Sim bombas!!! É isso que espera pela força de segurança quando chegarem na reserva raposa/serra do sol.

As forças armadas vão tentar retirar da reserva a população de não-índios, só que alguns índios estão apoiando os arrozeiros, porque vivem deste dinheiro. Mas o pior foi descoberto. Existe um ex-guerrilheiro venezuelano ensinando conhecimentos militares aos índios. O governo não pode deixar de intervir, e será nesta semana.

FOLHA DE S.PAULO 07 DE ABRIL

Grupo contrário à ação da PF em Roraima produz bombas

Enquanto a Polícia Federal se prepara para iniciar a Operação Upatakon 3, para retirar a população não-índia da Raposa/Serra do Sol (RR), grupos contrários à retirada (fazendeiros e parte dos índios) exibem os artefatos explosivos com os quais prometem resistir à ação.

LINK: http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u389613.shtml

Aqui segue outro link que acredito fazer referência ao assunto:

http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=tirZxbVnbjU

Sim bombas!!! É isso que espera pela força de segurança quando chegarem na reserva raposa/serra do sol.

As forças armadas vão tentar retirar da reserva a população de não-índios, só que alguns índios estão apoiando os arrozeiros, porque vivem deste dinheiro. Mas o pior foi descoberto. Existe um ex-guerrilheiro venezuelano ensinando conhecimentos militares aos índios. O governo não pode deixar de intervir, e será nesta semana.

FOLHA DE S.PAULO 07 DE ABRIL

Grupo contrário à ação da PF em Roraima produz bombas

Enquanto a Polícia Federal se prepara para iniciar a Operação Upatakon 3, para retirar a população não-índia da Raposa/Serra do Sol (RR), grupos contrários à retirada (fazendeiros e parte dos índios) exibem os artefatos explosivos com os quais prometem resistir à ação.

LINK: http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u389613.shtml

Aqui segue outro link que acredito fazer referência ao assunto:

http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=tirZxbVnbjU

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(document.body.clientHeight *0.88)*1.4 : document.body.clientWidth *0.88) - 10; document.body.scroll = "no"; document.body.scrollTop = 0 ; document.body.style.overflow = "hidden"; if (!isMSIE()){InitNotaVideo_102426();} }else{ dv.style.position = "relative"; dv.style.width = "100%"; dv.style.height = "100%"; txt.innerHTML = "Ampliar"; vd.style.width = "240px"; vd.style.height = "205px"; dvtxt.style.width = "236px"; document.body.scroll = "yes"; document.body.style.overflow = ""; if (!isMSIE()){InitNotaVideo_102426();} } } LONDRES, 19 Mar 2008 (AFP) La organización no gubernamental, que atribuye anualmente este "premio" al artículo "más racista" publicado en la prensa mundial, indicó que el artículo de La Nación describe a los indígenas como "neolíticos", "sucios" y "que necesitan ser civilizados". El "premio" otorgado por esta organización, con sede en Gran Bretaña, coincide con el Día de Naciones Unidas para la Eliminación de la Discriminación Racial, el 21 de marzo. Survival indicó en un comunicado que el galardonado recibirá un certificado inscrito con una cita de un escritor de la tribu Lacota Sioux, Luther Standing Bear: "Tantos años llamando al indígena salvaje, no lo han convertido en uno". TEXTO COMPLETO (PublicadLa toldería de la plaza Uruguaya En la plaza Uruguaya, bajo la tolerante mirada del gobierno nacional y municipal, se ha instalado una toldería de indígenas que demuestran a los ciudadanos asuncenos cómo se destruye un sitio atractivo y caro, y cómo se vivía en el neolítico. Según lo dicho la intendenta de Asunción, los indígenas han decidido quedarse donde están, pese a quien pese. Han salido de las catacumbas de la historia, impulsados por las ONG más irresponsables de un país infectado de ONGs irresponsables, para torturar la paciencia de los ciudadanos asuncenos que pagan religiosamente sus impuestos y no quieren vivir como ellos viven, de ninguna manera, aunque haya algunos sacerdotes católicos que consiguen dinero externo precisamente para crear estos focos de absurda presencia, con el cuento de la ayuda. Una toldería indígena neolítica en el centro de la ciudad es inconcebible y, sin embargo, allí está, como un cáncer expuesto, esparciendo malos olores, destrucción y contaminación ambiental. La ciudad está recibiendo un castigo inmerecido y no tiene por qué financiarlo. Los indígenas tienen que avenirse a vivir como gente, o mandarse a mudar al monte. Si esto sigue así, y continúa el clima de izquierda que estupidiza a la gente, pronto algún cacique se declarará, con dinero de las ONGs, descendiente directo de Arambaré y se instalará en el Palacio de López, para convertirlo en un chiquero. No es aventurado profetizar eso porque si se apoderan de una plaza que es pública, de todos los asuncenos, que fue trazada y construida y mantenida con el dinero de los asuncenos, pueden hacer cualquier cosa. Los indígenas tienen que civilizarse, convertirse en paraguayos, terminar con esa estupidez de preservar una cultura retrasada y marchita y vivir como gente pagando sus impuestos, o relegarse a lo profundo del monte a seguir conviviendo con los animales. No hay alternativas y los paraguayos no tenemos por qué pagar impuestos para mantener una civilización caduca, que fue incapaz de mantenerse a sí misma. No conozco un solo paraguayo que quiera ir a vivir a una toldería, y eso que quedan bastante cerca, ni siquiera para estudiar sus cochinas costumbres. Sí conozco indígenas que quieren vivir en Asunción, educarse y salirse del síndrome de la selva y convertirse en un ser humano con acceso a la civilización. Creo que es hora de decir basta a todas las estupideces que nos viene de una Europa pletórica, cada día más tilinga, que quiere resucitar a los dinosaurios para ver, y no en el cine, cómo un TRex devora a la gente, y defenderlos porque la gente es su dieta y tiene derecho a devorarla. Los antropólogos quieren tener a los indígenas cerca para estudiarlos como si fueran bichos -con dinero externo que dedican un poco a la observación y mucho a su enriquecimiento personal-. Es hora de decirle que vayan a desenterrar a los cadáveres de los salvajes vikingos para ver cómo vivían, o a proponerle al rey de Suecia que se instale una tribu de esa gente en la plaza principal de Estocolmo. O a los "sensibles" estadounidenses de izquierda que traigan las tribus sioux, pies negros, pawnees o dakotas a instalarse en el Dupont Circle de Washington, cosa imposible porque los mataron a todos. ¿Por qué tenemos que ser los paraguayos los que debamos sufrir la afrenta de una toldería neolítica en la plaza Uruguaya? Porque somos sudacas y no sabemos defender nuestros derechos y creemos en todas las tonterías imaginables, con tal que vengan encuadernadas en papel europeo o estadounidense. ODD o el 13/09/2007) Comentários AQUI

]]> http://malinche.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/ranchers-threaten-enawene-nawe-indians/ Sat, 29 Mar 2008 10:03:13 +0000 Margarida C. http://malinche.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/ranchers-threaten-enawene-nawe-indians/

Tamanho do texto? A A A A

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- A organização não-governamental Survival International lançou nesta quarta-feira uma campanha para proteger tribos isoladas da Amazônia.

De acordo com a ONG, que produziu um filme para a campanha, mais de cem tribos em todo o mundo continuam sem manter contato com a civilização.

"Elas representam os povos mais vulneráveis do mundo, que podem ser exterminados nos próximos 20 anos caso os seus direitos a um território não sejam reconhecidos e defendidos", afirmou a atriz Julie Christie, estrela do filme Doutor Jivago (1965) e narradora do filme.

