President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stated that, during his government, he will demarcate “the largest possible number” of indigenous lands, a measure that, according to him, collaborates to combat deforestation. This Friday (28), Lula participated in the closing of the 19th edition of the Free Land Camp, in Brasília, an annual manifestation of the indigenous movement. On the occasion, the president signed the homologation of six indigenous lands, in the states of Acre, Alagoas, Rio Grande do Sul, Ceará, Amazonas and Goiás. The processes had been stalled since 2018, as then-president Jair Bolsonaro stated that he would not make any demarcation during his government. President Lula signs approvals for indigenous lands during the closing of the Terra Livre Camp – Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil “We are going to have to work hard so that we can demarcate the largest possible number of indigenous lands, not only because it is your right, but because, if we want to reach 2030 with zero deforestation in the Amazon, we are going to need you as guardians of the forest”, said Lula, noting that the demarcation process is time-consuming and goes through many legal and study stages. In January, the Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Sonia Guajajara, told the vehicles of Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC), including Agência Brasil, that 14 demarcation processes for Union areas were ready to be approved. “What we want is, at the end of the mandate, for indigenous people to be respected and treated with all the dignity that every human being deserves in this country”, said Lula. “It is necessary to create awareness that indigenous people do not owe favors to any other people. When they say that you occupy 14% of the national territory, conveying the idea that it is a lot of land, we have to respond by remembering that, before the Portuguese arrived here, you occupied 100% of the territory”, she added. Lula also pointed out that the way of life and production of indigenous communities protects natural resources and that, for agribusiness, it is necessary to recover already degraded areas. “A standing tree will produce more for this country than trying to cut it down to plant soybeans. We have more than 30 million degraded lands that can be recovered and, on these lands, productivity can be doubled without affecting indigenous peoples and forests” , argued. Still according to the president, it is necessary to take care of the 25 million people who live in the Amazon. “We need to research the richness of our forest, our biodiversity, to draw from it and create a production method to make the people who live in the Amazon live decently and with dignity”, he said. Indigenous policy This Friday, Lula also signed decrees to recreate the National Council for Indigenous Policy (CNPI) and to establish the Management Committee of the National Policy for Territorial and Environmental Management of Indigenous Lands (PNGATI). The purpose of this policy is to promote and guarantee the protection, recovery, conservation and sustainable use of natural resources in indigenous territories. According to the Presidency, the initiative ensures the improvement of the quality of life of indigenous peoples with full conditions for the physical and cultural reproduction of current and future generations, in addition to guaranteeing the integrity of the tangible and intangible heritage of these peoples. The president also stated that the government is going to build a new career plan for employees of the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (Funai). “The person most interested in the career plan is the president of Funai [Joênia Wapichana] because she knows how low pay people are. We want to recover because working at Funai is as important as working in any department,” said Lula. Yanomami Still at the Terra Livre Camp, the government announced the release of R$ 12.3 million to Funai, for the acquisition of inputs, tools and equipment for the flour mills, recovering the productive capacity of the Yanomami indigenous communities in Roraima. The Yanomami Indigenous Land (TI) is the largest in the country in terms of territory and has been suffering from the invasion of prospectors. Contamination of water by mercury used in mining and illegal deforestation impacted the safety and availability of food in communities. The situation has generated a humanitarian crisis that has led to hundreds of children and elderly people dying from malnutrition and preventable causes over the past four years. Since January, the federal government has been working to evict miners and support indigenous peoples. For Lula, indigenous health is a priority. “We cannot allow what happened to the Yanomami to happen again, it cannot happen to any indigenous people,” he said. “I never imagined that there was a government that would let children and adults reach those conditions, which they could hardly raise from hunger, due to lack of food in a country that is the third largest food producer in the world. The truth is that those people were forgotten, those people were held hostage by miners”, added the president.
Agência Brasil
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