violent attacks and the burning of their prayer houses. The Yanomami, who live in the Amazon rainforest bordering Venezuela, are still in a longstanding fight to remove more than 20,000 illegal miners from their land, which is rich in gold. Illegal mining, logging, fishing, and land theft, as well as the construction of highways, railways, and hydroelectric dams, have continued to impinge upon Indigenous territories. In the decades to come, all Indigenous land - Brazil has 305 Indigenous groups - would continue to come under threat, whether or not the groups had already completed the slow process of demarcation and official government recognition. It didn’t, however, mean that those theoretical protections would always work in practice. The implementation of Brazil’s Constitution in 1988, including article 231, which outlines those rights as well as the federal government’s responsibility to demarcate and protect the land, gave them recourse. The Kayapó’s fight has been part of a larger movement to demand Indigenous land rights in Brazil following centuries of oppression. “If there were no more Kayapó territory, then there would definitely be no more forest at all,” says Renata Pinheiro, senior manager for Indigenous people and social policies at Conservation International Brasil. Other groups, such as the International Conservation Fund of Canada and Conservation International, have helped the Kayapó defend their territories, providing boats, radios, and aerial surveillance data so the Kayapó can patrol their 1,250 miles of border. Led by Chief Raoni Metuktire, who would eventually be nominated for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, they were joined by musician Sting in their fight to protect the Amazon rainforest, spawning nonprofits like the Rainforest Fund. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Kayapó made international headlines as they moved to obtain legal rights to their traditional lands. Women raise children, tend extensive gardens, and make trips into the forest to collect Brazil nuts, cumaru, açaí berries, and other fruits. The men fish and hunt animals such as tapir, capuchin monkeys, peccary, and deer. Numbering only 9,400 people, the Kayapó live in villages on the Xingu River and its tributaries. Subscribe to the E360 Newsletter for weekly updates delivered to your inbox. And even though the Kayapó are one of the strongest and best-known Indigenous groups in the Brazilian Amazon - they have led the fight for Indigenous rights for 40 years - Bolsonaro’s anti-Indigenous policies are posing a significant threat. Now, as Brazil’s nationalist President Jair Bolsonaro continues his push to legalize a broad range of economic and extractive activities on Indigenous land, plans are underway for a railway to help transport soybeans from the region’s burgeoning number of farms. They told us the highway wouldn’t affect us. “The kuben already had a lot of experience they knew exactly what they were doing,” he says. Illegal loggers and miners who used to arrive in a trickle, Mekranotire says, started gushing in. The paving also provided much easier outside access to two important Kayapó reserves, Menkragnoti and Baú, measuring more than 18,000 square miles and 6,000 square miles, respectively.
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