A campanha da ONG defende o direito desses índios de viverem isolados e alega que o contato com o "homem branco" trouxe conseqüências negativas a várias tribos.

A organização cita o exemplo dos akuntsu, um povo das florestas de Rondônia. Hoje, há apenas seis sobreviventes dessa tribo.

De acordo com a Survival, quando a Funai tentou entrar em contato com os akuntsu em 1995, descobriu que criadores de gado tinham invadido as terras deles e massacrado quase todos.

Depois da matança, segundo a ONG, os agressores teriam destruído as ocas com tratores para eliminar provas do crime.

"Um dos homens (que sobreviveram ao ataque), Pupak, ainda guarda uma bala de chumbo nas costas e conta que homens armados o perseguiram a cavalo. Eles vivem em um pequeno resto de floresta", diz o texto da Survival.

Outro exemplo citado pela ONG para justificar a necessidade de isolamento dos índios é o da tribo Awá, um povo de caçadores nômades do leste da Amazônia.

De acordo com a Survival International, hoje os awá estão sob pressão de enormes projetos agroindustriais, criadores de gado e grileiros.

"Estamos sendo encurralados pelos brancos. Eles estão sempre avançando e agora estão quase em cima de nós. Estamos sempre em fuga. Amamos a floresta porque nascemos aqui e sabemos como sobreviver a partir dela. Sem a floresta, vamos sumir, vamos ser extintos", afirmou um líder indígena dos awá, To''o, à ONG. BBC Brasil - Todos os direitos reservados. É proibido todo tipo de reprodução sem autorização por escrito da BBC.

via Estadão

15th-Century Getaway A hand-colored 1911 photograph of Machu Picchu, the wintertime retreat of the Inca ruler Pachacuti Yupanqui. More Photos >

By ARTHUR LUBOW

Published: June 24, 2007 in The New York Times

The stones at Machu Picchu seem almost alive. They may be alive, if you credit the religious beliefs of the ruler Pachacuti Yupanqui, whose subjects in the early 15th century constructed the granite Inca complex, high above a curling river and nestled among jagged green peaks. To honor the spirits that take form as mountains, the Inca stoneworkers carved rock outcrops to replicate their shapes. Doorways and windows of sublimely precise masonry frame exquisite views. But this extraordinary marriage of setting and architecture only partly explains the fame of Machu Picchu today. Just as important is the romantic history, both of the people who built it in this remote place and of the explorer who brought it to the attention of the world. The Inca succumbed to Spanish conquest in the 16th century; and the explorer Hiram Bingham III, whose long life lasted almost as many years as the Inca empire, died in 1956. Like the stones of Machu Picchu, however, the voices of the Inca ruler and the American explorer continue to resonate.

Imposingly tall and strong-minded, Bingham was the grandson of a famous missionary who took Christianity to the Hawaiian islanders. In his efforts to locate lost places of legend, the younger Bingham proved to be as resourceful. Bolstered by the fortune of his wife, who was a Tiffany heiress, and a faculty position at Yale University, where he taught South American history, Bingham traveled to Peru in 1911 in hopes of finding Vilcabamba, the redoubt in the Andean highlands where the last Inca resistance forces retreated from the Spanish conquerors. Instead he stumbled upon Machu Picchu. With the joint support of Yale and the National Geographic Society, Bingham returned twice to conduct archeological digs in Peru. In 1912, he and his team excavated Machu Picchu and shipped nearly 5,000 artifacts back to Yale. Two years later, he staged a final expedition to explore sites near Machu Picchu in the Sacred Valley.

If you have visited Machu Picchu, you will probably find Bingham’s excavated artifacts at the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven to be a bit of a letdown. Mostly, the pieces are bones, in varying stages of decomposition, or pots, many of them in fragments. Unsurpassed as stonemasons, engineers and architects, the Incas thought more prosaically when it came to ceramics. Leaving aside unfair comparisons to the jaw-dropping Machu Picchu site itself, the pottery of the Inca, even when intact, lacks the drama and artistry of the ceramics of earlier civilizations of Peru like the Moche and Nazca. Everyone agrees that the Machu Picchu artifacts at Yale are modest in appearance. That has not prevented, however, a bare-knuckled disagreement from developing over their rightful ownership. Peru says the Bingham objects were sent to Yale on loan and their return is long overdue. Yale demurs.

In many ways, the dispute between Yale and Peru is unlike the headline-making investigations that have impelled the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to repatriate ancient artifacts to their countries of origin. It does not revolve around criminal allegations of surreptitious tomb-raiding and black-market antiquities deals. But if the circumstances are unique, the background sentiments are not. Other countries as well as Peru are demanding the recovery of cultural treasures removed by more powerful nations many years ago. The Greeks want the Parthenon marbles returned to Athens from the British Museum; the Egyptians want the same museum to surrender the Rosetta Stone and, on top of that, seek to spirit away the bust of Nefertiti from the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. Where might it all end? One clue comes in a sweeping request from China. As a way of combating plunder of the present as well as the past, the Chinese government has asked the United States to ban the import of all Chinese art objects made before 1911. The State Department has been reviewing the Chinese request for more than two years.

The movement for the repatriation of “cultural patrimony” by nations whose ancient past is typically more glorious than their recent history provides the framework for the dispute between Peru and Yale. To the scholars and administrators of Yale, the bones, ceramics and metalwork are best conserved at the university, where ongoing research is gleaning new knowledge of the civilization at Machu Picchu under the Inca. Outside Yale, most everyone I talked to wants the collection to go back to Peru, but many of them are far from disinterested arbiters. In the end, if the case winds up in the United States courts, its disposition may be determined by narrowly legalistic interpretations of specific Peruvian laws and proclamations. Yet the passions that ignite it are part of a broad global phenomenon. “My opinion reflects the opinion of most Peruvians,” Hilda Vidal, a curator at the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History of Peru in Lima, told me. “In general, anything that is patrimony of the cultures of the world, whether in museums in Asia or Europe or the United States, came to be there during the times when our governments were weak and the laws were weak, or during the Roman conquest or our conquest by the Spanish. Now that the world is more civilized, these countries should reflect on this issue. It saddens us Peruvians to go to museums abroad and see a Paracas textile. I am hopeful that in the future all the cultural patrimony of the world will return to its country of origin.” Behind her words, I could imagine a gigantic sucking whoosh, as the display cases in the British Museum, the Smithsonian, the Louvre and the other great universal museums of the world were cleansed of their contents, leaving behind the clattering of a few Wedgwood bowls and Sèvres teacups.

Richard Burger’s office at Yale is dowdily decorated with modern Peruvian handicrafts, sculptures and fabrics. Although Burger, a professor of anthropology, has devoted his professional career to Peruvian archaeology, everything he excavates remains in Peru, as required by law. With his wife, Lucy Salazar, a native of Lima whom he met while she was studying archaeology at San Marcos University there, Burger organized an exhibition, “Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery of the Incas,” which, in 2003 and 2004, toured the United States and displayed many of the objects that Bingham sent back to Yale.

When Burger and Salazar came to Yale in 1981, most of the Inca artifacts were in storage. “We didn’t know if the collection would support an exhibition,” Burger told me. “It was scattered in different rooms of the Peabody. There had been fires and floods. Some of it desperately needed conservation work — it was deteriorating because it wasn’t climate-controlled.” Their notion was to create an exhibition in cooperation with the government of Peru, a prospect that the Peruvian tourist authority greeted with enthusiasm but no financing. Since Yale would provide only seed money, they had to come up with financing — slightly more than $1 million — to conserve the objects and bankroll the exhibition.

