Indigenous Lands

Os indígenas do médio Tapajós disseram que nós não aceitaremos e fizeram acampamento, ocuparam os barcos, ocuparam a empresa, foram para o tudo ou nada e conseguiram revogar um decreto.

For example, I managed to get a bill approved unanimously regarding the demarcation of indigenous areas.

The big problem with marking indigenous areas, if you ask Soninha Guajajara, my fellow minister, or any chief of any village in Brazil, I lived with many of them, except in the Amazon, because I don't know the reality of the original peoples in the Amazon, which are two very distinct realities — what I'm about to say doesn't apply there, because there it is public land and compensation doesn't apply, the land belongs to the Union, therefore it is the right of indigenous peoples, period; you can't mine, you can't try to... expand the deforestation arc there, because I have to preserve the Amazon rainforest.

There was an omission by the Brazilian State.

And say the following: in any area that has an anthropological study, any area that is confirmed to belong to indigenous peoples, simply give it to the indigenous peoples.

Long story short, we barely manage to carry out one, two, three demarcations of indigenous areas per year in Brazil.

If you ask any chief, he will say, 'I don't care, I want the land.'

There was an indigenous intrigue here in the region, which was a long time ago.