Brazil follows the trail of isolated indigenous people in the Amazon
A hand-hunted turtle shell and a ceramic vessel: these simple material remains, found three years ago, are the last known traces of isolated indigenous peoples in Ituna/Itatá, in the Legal Amazon.
Brazil has evidence of the existence of peoples without contact with society in this indigenous land in Pará, with a size similar to the city of São Paulo.
Ituna/Itatá is protected by a provisional decree against forest destruction, but indigenous organizations are asking the government to conduct more expeditions in search of traces to confirm the presence of isolated peoples, which would allow the State to definitively demarcate the area for forest preservation.
In the wooden and straw houses of Ita'aka, a village of 300 inhabitants in the neighboring Koatinemo indigenous land, reports of chance encounters with “relatives” from uncontacted communities of Ituna/Itatá circulate among the families of the Asurini people.
"My sister-in-law said to me: 'It's there, it's there!' It was a little boy who was looking at me very closely, he was the size of this banana tree," Takamyí Asurini, an elderly man who bears a scar on his back from an arrow he says was shot by the isolated people, told AFP.
Authorities extended on June 18 a provisional order that has restricted access to Ituna/Itatá since 2011, to “guarantee the full protection of territories with the presence of isolated indigenous peoples.”
Evidence in Ituna/Itatá ranges from sightings from the 1970s onwards to archaeological discoveries that indicate the presence of uncontacted indigenous people since at least 2009, according to the NGO Burness, which supports efforts for a definitive demarcation of the territory.
Brazil recognizes 114 “presence records” of isolated indigenous people in the Amazon, that is, groups that voluntarily maintain themselves without or with little contact with national societies.
According to the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (Funai), this isolation is sometimes due to the negative consequences of interacting with white people in the past: disease, physical violence and the plundering of natural resources, Funai explains.
Among the officially recognized records, about a quarter are considered confirmed, and others, such as those of Ituna/Itatá, are considered “strong evidence” of the existence of isolated peoples, although without any official systematic work to effectively prove it.
“There is a historical neglect of records in which the State recognizes the possibility of the existence of these peoples, but fails to guarantee effective measures for territorial protection,” pointed out Luiz Fernandes, member of the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (Coiab).
“To prove that there are isolated people, the State needs qualified records, but for us, indigenous peoples, it is different: we perceive them in nature, in the sounds we hear, their presence, sometimes their smells,” highlighted indigenous activist Mita Xipaya, 24.
Non-indigenous lands have already lost almost 30% of their native vegetation in the Brazilian Amazon since records began in 1998, according to the NGO Instituto Socioambiental.
On the other hand, it fell by 2% in indigenous lands delimited by the State during the same period.
For a decade, Ituna/Itatá has been plagued by illegal mining and deforestation for agricultural purposes, which has even threatened the safety of those responsible for monitoring, according to authorities.
The situation worsened during Jair Bolsonaro's presidency (2019-2022), when the government suspended the Ituna/Itatá protection ordinance and the indigenous land became the most deforested in the country.
The consequences persist to this day in this territory, where kilometers of devastated land amid the Amazonian green can be seen in a flight over the region, AFP confirmed.
Indigenous people and activists are calling on the current government to move forward with the permanent demarcation of Ituna/Itatá, months before President Lula leads the UN COP30 climate conference in Belém.
"It is necessary not only to look at the forest, but also at the people who live in it, the indigenous peoples, because it is through them that the forest is still standing," warned Toya Manchineri, general coordinator of Coiab, which defends the existence of isolated peoples.
ffb/lb/am/aa
IstoÉ