Never relinquishing hope that Peru might be a sponsor of the show, they were encouraged by a change of administration. The authoritarian Alberto Fujimori regime fell in a human rights and corruption scandal in 2000; following a brief transitional government, Alejandro Toledo was elected in 2001 as the first ethnically indigenous president of the country. Toledo has an inspiring personal story. Growing up as an impoverished shoeshine boy in a small town, he caught the eye of a Peace Corps volunteer, who arranged to have him study in California at the University of San Francisco. Toledo went on to do graduate work at Stanford University, where he met his future wife: Eliane Karp, a French-born student of anthropology and linguistics who was preparing a Ph.D. dissertation on the Latin American indigenous-culture movement and its relationship to Europe in the early 20th century. A gifted linguist, she speaks the native Andean language of Quechua. (Her husband does not.) At the suggestion of a friend who was advising the Toledo campaign, Burger and Salazar met with Karp-Toledo in her temporary office in August 2001, just after the new administration took power. The meeting went well. “We were very optimistic,” Burger told me. “This is a guy with a degree from Stanford, and his wife speaks Quechua and is interested in anthropology. We thought maybe Yale and Peru could have an educational initiative together.” Karp-Toledo told them she would like to learn more.

“She said, ‘Send me a proposal, not to my office but to my house, and I’ll show it to my husband,’ ” Salazar recalled.

“So we wrote up a proposal that involved an educational mission,” Burger said. “We sent it to them. When we went to Peru the following year, they said, ‘Why don’t we meet in the palace?’ ”

continua AQUI

Rainforests are very rich in natural resources, but they are also very fragile. For this reason, rainforest peoples have become instinctive conservationists. For them, conservation is literally a way of life. If they were to take too much food in one year, the forest would not be able to produce enough new food for them to be able to survive in the next year. Many rainforest tribes gather their food from small garden plots, which are shifted every few years. This method is less productive than western agriculture, but is also much less harmful to the rainforest environment. As they cannot produce food in large quantities, most tribes are forced to limit their numbers so their gardens and the products of hunting expeditions are able to feed them, and all tribes have a great respect for their forest and for the animals and plants they share it with.

The rainforest lifestyle may sound like a kind of paradise, a Garden of Eden for the lucky few who live there. It certainly has its advantages. There is little stress, little mental illness and little high blood pressure among rainforest dwellers. Physical fitness is generally good, and few people need to work for more than four hours a day to provide themselves and their families with adequate food and other necessities. However, life is far from perfect. One in every two children born in the rainforest dies before their second birthday, and if they make it to forty years of age they are considered tribal elders. Most rain forest dwellers who make it through childhood tend to die from a disease trivial to western medicine.

Sacrifice for Survival Competition for good hunting grounds is fierce, and there is often warfare between neighbouring groups when disputes over territorial rights break out. New-born babies are often killed by their mothers in order to prevent a group from growing too large to be supported by its territory. This is a major problem, as territories can be very large indeed.. It has been

estimated that a group of eighty-four people needs a minimum territory of 640 square kilometres in order to be fully self-sufficient. Female babies are killed more often than males. There are a number of reasons for this: men are the hunters, so by having more males a group is able to send out more hunters in order to produce more food; men are also warriors, so the more adult males there are in a group, the better protected against enemies it will be; as men are warriors, many of them are killed in battles with neighbouring groups; by limiting the number of women in a group, the group's ability to reproduce is naturally restricted. Although these measures may seem harsh to us, they are perfectly logical and an essential feature of life in the rain forest. A group which becomes too large will starve, so selective killing of infants ensures the group's survival.

Endangered Species This way of life has gone on uninterrupted for centuries, but is now under threat because of the invasion of the rain forest by outsiders - logging companies, mining operations and ranchers looking to make a quick profit by exploiting the natural resources to be found in the rain forests around the world. When you think of endangered species, you tend to think of animals or plants.

It would be fair however to describe rainforest peoples as endangered species. Each tribe is unique, has its own culture, mythology, religious beliefs, art and ritual. There may be a great deal we can learn from them. We know already that there are a vast number of as yet undiscovered plants and animals in the rain forest. Tribal medicine men may hold in their heads the key to curing many of the world's as yet incurable diseases by using undocumented chemical compounds found in species of rain forest plants. At the moment, despite the efforts of pressure groups, little concern is being shown either for the welfare of the rain forest or of its inhabitants - animal or vegetable - by the governments in control of the vast, but shrinking, areas of rain forest still in existence. Even more frustrating is the knowledge that rain forest soil is very poor for growing c rops and turns to virtual desert within five years of losing its protective canopy of trees. Governments know this, yet still allow logging and ranching to continue on a huge scale. It is true that in the short term, huge amounts of money can be made from exploiting the rain forest in this way. But in the longer term, and here I mean no more than ten to fifteen years, there will simply be vast areas of desert where once there was rain forest. But I digress. Let us turn now to the fortunes of possibly the most famous of all the tribes of the rainforest, the Yanomami Indians of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela. I hope that by looking at this one example in detail it will be possible to examine the problems which face rainforest peoples all over the world.   Protected Species As Amazonian Indian tribes go, the Yanomami have been lucky. Their traditional homelands were in the mountainous highlands of Brazil and Venezuela, away from the big rivers and relatively inaccessible. For this reason they were spared the ravaging effects of the previously unknown diseases brought by the Spanish conquistadors to South America during the seventeenth century, which wiped out many of the riverine tribes completely. Since then their territories have expanded into the lower valleys, but despite this, until recent times the only contact the Yanomami have had with whites had been through the occasional visits of scientists or missionaries. In 1985, however, a gold-rush on Yanomami lands in Brazil led to the influx of tens of thousands of miners and prospectors, overwhelming the small populations of local people. So far the Yanomami have been able to maintain their traditional customs, despite outside influences. After world-wide protest at the harsh treatment of the Yanomami, the Brazilian government was forced to grant the Yanomami 94,000 square kilometres of territory, an area larger than Scotland, in 1991. As has been noted above, even small groups need very large areas of territory in order to provide for themselves. The Yanomami know that if their population density increases, they will start to overuse their resources. Villages tend to fragment naturally through political rivalry and discontent as they become larger. This means that the average village population is kept down to between 50 and 70. Despite having the supposed protection of the Brazilian government, garimpeiros - illegal gold miners - continue to prospect on Yanomami lands. They have brought with them diseases that are either lethal or very difficult to control among the Yanomami. In 1991, a survey showed that half of all Brazil's Yanomami suffered from malaria, a disease previously unknown to them. Other diseases like tuberculosis and hepatitis are killing large numbers of Indians, and the Brazilian national health service is not providing medicines in sufficient quantity to control the problem. It has also been found that people living downstream from the gold mines have unacceptably high levels of mercury in their bodies.

And in Venezuela In Venezuela the Yanomami live in a biosphere reserve which is 83,000 square kilometres in area. The biosphere reserve was set up not only to protect the 11,000 or so Yanomami who live there, sharing the territory with the Yekuana tribe, but also to protect the rich rainforests of the region. For the Venezuelan Yanomami, it would seem that their biggest problem is the army, which has been moved into their lands in order to protect them from the Brazilian garimpeiros (see above). The morale of the officers and men alike is poor, and they take out their frustration on the Yanomami, through abuse, including rape. Further problems are caused by the frequent "scientific" expeditions into their lands. The Yanomami say that they learn nothing from the expeditions and that they do not believe that some of the visitors are scientists anyway. Eco-tourists are becoming more common intruders on rainforest people's lands. They should be reminded that in looking for that "unique jungle experience" they may bring with them diseases new to the tribes they encounter while having their "experience". It should be remembered that medical care for the Yanomami seems to be as inadequate in Venezuela as it is in Brazil. Left: The unique jungle experience.

