Survival recently reported the arrests of four Wanniyala-Aetto men for hunting on their ancestral lands inside a national park in Sri Lanka. We took a look through the archives and came across this statement from Tapal Bandialetto, a Wanniyala-Aetto man. He describes how the Wanniyala-Aetto were moved from their forest in 1983, and the problems facing his people as they try to find food for their families on small plots of land outside the park.

‘The government said we had to come to Hennanigala [government resettlement area], and that if we didn’t like it, we could go back to our land in 4 or 5 years. We were inexperienced, and came. For 2 or 3 years, the government gave us all our food supplies. Then they stopped.

The government helped for about 5 years, then said now you have paddy fields, you can live off them. But we didn’t know how. Now, the governments don’t care. They have abandoned us like a puppy.’

People go inside the Maduru Oya National Park to get food, but they go without permits. If they are caught, they go to court.’There are 250 families here in Hennanigala, all ready to go back to our land in the National Park.

‘If the next generation waits here in Hennanigala, they will learn drinking, smoking and gambling. All the wrong things. They must go back to the jungle while they are still young, and go back to the traditional system. Before, we had no schools or hospitals, but we had our own systems of medicine, of education. It is all being lost.

‘I want my land back, my village back. Kandeganvila is the name of my village. The government built a water tank there for us, then threw us out. When we were in the jungle, we were healthy and strong, we didn’t use pesticides or fertilisers. We had a natural life.

‘Chena cultivation gives a very big harvest. You can’t get as much from this land in 3 years! We live and die and eat and share everything in the jungle. We eat meat, the deer eats leaves, we die in the ground, trees grow, the deer eat leaves. Like a circle. At that time, we didn’t kill young animals, or animals that were drinking water. We only killed male animals, and shared them with the village. Now, people hunt illegally. They catch any animal. They go into the park at night. We cared for the land. Now we’re gone, no-one cares for it.’

Tapal Bandialetto, Wanniyala-Aetto man, Hennanigala.

The Arhuaco are one of three unique, related Indian tribes who live on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia. They are characterised by a complex spirituality and distinctive clothes and houses. Survival’s report on the Arhuaco, Guardians of the Sacred Land, is available to buy from the Survival Bookshop for just £1. This passage from the report explains Arhuaco philosophy and spirituality.

In the beginning of time, Kaku Serankua created the Earth. He made her fertile and took her as his wife.

The world was supported by two sets of four golden threads which were interwoven and attached to the four cardinal points. Where the eight golden threads cross, lies the heart of the world. This is our home, the Sierra Nevada, which is marked out by the ‘black line’ which defines its boundary and separates it from the low plains which surround it.

The snow peaks and sacred lakes were placed in the middle of the mountains; this, the highest area, is chundua. The peaks are like people, like us in many ways, like ‘guardians of honour’. They are like our parents, our fathers and mothers. They are also the fathers and mothers of the white man; for our god is his god. A mamo [priest] was put on every peak to be vigilant and caring. Every peak has a mamo, just as every house has someone living there. The peaks are like our temples or churches.

Then Kaku Serankua distributed the land, he kept the Sierra as a sacred place where wisdom would reside, so that one day it could be taught again to humanity. This is where Kaku Serankua lives now, watching over his creation.

Before he made the world, Kaku Serankua created the water, which nourishes the Earth as the veins of man nourish his body. He also made the stars, the sun and moon, and everything.

When he came to create the living beings, he gave laws to the four kinds of people - the white, yellow, red and black. Their colours are the same as the four mantles of the earth: bunnekan, the white earth; minekan, the yellow earth; gunnekan, the red earth; and zeinekan, the black earth.

Our breathing is the same breath which springs from the world: the air, the winds, and the breeze. All the races of people are equal; to each was given their own rights and their own laws so that they did not violate their brothers and sisters. Each one of us has been given a path whereby we can come close to god and recognize and know him.

A Survival researcher recorded this interview with Kamairu Awá, a young Awá man. He describes an encounter with some uncontacted Awá, whose whereabouts are still unknown. An estimated 60 - 100 Awá still live isolated in the pockets of forest that remain in Maranhao state.

‘We [Kamairu and his brother in law, Mihatya] went into the forest to hunt and fish. Mihatya, who was fishing, was suddenly hit by an arrow. I, Kamairu, was hunting with a dog. I was running after a paca (a large rodent) and it leapt into the stream and we tried to kill it. At the same time that we were trying to kill the paca, we were shot at. When Mihatya was shot by the arrow he shouted and at that same moment I saw the couple. We took off our clothes so we were naked, so we could make contact with them. We shouted at them, but they didn’t hear us as they were running off. We saw a young Indian woman with a new skirt made of tucum (palm fibre). She was very pretty and young.

‘We wanted to talk to them and see whether we could bring them to our village. But they didn’t wait for anything and ran off. We never saw them again. After this we saw traces of them, footsteps along the stream and in the forest as they were hunting, but we never saw them again.’

For as long as they can remember, the Guarani have been searching - searching for a place revealed to them by their ancestors where people live free from pain and suffering.

They call it the ‘land without evil’, and they are still seeking it. The plight of their tribe today makes it more necessary than ever.

The Guarani have been in intense contact with outsiders for hundreds of years, but have retained their own very separate identity - and with it their, ‘Constant desire to seek new lands, in which they imagine they will find immortality and perpetual ease’ (Pero de Magalhães de Gandavo, 1576).

Over hundreds of years, the Guarani in Brazil have travelled vast distances in search of such lands, and Guarani communities can now be found scattered far from their homelands in the south, across five Brazilian states.

At the beginning of the 19th century, for instance, hundreds of Indians set off on a journey, inspired by Guarani seers foretelling the end of the world and prophesying that an escape from doom could be found in the land without evil.

They marched 500 miles from the south of Mato Grosso do Sul almost as far as São Paulo. Here they were met by a Brazilian army expedition, which suffered severe losses in the ensuing battle and was forced to allow them to settle.

This permanent quest is indicative of the unique character of the Guarani, a ‘difference’ about them which has often been noted by outsiders.

Today, this manifests itself in a more tragic way: profoundly affected by the loss of almost all their land in the last century, Brazil’s Guarani suffer a wave of suicide unequalled in South America.

‘I think of the conditions in which we live - abject poverty, those little houses. We have nothing to eat and yet our people still sing with such joy, with such hope, always in search of the land without evil… We Indians don’t want money or riches. Do you know what we want? We just want enough land to live on how we like.’ Marta Silva, Guarani woman.

[The Guarani’s story, along with those of many other tribes, is told in Survival’s book ‘Disinherited - Indians in Brazil’, available from our online bookshop.]