Eraldo Peres
The demonstrators marched through the government district to the Chamber of Deputies on Wednesday, where parliamentarians debated the controversial PL 490 initiative. Security forces blocked the entrances to the Chamber of Deputies, as the news portal “G1” reported. The day before, there had been clashes between the police and indigenous people, five people were injured.
The legislative initiative provides that indigenous protected areas can only be designated on those lands on which the ethnic groups can be shown to have lived at the time the constitution was promulgated in October 1988. So far, protected areas have been designated through a procedure at the National Authority for Indigenous Affairs (Funai) after hearing experts.
Critics see the planned new regulation as an attempt to expel indigenous peoples from their ancestral land. Because many peoples are not able to provide the relevant evidence. “PL 490 would allow the government to take away the territories of indigenous peoples that have belonged to them for decades,” said Kretã Kaingang from the indigenous umbrella organization Apib. “It will open the indigenous lands for predatory activities such as mining and, in practice, make it impossible for our peoples to have our territories designated as protected areas.”