In the case of the Yanomami, there is at least some cause for optimism. They now live on reserves approved by governments and seem to be maintaining their traditions. Clearly there is a need for better health care and for more sympathetic policing of their lands by the military. They are perhaps the most famous of all rain forest tribes, and are therefore protected to some extent by public opinion. There would be world-wide outcry if Yanomami lands were threatened by development or mining again.

But how many other tribes are struggling for survival in the rainforests of the world? How many people have heard of the Kayapo, the Yekuana, the Iban, the Mehinacu or the Xikru? How much popular support could be rallied in their defence?

Clearly, rain forest tribes throughout the world are in need of protection. This protection should be granted as soon as possible by the governments of their nation states, but is bound to take time. Most rain forest tribes live in poor countries. The forests are rich in natural resources and can make huge sums of money for a few years, thus making the countries involved richer. But after those few years all that remains is desert. Most former rain forest which has been exploited for other purposes will either take many years to recover, or will never recover at all. The only way to stop the destruction of the rain forests, of the animals and plants, and of the tribes which live in them is through greater public awareness of the problems we are creating for ourselves. By this I mean a world-wide realization of the importance of the rain forest and its inhabitants, and of the need for proper protection against its permanent destruction. The possibility of imposing trade sanctions upon countries which continue to destroy their rain forests is at time of writing a subject of debate at a meeting of worldwide conservation groups. Perhaps this is a hopeful sign for the future of the rain forest...

Useful Reading

1. The Law of the Mother
Elizabeth Kemf (Ed), Sierra Club Books (1993).
- Details of the problems facing tribal peoples all over the world, including the Yanomami.

2. The Last Rainforests
Dr Mark Collins (Ed), Guild Publishing (1990).
- This is a general reference book about rain forests, which also has some information on tribes living in them. ]]> http://malinche.wordpress.com/2007/06/24/dna-for-sale-angers-amazonian-indians/ Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:40:49 +0000 Margarida C. http://malinche.wordpress.com/2007/06/24/dna-for-sale-angers-amazonian-indians/ LARRY ROHTER
IN KYOWA, BRAZIL

AS THE Karitiana Indians remember it, the first researchers to draw their blood came here in the late 1970s, shortly after their Amazon tribe began sustained contact with the outside world. In 1996, another team visited, promising medicine if the Karitiana would give more blood, so they dutifully lined up again.

But those promises were never fulfilled, and since then the world has expanded again for the Karitiana through the arrival of the internet. Now they have been enraged by a simple discovery: their blood and DNA are being sold by a US concern to scientists around the world for $85 a sample.

They want the practice stopped and are demanding compensation for what they describe as the violation of their integrity.

"We were duped, lied to and exploited," Renato Karitiana, leader of the tribal association, said from the tribe's reservation in the western Amazon, where 313 Karitiana eke out a living from farming, fishing and hunting.

Antonio Karitiana, the village chief (pictured below) said that health care, sanitation and housing are precarious and transportation deficient. Any money mad from their blood should have been invested "for the benefit of the entire community," he said.

The Surui people, whose homeland is to the south of the Karitiana, and the Yanomami, who live on the Brazil-Venezuela border, complain of similar experiences.

The indigenous peoples of the Amazon are ideal for certain types of genetic research because they are isolated and close-knit populations, allowing geneticists to construct a more thorough pedigree and to track disease transmission down generations.

But the practice of collecting blood samples has aroused widespread suspicions among Brazilians, who have been zealous about what they call "bio-piracy" ever since rubber seedlings were exported from the Amazon nearly a century ago.

Coriell Cell Repositories, a non-profit entity in New Jersey, stores human genetic material and makes it available for research. It says the samples were obtained legally through a researcher and approved by the National Institutes of Health in the United States.

Joseph Mintzer, executive vice president of the parent organisation, the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, said: "We are not trying to profit from or steal from Brazilians. We have an obligation to respect their civilisation, culture and people, which is why we carefully control the distribution of these cell lines."

Like a similar centre in France that has also obtained blood and DNA samples of the Karitiana and other Amazon tribes, Coriell says it provides specimens only to scientists who agree not to commercialise the results of their research or to transfer the material to third parties.

The core of the debate has to do with the concept of 'informed consent'. Scientists argue the appropriate protocols were followed, but the Indians say they were deceived.

"This is sort of a balancing act," said Judith Greenberg, director of genetics and developmental biology at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. "We don't want to do something that makes a whole tribe or people unhappy or angry. On the other hand, the scientific community is using these samples, which were accepted and maintained under perfectly legitimate procedures, for the benefit of mankind."

But the Indians say that when the first blood samples were drawn, they had little or no understanding of the outside world, let alone the workings of Western medicine and modern capitalist economics.

Francis Black, the first researcher to take samples here, died recently, so it is impossible to obtain his account.

But officials of the National Indian Foundation, the Brazilian government agency that supervises tribal groups, said his presence on the reservation violated procedures specifically designed to protect Indians from outsiders.

in Scotland on Sunday

Segundo a reportagem, eles dizem que os primeiros pesquisadores a obter amostras de seu sangue chegaram à região no fim dos anos 70. Em 1996, uma nova equipe os visitou, prometendo remédios caso eles doassem mais sangue, e por isso eles voltaram a permitir a coleta. Tais promessas jamais teriam sido cumpridas.

Os índios querem que as vendas sejam suspensas e exigem uma indenização por violação de integridade. A reportagem diz ainda que os surui e os ianomâmi se queixam de experiências semelhantes e dizem que também estão tentando impedir a distribuição de seu sangue e DNA pela empresa norte-americana, a Coriell Cell Repositories, de Camden, Nova Jersey.

in Folha Online 

Mais notícias sobre este assunto: AQUI 

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By LARRY ROHTER

Published: June 20, 2007

KYOWÃ, Brazil — As the Karitiana Indians remember it, the first researchers to draw their blood came here in the late 1970s, shortly after the Amazon tribe began sustained contact with the outside world. In 1996, another team visited, promising medicine if the Karitiana would just give more blood, so they dutifully lined up again.

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But that promise was never fulfilled, and since then the world has expanded again for the Karitiana through the arrival of the Internet. Now they have been enraged by a simple discovery: their blood and DNA collected during that first visit are being sold by an American concern to scientists around the world for $85 a sample.

They want the practice stopped, and are demanding compensation for what they describe as the violation of their personal integrity.

“We were duped, lied to and exploited,” Renato Karitiana, the leader of the tribal association, said in an interview here on the tribe’s reservation in the western Amazon, where 313 Karitiana eke out a living by farming, fishing and hunting. “Those contacts have been very injurious to us, and have spoiled our attitude toward medicine and science.”

Two other Brazilian tribal peoples complain of similar experiences and say they are also seeking to stop the distribution of their blood and DNA by Coriell Cell Repositories, a nonprofit group based in Camden, N. J. They are the Suruí people, whose homeland is just south of here, and the Yanomami, who live on the Brazil-Venezuela border.

Coriell stores human genetic material and makes it available for research. It says the samples were obtained legally through a researcher and approved by the National Institutes of Health.

“We are not trying to profit from or steal from Brazilians,” Joseph Mintzer, executive vice president of the center, said in a telephone interview. “We have an obligation to respect their civilization, culture and people, which is why we carefully control the distribution of these cell lines.”

Like a similar center in France that has also obtained blood and DNA samples of the Karitiana and other Amazon tribes, Coriell says it provides specimens only to scientists who agree not to commercialize the results of their research or to transfer the material to third parties.

