Amazon ‘retakings’ challenge Bolsonaro

Sateré-Mawé members launch their boat during the last leg of their journey in January to resettle an abandoned village on the tribe’s traditional lands along the Mariaquã River. (Photo by Matheus Manfredini)

This January, nine Sateré-Mawé Indians from the Andirá-Marau indigenous territory, which straddles the border of the Brazilian Amazon states of Amazonas and Pará, set out by boat for an area of teeming tropical forest where their ancestors once lived. The north-central Brazil land was left out—erroneously, they say—of a reserve demarcated for them in 1986. After pressing the government unsuccessfully for years to recognize their rights to the territory, the Indians decided to take matters into their own hands and join an emerging effort to resettle the area. It was a daring challenge to the policies of right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has argued Indians occupy far too much of the country’s territory—land he and his government contend should be opened up to mining and agribusiness. In his electoral campaign, Bolsonaro vowed “not to give another centimeter of land” to indigenous communities... Read more →