Today marks the last day of a protest by the Awá, one of Brazil’s last remaining hunter gatherer tribes. The main message of the tribe is simple: we exist.
The protest is largely in response to the comments made by the mayor’s office of nearby Ze Doca denying the existence of the tribe, which for decades has been threatened by illegal logging and hunting. Such are the stakes that for many of the Awá this march represents the first time they’ve ever left their homes.
The development of Amazon has been catastrophic for the Awá, whose numbers have dwindled to approximately 300. According to Survival International, an indigenous rights group, the tribe’s land first became a target for opportunity-seeking settlers following the discovery of iron ore in the 1970s. The World Bank-funded Great Carajás Programme, which oversaw the construction of a railway line and the world’s largest iron ore mine at the time, resulted in the deaths of many Awá from disease or massacres committed by colonists flooding the area in search of a profit.
In June 2009 the tribe won legal recognition for its land in federal court. The same ruling ordered all migrants to leave Awá territory. That decision has been suspended as a result of ranchers’ appeals, however, leaving the tribe once again vulnerable to disease, violence and the degradation of their land.
If anything, this week’s protest should prove to the developers and politicians alike that the Awá do indeed exist. But the crisis facing this endangered tribe is more than just existential, and only through properly enforced federal protections will groups like the Awá stand a chance at surviving.
Photo: Flickr user Markg6
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[...] Lerner-Kinglake reports on the last day of the protest by the Awá, a Brazilian indigenous people, to try to prove its existence. “If anything, this [...]