The indigenous peoples of the Amazon are ideal for certain types of genetic research because they are isolated and extremely close-knit populations, allowing geneticists to construct a more thorough pedigree and to track the transmission of illnesses down generations.

The practice of collecting blood samples from Amazon Indians, though, has aroused widespread suspicions among Brazilians, who have been zealous about what they call “bio-piracy” ever since rubber seedlings were exported from the Amazon nearly a century ago. The rise of genome mapping in recent years has only exacerbated such fears.

Debora Diniz, a Brazilian anthropologist, argues that the experience of the Karitiana and other tribes shows “how scientists still are ill prepared for intercultural dialogue and how science behaves in an authoritarian fashion with vulnerable populations.”

The core of the international debate that has emerged here, though, has to do with the concept of “informed consent.” Scientists argue that all the appropriate protocols were followed, but the Indians say they were deceived into allowing their blood to be drawn.

“This is sort of a balancing act,” said Judith Greenberg, director of genetics and developmental biology at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health. “We don’t want to do something that makes a whole tribe or people unhappy or angry. On the other hand, the scientific community is using these samples, which were accepted and maintained under perfectly legitimate procedures, for the benefit of mankind,” she said.

The Indians themselves, however, respond that at the time the first blood samples were drawn, they had little or no understanding of the outside world, let alone the workings of Western medicine and modern capitalist economics.

Francis Black, the first researcher to take blood samples here, died recently, so it is impossible to obtain his account. But officials of the National Indian Foundation, or Funai, the Brazilian government agency that supervises tribal groups, said that his presence on the reservation here violated procedures specifically aimed at protecting Indians from outsiders.

“We would never have authorized such a thing,” Osmar Ribeiro Brasil, who has worked at the agency’s regional headquarters in Porto Velho since the 1970s, said of the blood collection. “There is no record of any research permission request either here or at our headquarters in Brasília.”

For the reporting of this article, all the required procedures were followed. Funai authorized the visit here and sent an official to accompany a reporter and a photographer. But that official did not sit in on the interviews here or coach the Indians in their responses.

In the case of the 1996 expedition, permission to enter the reservation was obtained, but only to film a nature documentary, Funai officials said. Once on the reservation, however, a Brazilian doctor accompanying the film crew, Hilton Pereira da Silva, and his wife began conducting unauthorized medical research, Funai officials and residents of the reservation said.

“If anyone is ill, we will send medicine, lots of medicine,” is what Joaquina Karitiana, 56, remembers being told, which soothed her worries. “They drew blood from almost everyone, including the children. But once they had what they wanted, we never received any medicine at all.”

Dr. Pereira da Silva was not available for comment. But in a statement that he issued in response to complaints about his work, he said he had explained the purposes of his research “in accessible language” and had promised that “any possible benefit of any type that results from research with this material will revert in its entirety to those who donated.”

As a result of the legal pressures that the tribe and Funai have brought, Brazilian institutions that had collected blood samples have returned them to the tribes. But entities abroad have resisted, saying both that they acted properly and that there are no profits to be shared with the Indians.

“They want money, and we have not made any money,” Mr. Mintzer of Coriell said. “I don’t know of anyone who has made any money from this.”

The Karitiana say that includes them. Antonio Karitiana, the village chief, said that health care, sanitation and housing were precarious, and that transportation was deficient. Any money obtained from Coriell or a lawsuit would be invested “for the benefit of the entire community,” he said.

“We don’t want that blood back, because it is contaminated now,” said Orlando Karitiana, 34, a tribal leader. “But these blood samples are valuable in your technology, and we think that every family that was tricked into giving blood should benefit.”

The religions of some other tribal groups, however, regard human tissue as important or nearly sacred. The Yanomami, for example, say they want the blood samples returned to them intact.

“A soul can only be at rest after the entire body is cremated,” said Davi Yanomami, a leader of the group. “To have the blood of a dead person preserved and separated from the remainder of the body is simply unacceptable to us.”

But Francisco M. Salzano, one of Brazil’s leading geneticists, with more than 40 years of experience in the Amazon and dealing with indigenous peoples, argues that it is acceptable to brush aside such concerns.

“If it depended on religion and belief, we would still be in the Stone Age,” he said in a telephone interview from his office at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.

“None of these samples have been used in an unethical manner,” Dr. Salzano added. As for the question of informed consent, he added, “That is always relative.”

in The New York Times 

Hoje o contingente de nativos cifra-se á volta de 400.000 Indios, que vivem no Brasil em reservas demarcadas e protegidas pelo Governo. Com cerca de 200 Etnias indigenas e 170 línguas, o Mundo Indigena se dividiu em duas partes, com uma delas a se integrar na civilização e a outra a viver isoladamente nas regiões da Amazónia.
Os Tupi-Guarani, Micro-Jê- Arnak, Karib e tantas outras Tribos Indigenas que vivem em Estados do Sul, Norte e Centro-Oeste do Brasil, conservam ainda a sua afinidade lingúistica, enquanto que outras vivendo no Nordeste e sudoeste do País, adquiriram progessivamente a nossa lingua, a Portuguesa. o que já não aconteceu com as manifestações folclóricas nativas, cujos costumes ainda hoje se conservam, devido aos inumeros rituais que prevalecem no Mundo Índigena.
O Toré, Kaurup e os Toantes são os mais frequentes entre os Indios porquanto eles obedecem aos Agradecimentos, Casamentos, Batizados e a outras celebrações importantes. Durante os folguedos que duram toda a noite, tanto as mulheres (cantadeiras) como os dançadores “Praiás” (indios que usam máscaras) emprestam a esses movimentos uma vasta cultura, até porque os colares, roupas e pinturas coloridas, os motivar para esses mesmos rituais.

A coreografia do Toré, comum a vários grupos indigenas das regiões Norte e Nordeste, consiste em dançar ao ar livre, formando um grande círculo em torno dum Centro, onde cada par ( homens e mulheres) giram em volta de si mesmos, pisando fortemente o solo em ritmos de dança, no que são acompanhados por dançarinos, que em coro, declamam versos de difícil compreensão, porquanto são cantados no idioma da Tribo. No fundo é um ritual que expressa contentamento, sobretudo pela magia e pela mística que cada Tribo mantem, perservando essa mesma Cultura.

Por sua vez o Kaurup, que é uma das maiores festas tradicionais Indigenas, praticada no “Alto Xingu” em Mato Grosso, pelos índios que lá vivem, consiste em uma reverência aos mortos, que através dos tempos, se tem mantido e que se inicia com danças e cantos em frente a vários troncos, que pintados e enfeitados a preceito, simbolizam os familiares já falecidos.

Con os Toantes, as músicas sagradas sempre predominaram, assim como as benfeitorias do corpo e da alma que tão expressas ficavam através dos rituais Indigenas, porquanto fazem parte duma Cultura ainda não arreigada dos costumes Indígenas.

O Indio de uma maneira geral, respeita e sempre respeitou o meio ambiente, procurando tirar dele, sómente o necessário; madeira, palha, ceramica e peles de animais, foram mais que suficientes matérias primas que a Natureza lhes ofereceu e da qual eles tiraram partido para a sua sobrevivência, além claro da caça, da pesca e da agricultura.
Hoje em dia algumas Tribos mantem esse padrão de vida, sobretudo aqueles que se mantem isolados. No entanto o Mundo Indigena sem classes sociais e preconceitos, se regeu sempre por duas figuras importantes; o Pajé (Sacerdote da Tribo que conhece os rituais e recebe as mensagens dos Deuses, além de ser ainda o Curandeiro) e o Cacique (chefe) tambem importante na vida Tribal, pois a ele competia e compete organizar e orientar os Indios.
A educação dos indios é interessante, até porque os Indios menores, seguem os adultos tentando imitar o que eles fazem. Toda a religião Indigena assenta sobretudo nas crenças e nos rituais religiosos, porquanto todas as Tribos acreditam nas forças da Natureza e nos Espiritos dos antepassados.
A titulo de curiosidade aponto aqui alguns costumes das Tribos Indigenas, que mais não são que típicos episódios tão característicos dessas etnias.

