Brazilian Indians fear millennial way of life is threatened by development (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Brazilian Indians fear millennial way of life is threatened by
development

Wednesday, February 18, 2004
By Michael Astor, Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-02-18/s_13216.asp

XINGU NATIONAL PARK, Brazil — Naked children are leaping from mango
trees and tumbling into the mild water of the Xingu River without a
care. But up by the grass-roofed long houses, the village elders fret
that their way of life may come to an end soon.

"We're worried for our children and grandchildren," said Rea, a Kayabi
Indian woman. "Our Xingu is an island, and if the white man enters with
his machines, he'll break it all down in no time."

Xingu is Brazil's oldest and probably its most successful Indian
reservation — a 2.8-million-hectare (6.92-million-acre) sprawl of
pristine rainforest where 14 Indian tribes live much as their people
have for thousands of years. The reserve was established in 1961, just
a few years after many of the tribes in the region had had their first
contact with white civilization.

It sat in the middle of a vast undeveloped stretch in the state of Mato
Grosso, or "thick forest" in English. Today, the park is surrounded by
fields and pasture in the center of Brazil's fastest developing
agricultural region.

The Indians, whose numbers have nearly doubled to about 5,000 since
1961, say they are feeling the pressure.

"In 20 years there won't be enough land for all of us. If you look at
the park, it's just a triangle with a little rectangle on top," said
Awata, the school teacher at Capivara, one of several Kayabi villages
that line the river.

In the villages, life goes on much as it always has, but there are signs
of the encroachment of white civilization all around. Shiny metal water
faucets are now a fixture in most villages, thanks to a well-digging
project that aims to protect the Indians from polluted headwaters
outside the park. Once-crystalline rivers are muddied from erosion
caused by farming and logging up river.

"We can no longer fish with bows and arrows so we need to buy fish hooks
from the white man," said Mairawe Kayabi, the president of the Xingu
Indian Land Association, who like many Indians uses his tribe's name as
a last name.

The sound of Indians stomping and chanting is still heard in the
villages, only now it is as likely to emerge from a cheap tape recorder
as it is from a live ceremony. In the Ngojhwere village, the cooking
grill is a bicycle wheel with its spokes hammered down. Three metal car
wheels turned on their side raise the grill over the wood fire burning
on the dirt floor.

Breakfast is piraucu, a big, freshly caught river fish. The Indians stew
it in water and, when it's ready, wrap it in pieces of a big gummy
manioc pancake called beiju with hot pepper and store-bought salt for
seasoning.

The women now use steel pots instead of clay to fetch water and cook.
Satellite dishes sit outside many of the long houses feeding a handful
of Brazilian TV channels to generator-powered televisions.

"All the stuff on the television puts stuff in the young people's
heads," Mairawe said. "They are attracted to whatever comes from
outside. This is a cause for a lot of disagreement among the
leadership."

For ceremonies, the Indians still strip naked and paint their bodies
with red powder from ground urucum seeds and the black ink of the
jenipapo fruit. But most days they wear Western clothing, the woman
preferring long, cotton dresses, the men shorts and T-shirts.

Kuiussi, the Suya Indians' chief, wearing a skimpy swimsuit during a
journalist's visit, warns visitors not to take pictures of Indians
wearing Western clothes.

"If people see the pictures, they'll say we're not Indians — that we're
mixed (race) — and that's not true," he says. "We are all Indians
here."

While Kuiussi worries about outside influences, his son, Wetanti, 25,
sees no problem keeping a foot in both worlds. He proudly displays a
small album that begins with photos of him naked, painted, and
feathered and ends with him looking disco-ready in white slacks, a
black T-shirt, and wraparound sunglasses.

The Suya had their first contact with white people just over 40 years
ago, in 1959. Today the village sits on the edge of the Xingu
reservation: face to face with white civilization.

"Right now, we have to fight to maintain our traditions. The world won't
be the same for our children and grandchildren so we have to hold on to
what we have as long as we can," Kuiussi said. "Maybe in the future,
they'll want to farm or do something with the land to make money, but
not in my lifetime."

The park owes its existence to the Villas Boas brothers. During a
government expedition to Brazil's hinterlands in the 1940s, the
pioneering Indian defenders saw first hand the devastating effect that
contact with white civilization was having on Indians and their
culture.

The Villas Boas quartet — Orlando, Claudio, Alvaro, and
Leonardo — lobbied the government to set aside land for the reservation
and then convinced 14 tribes from around the region to move into it. At
the time, wildcat miners, loggers, and farmers were just starting to
make their way into the region.

"We taught them (the Indians) if they wanted to survive, if they wanted
their children to survive, not to let anyone in. We told them if anyone
came, to fight them," Orlando Villas Boas, who died last year, said in
a 1998 interview.

On at least one occasion, Indians took the advice to heart. They killed
11 loggers who refused to leave, Villas Boas said. "No one even thought
of coming here after that."

Today, the Indians perform joint patrols with the Federal Indian Bureau
and Brazil's environmental protection agency. But when there are no
officials around, the Indians aren't afraid to put on war paint and
pick up bows, arrows, and even hunting rifles to expel invaders.

There can be problems among the Indians themselves. Many tribes moved to
the park from hundreds of miles (kilometers) away, from places where
the terrain was different, and they have had trouble adapting to life
in the Xingu. Kayabi elders complain that the materials needed to make
traditional objects are not available in the park.

"The old people didn't like it when they got here," said Jywapan Kayabi,
one of the chiefs at Capivara. "They couldn't find the kind of wood
they needed to make their bows and arrows or the kind of grass they
used to weave their baskets."

Communication is another problem. Because each of the 14 tribes has a
distinct language, they can communicate with each other only in
Portuguese, a language few Indians speak even today.

The Indians in the northern part of the park still don't have much
contact with tribes in the southern part, even though they share a more
compatible culture and visit each others' villages occasionally for
festivals.

"If we see their dances we might understand some of what they're
singing, but we can't join in the singing," said Ionaluka, who is the
rare offspring of a mixed-marriage between Suya and Kayabi parents.


Source: Associated Press