BRASILIA – Indigenous people started, this Monday (24), the 19th Free Land Camp (ATL), in Brasília. The event, considered the largest meeting of ethnic groups in Brazil, brings together several indigenous people from all over the country. The group will remain at Praça Cidadania, in front of the Cláudio Santoro National Theater, until this Friday (28).
The leaders of the Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (APIB) say that the group’s objective this year is to reinforce the need for the demarcation of indigenous lands, in addition to calling for an end to violence and decreeing a “climate emergency”.
The expectation is that six thousand indigenous people, of different ethnic groups, will be present at the camp. The event also features more than 30 activities, divided into the axes “Tell the people to move forward”, “Village the Policy”, “Demarcation Now”, “Indigenous Emergency” and “We will move forward”.
APIB’s executive coordinator also claims that land demarcation has been complicated by the difficulty in obtaining data from this process.
“There are already 14 lands suitable for homologation, 35 awaiting the declaration ordinances and more than 100 waiting for the installation of the working groups. More than 600 lands still do not have any stage in this process. There are 1396 lands, in total, in different stages for the demarcation”, explains Karipuna.
With the theme “The indigenous future is today. Without demarcation, there is no democracy!”, the expectation is to bring together more than six thousand indigenous people in the camp, which will be set up in Praça da Cidadania in Brasília (DF). The message reinforces the importance of the demarcation of indigenous lands in the country, which were paralyzed for four years in the Bolsonaro government.
The ATL 2023 schedule has more than 30 activities divided into five thematic axes, namely: Tell the people to move forward, Village the Policy, Demarcation Now, Indigenous Emergency and We will advance. The axes have plenary sessions on indigenous women, territorial and environmental management of indigenous lands, access to public policies and indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation.
During the program, the indigenous movement will also promote three marches through the streets of the Brazilian capital. The first of them, on the 24th, will call for the overthrow of anti-indigenous bills such as PL 191 that allows mining in ancestral lands of indigenous peoples and the PL for land grabbing. Bills like these make indigenous people the most frequent targets of rural violence in Brazil, representing 38% of the people murdered in 2022 according to the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT).
On the 26th, the act “Indigenous Peoples declare a climate emergency!” calls for attention to tackling the violations caused by climate change. Dinamam Tuxá, executive coordinator of Apib, reiterates that indigenous lands are the areas with the greatest biodiversity and the most preserved vegetation, since they are territories protected and managed by the original peoples.