Em Roraima a Oeste do Pará, vivem lá presentemente cerca de 1250 Indios e o que mais ressalta da Cultura desse Povo, era a troca de mulheres capturadas de outras aldeias e que eram consideradas troféus de guerra, por artigos europeus. assim como também as mulheres dessa Tribo usarem como roupa, uma espécie de cinto, feito da entrecasca da árvore, o que só por si significava que ela estava sexualmente disponível ao contrário de quando ela o retirava sinal evidente que indicava a aproximação.
No Acre, na área Indigena de Campinas, os Katukina (indios barbados) tinham por costume pintar a boca de preto, assim como também trocarem de cônjugues, (os filhos ficavam sempre com a Mãe) uma prática bastante comum entre esses Povos nativos.
Ainda na Amazónia, os Sataré-Mawé, que ficaram conhecidos por serem os introdutores do Guaraná na região e por produzirem uma forte bebida fermentada, que causava embriaguez durante um mês seguido, assim como a Formiga, insecto muito respeitado pelos Indios que a consideravam uma divindade, a tal ponto, que os nativos para demonstrar coragem aos seus filhos, até porque a picada era extremamente dolorosa, os obrigava a colocar as mãos dentro duma espécie de luva cheia de formigas e resistir á dor, caso conseguissem eram considerados adultos.
Nos dias de hoje,alguns dos muito costumes praticados por esses povos,já estão extintos.
No dia 19 de Abril comemora-se em todo o Brasil o dia do Indio.

in Maia Hoje 

Sun staff writer
 April 24. 2006 6:01AM

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University of Florida archaeologist Michael Heckenberger began making periodic trips to the Amazon in South America in 1991, and seems to smugly relish shattering romantic notions about the region and its history.

"I don't think we saw a piranha any time we were there," said Heckenberger, who'll be featured in a segment on the History Channel tonight at 9 p.m.

Stories of the Amazon, told from the 1500s through today, have invariably depicted the Amazon as a sort of untapped Garden of Eden or a "green hell" infested with savages.

The primitive picture of native Amazonians forged in the 16th century and perpetuated into present day is off the mark, Heckenberger says. In the centuries leading up to colonization, the Amazon was an interconnected society of roads and commerce, he says. In many ways, the "jungle" of the 1500s was as functional as some European towns of the same period, he says.

"They had astronomy, engineering, architecture," Heckenberger said. "Amazonia was not just stone-aged, frozen at the dawn of time."

So is there a lost city of the Amazon, buried well beneath the thick understory of the jungle? That was the question the History Channel had for Heckenberger when they recently accompanied him into the Amazon to film a program largely based on his work that airs tonight.

The answer to the History Channel's question is a somewhat unsatisfying "yes and no." There's no evidence of massive pyramids or golden cities like Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett, the early 20th-century British explorer, might have hoped to find. But vast excavations of pottery and evidence of moats and walls long buried beneath the surface denote a civilization far more advanced than archaeologists ever previously thought existed in the Amazon.

Hovering over a computer monitor in his UF office Thursday, Heckenberger traces his finger across a map of the Upper Xingu region of the Amazon in Brazil, projected on his screen. The green and purple map shows small circular clusters connected by straight, deliberate lines. The clusters were once villages, some as large as 1,000 people, and the lines were once roads connecting them into something akin to a city.

"Nothing is unconnected," he says emphatically. "The whole bloody landscape is connected."

The connections reveal that the native Amazonians in this area, now stretched across a territory about the size of Massachusetts, were once part of a network nearly twice the size.

Through mapping analysis and radiocarbon dating of artifacts, Heckenberger and his crew have discerned that the "clusters" of native Amazonians all operated during the same period. They had a vibrant agricultural and fishing economy. They cleared stretches of forest for parks and roads, according to Heckenberger's research.

"This is like Gainesville," his says, circling the map with his index finger.

But throughout the 16th century, colonizing forces along the Amazon River and the eastern coast of Brazil forced indigenous people back into the central region of the continent, and at the same time spread disease that crippled the population, Heckenberger says.

"By 1700-1750, most of the groups living along the Amazon - lights out," he said.

Historians have mistakenly assumed that the scattered, disconnected villages that formed after a series of disease outbreaks told the whole story of the region's history, Heckenberger said. Now comes the task of filling in those gaps in history, and Heckenberger is doing that with the help of the modern-day Kuikuro people who live in the Upper Xingu region of Brazil.

The Kuikuro, descendants of some early native Amazonians, have pointed Heckenberger toward some of the once vibrant and heavily populated sites that comprise his research. They've also become his friends, he says. Several years ago, Heckenberger was "adopted" by a Kuikuro family, granting him the indigenous name "Maikajanna."

Much has changed in the Upper Xingu region even during the 15 years Heckenberger has studied there. What once were quiet villages are now bustling communities with the hum of power generators and the roar of motorcycles breaking through the steamy jungle air.

Technology, it seems, can't be kept at bay anywhere for too long.

"Just like everywhere else," Heckenberger said, "kids want a Walkman."

Jack Stripling can be reached at 374-5064 or Jack.Stripling@ gvillesun.com

Depois de São Paulo, Rio e Paris, "Amazônia Brasil" está em Lausanne, oeste da Suíça, no Palais de Beaulieu, das 10h às 19h, até 8 de outubro.

Já que muito poucos brasileiros vão à Amazônia, é ela que vem às pessoas. Muito falada, fotografada e filmada, a Amazônia fascina o mundo inteiro mas geralmente esquece-se que cerca de 30 milhões de pessoas vivem na região. A exposição "Amazônia Brasil" é visa apresentar uma visão realista e atual da Amazônia brasileira do ponto de vista de seus habitantes.

Os guardiões da floresta

- Dos 22 milhões de pessoas que vivem na Amazônia brasileira, dois terços já estão nas cidades. Apesas 5 milhões vivem a floresta. São elas as guardiãs da Amazônia. Onde elas vivem, a floresta está preservada. Se vocês quiserem ajudar a Amazônia, têm de ajudar essas pessoas, afirmou o médico Eugênio Scannavino Netto, idealizador e coordenador-geral da exposição e fundador da ONG Saúde e Alegria, que trabalha em Santarém, no Pará, desde 1985.

Depois de ter sido mostrada em São Paulo em 2002, no Rio em 2004 e em Paris em 2005, "Amazônia Brasil" fica em Lausanne, oeste da Suíça, até 8 de outubro, financiada por patrocinadores suíços. A próxima etapa prevista será Berlim, em 2007.

Objetivos bem definidos

- É claro que para quem conhece a Amazônia, a exposição é pequena mas, para quem não conhece, é um bom começo", afirma Malu Ramos, diretora executiva da exposição, concebida e realizada pela Fare Arte, empresa de São Paulo.

Entre os objetivos da exposição estão apresentar uma visão realista da Amazônia brasileira e de suas comunidades, sensibilizar o público para os problemas da Amazônia e do meio ambiente em geral e apresentar experiências positivas de Ongs e governos, de cooperações nacionais, internacionais e do setor privado.

A exposição começa com a sala sensorial em que as paredes são cobertas com fotos-satélites da Amazônia. Também tem armações de galhos e ninhos de pássaros de verdade, algumas pirogas e uma enorme mesa com sementes da floresta.

