Brazil miner sees Indigenous land as ripe for exploration if protections expire
by Sydney Bauer on 30 August 2022
A Brazilian company stands poised to start mining inside an Indigenous territory in the Amazon as soon as October, highlighting the precarious nature of the protections afforded to Indigenous lands under the current administration.
Oxycer Mining has filed five applications with the national mining regulator to prospect for gold in the Piripkura Indigenous Territory in Mato Grosso state, according to data from the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of Indigenous and traditional peoples.
The territory has not yet been demarcated, or officially recognized by presidential decree, and is currently only protected under a legal mechanism known as a “use restriction ordinance.” These ordinances, which protect against activities such as illegal logging and mining, are temporary in nature and must be periodically renewed. The ordinance for the Piripkura territory is due to expire on Oct. 4, according to the ISA, and Oxycer’s mining applications suggest there’s a possibility it won’t be renewed. The Federal Public Ministry is seeking renewal of the ordinance, but the last two ordinances were only renewed for six-month periods, according to the ISA.
The 243,000-hectare (600,500-acre) Piripkura Indigenous Territory is home to one of the world’s most vulnerable uncontacted Indigenous peoples. There are only three known surviving Piripkura individuals: uncle and nephew Pakyî and Tamandua live in voluntary isolation in the Piripkura territory, while Rita, Pakyî’s sister and the only one of the trio with extended contact with the outside world, lives in the Karipuna Indigenous Territory in neighboring Rondônia state. The Piripkura suffered from at least two massacres since their first contact with outsiders in the 1980s and now faces the risk of extinction again.
Tamandua and Pakyî, two of the last remaining Piripkura, appear in the 2017 documentary “Piripkura”, by directors Bruno Jorge, Mariana Oliva and Renata Terra. Their land is the target of a new mining operation from the Brazilian company Oxycer if Brazil’s Congress does not renew an ordinance that protects their territory. Image from the documentary film “Piripkura”.
More:
https://news.mongabay.com/2022/08/brazil-miner-sees-indigenous-land-as-ripe-for-exploration-if-protections-expire/
