Funai (Fundação Nacional do Índio) keeps the security of the most recent isolated indigenous group located in Brazil, in the south of the Amazon, at risk. The autarchy, for almost a year, has received warnings about it in internal technical reports and in a recommendation from the MPF-AM (Federal Public Ministry in Amazonas).
The communiqués to the president of Funai, Marcelo Xavier, point out that it is necessary, “in an emergency”, to decree a restriction on the use of the territory, to implement two protection bases at strategic points and a sanitary barrier due to the pandemic.
New expeditions are also requested to monitor the group of indigenous people, called Mamoriá-Grande, respecting their decision not to contact them. Since then, however, Funai has not even informed society about the confirmation of the existence of a new isolated group.
The documents delivered to Xavier, to which the Sheet had access, are confidential at Funai. The material explains that the presence of the isolated was confirmed by the encounter of vast vestiges of the community and by the auditory contact with the indigenous people, who fled when they realized the presence of the foundation’s expedition, in August of last year.
The same document points out that the region is considered to be of tension due to the presence of illegal hunters, riverside dwellers and extractivists in the region.
Questioned about two weeks ago about the alerts, Funai did not respond until the publication of this report. The MPF-AM said that the matter is being processed in secrecy, so it cannot provide information.
According to a member of the CGiirc (General Coordination of Isolated Indians and Recent Contact), in Brasília, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, civil servants working in the region are threatened for reporting the risks to isolated indigenous people.
The place where the group was located is in a vacant area of the Union (land not allocated by the public authorities) between the Purus and Juruá rivers, on the border with the Medium Purus Resex (Extractive Reserve).
According to a report by Coiab (Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon), in 2021 deforestation in this Resex increased by 39%, which is equivalent to more than 27,000 trees felled.
After the location of the isolated group, in August of last year, a new expedition was made. The work resulted in a new report, in September, also kept confidential. In it, once again, the foundation’s management is informed about the urgent need for protective measures.
Funai, on the occasion, received details about the group’s way of life. In the document, to which the Sheet also had access, there are photos of tools for hunting, fishing, food, shelter and transit of the indigenous peoples through the rivers of the region, left behind when they heard about the expedition.
On March 4, 2022, the Attorney General’s Office entered the case and issued a recommendation, with a period of ten days to respond, to the president of Funai.
In the message, the MPF-AM recommends that the president of the agency publish “immediately” an ordinance restricting the use of the territory and that negotiations be carried out between Funai and ICMBio (Chico Mendes Institute for the Conservation of Biodiversity) to install a base of protection.
After the deadline, neither Funai nor the Public Ministry took action.
In February, the president of Focimp (Federation of Indigenous Organizations and Communities of the Middle Purus), chief Zé Bagaja Apurinã, denounced the absence of the State and the risks of the isolated areas of Mamoriá-Grande, in a note published by Coiab.
And, at the end of June, Apib (Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil) filed a new allegation of non-compliance for the protection of isolated groups, asking for judicial intervention.
In its arguments, the association indicates that the Federal Constitution of 1988, Convention 169 of the ILO (International Labor Organization), of 1989, to which Brazil is a signatory, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, of 2007 , guarantee isolated groups the right not to contact non-indigenous people and impose their protection as a duty of the State.
In an interview with Sheet on April 22, published in a longer version on June 18, after his death, Bruno Pereira, an indigenist murdered in Vale do Javari, commented on the case of the Mamoriá-Grande. He considered it “the most serious” omission by Funai in relation to isolated indigenous people.
For Bruno Pereira, the department that takes care of isolated people at Funai “hidden” the indigenous people, something that, in his view, had never happened in the last 30 years of indigenous policy in the country.
“And Funai hides this? Since September, [mas] didn’t open, didn’t start a process to protect this group of indigenous people”, he added. “Talk to the old sertanistas of Funai, any of them, and talk about when in public policy, in these 34 years of it, isolated indigenous people hid.”
According to the indigenist and anthropologist Miguel Aparício, from the OPI (Observatory for the Human Rights of Isolated and Recent Contact Indigenous Peoples), the suspicion of the existence of this group of isolated peoples has been registered for decades by riverine people and other contacted peoples.
He states that, “in normal times”, the confirmation would be communicated to society as a great achievement by Funai. “Historically, the logic would be to have a celebration,” he says.
