Weekly web roundup: ‘Lost’ towns and a vote for the Amazon
by Matthew
The first judge has voted in favour of the Indians of Raposa Serra do Sol in Brazil’s Supreme Court land case. This is positive news but represents the very first step in a battle of enormous consequence for the country’s Indian population, and indeed the entire Amazon.
It is an extremely important moment in the history of Indian rights and constitutional law in general. The Huffington Post noted that “the future of Brazil’s traditional Indian cultures was under challenge.”
‘Lost’ towns of the Amazon
BBC News covered the unearthing of “lost towns’ discovered in the Amazon”. The towns ‘were lost’ since “the people who once lived in the settlements are thought to have been wiped out by
European colonists and the diseases they brought with them.”
This process has been replicated throughout South America where many millions of indigenous peoples have been wiped out by colonisation over centuries. It is still happening today as ‘progress’ and ‘development’ dispossess tribal peoples of their land and bring rapid, and sometimes disastrous, change. Our campaign, Progress Can Kill, highlights the shocking ways in which this is occuring.
In search of Sydney
We hear that film-maker Steve Bowles has set out to track the life and work of Sydney Possuelo, the legendary Brazilian activist. Possuelo has had an immense impact on the plight of Brazil’s tribal peoples through his work with FUNAI and elsewhere.
“I knew from that first meeting that I would make a film about him one day” Steve says of his encounter on a research trip in 1983. His interest with the charismatic man is matched by his long-standing fascination with tribal peoples.
“These groups are the opposite to our society. We are obsessed with things while they are profoundly spiritual and the bonds within the groups are strong. In our society we live in isolation even though we are surrounded by people. We’re full of preoccupations and anxieties - they are more content.”
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:32 pm
[…] SIthe idea to be that some mythical lost tribes had been found, and that the definition of “uncontacted tribe” is in practice quite specific and in use by the Brazilian government’s equivalent of a […]