(Brasilia) The indigenous peoples of Brazil, starting with those of the Amazon, won an important victory on Thursday: at the end of a trial started in 2021, the Supreme Court consolidated their right to their lands, rejecting the positions defended by the powerful agribusiness sector.
The issue was all the more crucial as the reserves allocated to indigenous people are considered by scientists as bulwarks against deforestation and therefore play a key role in the fight against global warming.
This judgment is a “very important response to the threats and criminalization that we have experienced over the last four years,” Kleber Karipuna, executive director of the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib), told AFP, in reference to the mandate of ex-far-right president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).
But it is also a call to the government of left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who returned to power in January, to “move forward on the demarcation of indigenous lands,” he added.
The majority was reached on Thursday when a sixth magistrate, out of the eleven who sit on the highest court in the country, voted against the thesis of the “temporal framework”, during this long-term trial which began in August 2021 and was suspended for several times.
Three other judges then voted against it. Results: nine votes against, two for.
Gathered under a large tent in front of the Supreme Court, hundreds of indigenous demonstrators, some with their bodies painted and their heads topped with feathers, followed the debates on a giant screen.
When the majority was reached, some burst into cries of joy and dance moves, while others hugged their neighbor.
The thesis of the “temporal framework”, defended by the powerful agro-business lobby in the name of the “legal security” of operators, proposes to recognize as lands rightfully belonging to the indigenous people only those which they officially occupied or claimed at the time. of the promulgation of the Constitution in 1988.
However, the natives explain that certain territories were no longer occupied by them at that time, because they had been expelled, notably under the last military dictatorship (1964-1985).
According to the NGO Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), almost a third of the more than 700 indigenous reserves already demarcated in Brazil (the majority in the Amazon) could have been affected.
“Debt impossible to pay”
While Judge Carmen Lucia highlighted the “impossible to pay debt of Brazilian society towards indigenous peoples”, Joenia Wapichana, president of Funai, a public body for the protection of indigenous people, welcomed the fact that “justice is on the side of indigenous peoples.
“Now that the time frame is definitively buried, we will be able to move forward in the protection of our lands and our rights,” she told AFP.
The only two magistrates favorable to the thesis defended by agrobusiness were appointed by Jair Bolsonaro.
The latter, whose mandate was marked by an outbreak of deforestation, had promised not to “give one more centimeter” to indigenous peoples.
Approvals of new reserves remained at a standstill for more than five years, until Lula’s return to power, who legalized six new ones in April, then two others at the beginning of September.
Of the more than 700 reserves already demarcated in Brazil, almost a third of them have not yet been officially approved.
The trial at the Supreme Court, which will set a precedent, relates more specifically to the case of the Ibirama-Laklano territory, in the state of Santa Catarina (south), which lost its status as an indigenous reserve of the Xokleng people in 2009, at the following a judgment of a lower court.
The judges then justified their decision by explaining that these lands were not occupied by indigenous people in 1988.
“I am very emotional because my grandfather fought a lot for this and he is no longer here to see it,” said Txului Namblá, an 18-year-old Xokleng girl.
Compensation
Supreme Court justices have yet to find consensus on pending issues, including possible state compensation for owners of land that would be transformed into reserves in the future.
This alternative solution to the “temporal framework” was proposed by the powerful judge Alexandre de Moraes, but it was rejected by the natives.
They fear in particular that case law on the subject of compensation will slow down the approval of new reservations, because they would represent a high cost for the State.
Brazil has nearly 1.7 million indigenous people, living on or off reserves, or 0.83% of the population, according to figures from the latest census.