A segunda sala é dividida em duas partes: de um lado a vila amazônica, como a casa de um seringueiro, uma casa de farinha, outra que representa um ervanário do "Ver o Peso", mercado de Belém onde se vendem remédios da floresta; de outro, uma série de vídeos mostram experiências científicas com projetos concretos em andamento.

O olhar das crianças

A terceira sala é de projeção de vídeos com dois telões com imagens dos rios e de festas indígenas e os visitantes sentam-se num tronco de árvore.

A parte mais chocante é a sala que representa a destruição da floresta. Manchetes de jornais, sempre atualizadas, se superpõem às fotos em branco e preto do desmatamento. Troncos de madeira queimada circundam o piso da sala e a iluminação também ajuda a dar uma aspecto trágico ao ambiente.

Para não ficar no trágico, a sala seguinte é a das experiências positivas. Segundo Eugenio Scannavino Netto, há mais de mil projetos em andamento na Amazônia brasileira. A sala mostra uma seleção de dez desses projetos de ONGs em diversas setores, com informações detalhadas e um computador conectado com os sites de cada uma das organizações responsáveis por esses projetos.

A exposição termina com a sala de produtos e design, com ambiente de desfile de modas em que estão expostos peças artísticas de artesanato, incluindo vestidos de fibras e borracha natural, tudo com material amazônico.

- O mais gratificante é o olhar curioso das crianças das escolas que vêm à exposição acompanhadas de seus professores, afirma Malu Ramos, diretora-executiva da exposição.

Ao final da exposição, o visitante ainda pode saborear sucos e sorvetes da Amazônia e comprar artesato autêntico da região.

in SwissInfo

• Tudo sobre "XINGU" na HighBeam Encyclopedia: AQUI
• Sonoridades dos Índios Tabajaras fixadas em CD: AQUI

As mulheres dessa tribo usam como roupa apenas uma espécie de cinto chamado uluri, feito de entrecasca de árvore. A presença dele significa que a mulher não está disponível sexualmente, a aproximação só acontece quando ela o retira. Se, por acaso, esse cinto se romper a mulher se sente nua e desprotegida. No ritual de passagem que marca a transição entre a infância e a vida adulta, os meninos ficam reclusos na casa dos homens e têm que passar por sofrimentos físicos e dar novas provas de força. Embora não haja um espaço físico determinado, as meninas também têm que cumprir alguns rituais de passagem.

Bororó

De todos os rituais dos índios Bororó, o funeral é o que mais chama atenção pela beleza e complexidade. É uma cerimônia que pode durar até dois meses. A tribo obedece a uma organização social rígida, mas a morte de alguém pode provocar mudanças ou reforçar as alianças. A aldeia é dividida em duas partes - exare e tugaregue - que, por sua vez, se subdividem em clãs com prerrogativas e deveres muito bem definidos. Os Bororó reconhecem a liderança de dois chefes hereditários que sempre pertencem à metade exare, conforme determinam seus mitos.

Gavião

Os índios Gavião tem uma relação forte com os nomes pelos quais são chamados. Cada indivíduo recebe dois nomes e um deles não pode ser divulgado. Dar ao outro a chance de conhecer este segredo significa transferir poder. Quando alguém recebe o nome de um parente que já morreu carrega a responsabilidade de manter as características do antepassado e quem o escolhe assume o papel de padrinho com a função de transmitir a cultura.

As relações entre genro e sogra, nora e sogro também tem regras. Depois do casamento, por um período determinado, ficam proibidos de chamar o outro pelo nome.

Uma das mais fortes tradições desses índios é a corrida de toras. As equipes de revezamento, formadas somente por homens, carregam troncos de buriti nos ombros. O mais importante não é quem chega primeiro porque a corrida vale mais pelo divertimento. A comemoração é maior quando as equipes chegam praticamente juntas.

Guajá

Os Guajá são uma das últimas sociedades de caçadores e coletores do mundo. Foram contactados recentemente, há apenas 25 anos, e entre eles existe um grupo com apenas 6 anos de contato.

As mulheres dessa tribo, em alguns casos, têm um papel decisivo, fato pouco comum nas sociedades indígenas. A opinião das idosas é levada em conta e ela pode tanto resolver conflitos domésticos como dividir as tarefas de roçar, caçar e coletar. Elas também cuidam dos animais de estimação, muito numerosos na tribo, e eles, muitas vezes, são até amamentados pelas mulheres mais jovens.

Pode acontecer que um homem se case ao mesmo tempo com duas mulheres, uma sexagenária e outra bem jovem, mas a primeira, além de receber todo o carinho e respeito do marido, tem ainda poder para tomar as decisões principais da casa.

Katukina

Mesmo pertencendo a mesma tribo os Katukina se dividem em "Povo da Onça", "Povo da Ariranha", " Povo do Sol", "Povo do Céu" e "Povo da Pupunha" e entre esses clãs existe uma relação de hierarquia social. Embora, monogâmicas, as relações conjugais são muito instáveis. A troca de cônjuges é bastante comum, mas os filhos sempre ficam com a mãe.

Os Katukina já foram descritos por muitos viajantes como índios barbados por causa do costume de pintar a boca de preto.

Kulina

Quando se casa o homem vive na casa da família da esposa e tem que trabalhar para retribuir pela mulher que recebeu. Cada casal Kulina tem a obrigação de gerar pelo menos três filhos, só depois disso ganha o direito de construir uma casa separada e só continua junto se desejar.

Os Kulina acreditam que a concepção acontece apenas com o acúmulo do sêmen no útero, sem qualquer contribuição feminina. Para engravidar, a mulher tanto pode relacionar-se apenas com o marido ou ter vários parceiros. Em qualquer dos casos, ela é a única responsável pelos cuidados com a criança.

Marubo

Uma das práticas sociais dessa tribo é a poligamia. O homem pode se casar com várias mulheres, e cada uma delas ocupa um espaço bem definido na maloca.

A cremação fazia parte dos antigos costumes desses índios. Eles comiam as cinzas com mingau para que o morto pudesse continuar entre eles. Por influência dos missionários, hoje, os mortos são sepultados em cemitérios. A única exceção ocorre com as crianças de colo, que são enterradas geralmente entre as árvores.

Parakanã

Entre esses índios a amizade formal, que pressupõe deveres, troca de presentes e outras obrigações sociais, se dá apenas entre os indivíduos do mesmo sexo.

Antes dos 10 ou 12 anos, é o adulto que escolhe o companheiro da criança. Depois dessa idade, a amizade é ritualizada durante a festa do cigarro.

Na casa cerimonial, eles dançam, um par de cada vez, e fumam até entrar em transe para conversar com os espíritos. As mulheres também realizam esse ritual mas nas próprias casas, e não podem fumar.

Cabe aos homens derrubar e limpar o terreno para o roçado, mas o plantio e a colheita são tarefas exclusivamente femininas, com exceção da roça de fumo, onde as mulheres não podem nem entrar.

Saterê Mauê

A formiga tem um significado especial e é muito respeitada por esses índios. Uma das espécies, a tocandira, é considerada como divindade e usada nos rituais de passagem. A picada é extremamente dolorosa, mas os meninos para demonstrar coragem tem que colocar a mão dentro de uma espécie de luva cheia de tocandiras e resistir impassíveis à dor. Só depois disso são considerados adultos.

Os saterê-mauê têm uma forte tradição agrícola e comemoram o fim da colheita com o tarubá, uma bebida fermentada tão forte que pode causar embriaguez por até um mês.

