Uncontacted Indigenous community in the Brazilian state of Acre. Although the country’s official toward these groups has been to not engage in any contact, regardless of whether there’s a pandemic, a federal law passed in July 2020 allows religious missionaries to remain inside these reserves. Photo Credit: Gleilson, Miranda / Government of Acre via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).
Society BrazilBig Win for Indigenous People: “No Outsiders Allowed”
The Supreme Federal Court of Brazil has ruled in favor of Indigenous organizations and bans missionaries from entering reserves where remote populations live, for health, cultural, social, and environmental considerations.
Outsiders have not been allowed to interfere with Indigenous groups and their environment since 1987, but a law in 2020 allowed for missionaries to be an exception to the rule, upsetting the Indigenous community while putting their health, especially in times of COVID-19, at risk.
“As we are under an anti-Indigenous government, it is important to have a decision which reassures the Indigenous policy,” says Carolina Ribeiro Santana, a lawyer for the Observatory for the Human Rights of Isolated and Recently Contacted Indigenous Peoples, and one of the co-authors of the lawsuit against the law passed in 2020.
Through contacts with the outside world, Indigenous people are obviously at risk of disease spread, but also traditional cultures and social cohesion are undermined by the presence of missionaries. There is a will to have nomadic communities settle down, and this structural change makes the land more vulnerable to illegal logging since it is highly coveted.
