Bolsonaro decree could spell ‘the end of indigenous land demarcations’

During his campaign ahead of the 2018 election, then-congressional backbencher Jair Bolsonaro promised that, under his watch as president, there would not be a “single centimeter” of land demarcated for the country’s indigenous communities.

In his view, these ancestral territories should instead be used to create wealth, a belief that goes hand in hand with his calls to legalize wildcat gold mining and his government’s dismantling of environmental oversight frameworks. 

In this regard, Brazil’s far-right president stuck to his word, with zero new indigenous land demarcations made since the beginning of his term.

And now, with Mr. Bolsonaro’s first term in office coming to an end, a decree published on Monday’s edition of the Official Gazette could make demarcating indigenous lands completely unfeasible.

The president’s decree extinguishes regional committees of Brazil’s indigenous foundation Funai by making wholesale changes to the agency’s statute. Gone, too, are its Fronts of Ethno-Environmental Protection and Local Technical Coordination Units, leaving the organization largely neutered in the construction and application of indigenous policies.

“The Bolsonaro administration promised to stick the knife into Funai, remember?” says Antonio Eduardo Cerqueira de Oliveira, executive secretary of the Indigenous Missionary Council (Cimi). “First, he cut off the limbs, and now this decree cuts off the agency’s head. It practically does away with the institution.”

Funai’s regional committees are crucial venues for planning, negotiation, shared management, and social control. They also offer a space for Funai staffers, indigenous people, and other federal government members to plan...