Uma de suas plantações tradicionais é o guaraná. Foram esses índios que domesticaram o arbusto silvestre e aprenderam a usar as sementes para fabricar uma bebida, que hoje é um refrigerante fabricado industrialmente no Brasil.

Suruí

Em determinadas épocas do ano esta tribo se divide. Um grupo fica fora da aldeia, enquanto a outra metade cuida do plantio, da colheita e do preparo da mandioca. No final tudo é compartilhado.

Quem saiu retribui os alimentos da roça com os produtos da caça, pesca e os artefatos que foram produzidos. Na estação seguinte há um revezamento, o que serve para fortalecer a coesão do grupo.

Tapiragem

Os índios da Amazônia, Mato Grosso e Venezuela mudam a cor das penas das araras e papagaios para fazer adereços.

Para conseguir isto, na época da muda, eles tiram as penas das asas e da cauda, friccionam a pele com ungüentos e dão alimentos especiais às aves como ovos de tartaruga, secreções leitosas da pele e sangue de sapos e rãs, peixes, como pirarucu, e sementes de açafrão e urucum.

O resultado deste processo, conhecido como tapiragem, é que as penas perdem o azul ou verde original que possuíam. Nascem amarelas pinceladas com vermelho ou amarelo-ouro, este tom, mais raro, é o preferido para compor os adereços.

Tenharim

Esses índios costumam enterrar os mortos debaixo dos pisos das casas. Acreditam que o espírito permanece morando no local e usando os utensílios que possuía quando era vivo.

Para pescar os Tenharim têm um hábito curioso. Eles colocam dentro d’água um pedaço de madeira com o desenho dos peixes que querem capturar. Fazem isso sempre debaixo de árvores frutíferas mas acreditam que a fartura da pescaria é explicada unicamente pelos desenhos. Eles só não pescam o boto e do peixe-boi por serem considerados alimentos tabu.

Tikuna

As meninas da tribo Tikuna são submetidas a um ritual de iniciação quando ficam menstruadas. A festa sempre acontece na lua cheia, que representa beleza, bondade e sabedoria. Para esta comemoração os índios, além de enfeites para as virgens, fabricam máscaras de monstros e macacos.

Um dos índios usa uma máscara com cara de serpente e incorpora o espírito do principal personagem do ritual, um monstro que vivia na água. Durante os festejos o monstro faz gestos obscenos que divertem a tribo. Ele também ronda o cubículo onde a menina fica reclusa batendo com um bastão no chão. Durante três dias e três noites essa garota é protegida por duas tias que aproveitam o tempo dando conselhos: para ser uma boa mulher Tikuna, ela deve ser ativa, trabalhadeira e respeitar o marido.

Tukano

Esses índios são extremamente vaidosos. Gastam dias e dias num grande esforço para capturar aves de plumagens belas, coloridas e variadas para fazer adornos. Eles também gostam de modificar as cores originais dando comidas especiais para as aves ou aquecendo as penas. Esse processo é conhecido como tapiragem. Usam até duas dezenas de aves para um único adorno. Estes enfeites são usados em rituais e aqueles que usam as peças mais bonitas são muito prestigiados pela tribo.

Wai Wai

Fazia parte da cultura deles a troca de mulheres capturadas de outras aldeias, consideradas como troféus de guerra. Com a chegada dos holandeses que colonizaram o Suriname, antiga colônia nas Guianas, os índios estabeleceram este mesmo tipo de relação, trocando mulheres por artigos europeus. Os holandeses se utilizaram desta prática para conseguir com que os índios ao invés de trazer mulheres capturassem os escravos negros fugidos.

Waiãpi

Este povo, falante de uma língua Tupi, vive em ambos os lados da fronteira entre o Brasil e a Guiana Francesa. Ali, cerca de 750 Waiãpi ocupam o curso alto do rio Oiapoque. No Amapá, são cerca de 530, distribuídos em 12 aldeias. Algumas famílias Waiãpi procedentes do rio Cuc vivem hoje no Alto Peru do Leste.

No panorama da devastação social e ambiental que atinge a maioria das áreas indígenas no país, a atual situação dos Waiãpi no Amapá representa um caso privilegiado. Eles expulsaram todos os invasores de sua terra, que eles mesmos demarcaram, numa extensão de 603.000 hectares e que foi homologada em maio de 1996. Hoje, buscam alternativas de desenvolvimento que garantam sua autonomia cultural e seus direitos à exploração exclusiva dos recursos de sua terra. Neste processo, criaram um conselho de aldeias, o APINA. A experiência de gestão das atividades de produção e comercialização empreendidas pelas diferentes aldeias por parte do APINA vem tendo crescimento significativo ultimamente.

Nas festas de caxiri, as famílias de várias aldeias se reencontram para compartilhar de um acervo cultural que os Waiãpi têm preservado e fortalecido ao longo desses últimos vinte anos de "contato".

A dança entre os Waiãpi geralmente está dissociada da alegria, acontece mais em momentos de crise para aplacar a ira de Ianejar - o grande pai - que sempre ameaça destruir a humanidade.

O pajé, como lida com forças sobrenaturais, podendo atrair bons e maus espíritos, nesses períodos é sempre "vigiado". A tribo teme que ele provoque problemas desnecessários.

Yanomami

Os Yanomami abrem várias trilhas para ligar as diferentes aldeias com as áreas de caça, os acampamentos de verão e as roças recentes e antigas. Eles fazem um constante rodízio entre esses lugares e com isso a floresta se recupera com rapidez.

Todos da tribo moram numa imensa casa coletiva e as crianças ocupam um lugar de destaque, suas necessidades são prontamente atendidas e seus pedidos sempre levados em conta. Embora, haja um intercâmbio freqüente de mulheres e produtos, cada uma das aldeias tem completa autonomia política e administrativa.

Esses índios queimam os seus mortos e comem as cinzas e acreditam que os espíritos, que podem ser bons ou maus, habitam as plantas e animais.

A reserva dos Yanomami fica próxima ao Pico da Neblina, na fronteira do Brasil com a Venezuela. Essa área tem sido invadida por garimpeiros atraídos pelas grandes reservas de diamante, ouro, cassiterita e urânio.

Zorós

Os zorós pertencem ao grupo lingüístico tupi e são herdeiros da tradição ceramista desse povo. Usam técnicas refinadas na fabricação de peças ricamente adornadas. Essa tribo foi descoberta em 1971 mas o primeiro contato só aconteceu sete anos depois e ainda hoje os Zorós vivem relativamente isolados. Por seus traços delicados, são considerados, segundo descrição dos sertanistas, como os índios mais bonitos da Amazônia Ocidental.

Publicado em: Ambiente Brasil

Jecinaldo Sateré Mawé of the Amazonian Sateré Mawé tribe called the Pope’s remarks ‘arrogant and disrespectful’.

Pope Benedict XVI also claimed, according to the BBC, that the Christianisation of the region ‘had not involved an alienation of the pre-Colombian cultures’.

Today, the indigenous population of Brazil is less than 7% of what it was in 1500. Of a thousand distinct tribes, only about 220 remain.

The Catholic Church’s Indian advocacy group in Brazil, CIMI, has called the Pope’s statement, ‘wrong and indefensible’. Before the Pope made his comments, Indian leaders had written to him about the threats they continue to face, and expressed their gratitude for the support of missionaries and the church in Brazil in fighting for their rights.

Survival’s director Stephen Corry said today, ‘It is tragic that unlike previous popes who have visited Brazil, His Holiness did not meet with Indian leaders, and made no public reference to the genocide visited upon the indigenous peoples of Brazil over the past 500 years.’

For further information contact Miriam Ross on (+44) (0)20 7687 8734 or email mr@survival-international.org