13-1 Brazil: Who Pays for Development?

Using Satellite Photography for Grassroots Development in Amazonia

A picture, it is said, is worth a thousand words. In some cases it can be worth much more, particularly if the picture can aid in the survival of indigenous people and local communities. The extremely rapid pace of forest conversion in Amazonia threatens the land, resources, and consequently the survival, of its indigenous peoples through the loss of their forest resources. In regions with recent…

The Pataxo of Bahia: Persecution and Discrimination Continue

The Pataxó of Bahia: Persecution and Discrimination Continue In the 1940s remnants of the three Indian groups that had gradually been compelled to abandon their ancestral lands had moved to the area occupied by the Pataxó Hahahai Indians in the basin of the Pardo and Colonia rivers in southeastern Bahia, Brazil. As a result of living together, these different groups have now become Pataxó Hahahai…

The Kayapo Bring Their Case to the United States

The Kayapó Bring Their Case to the United States From 27 to 31 January 1988, the Florida Rain-forest Alliance, along with numerous other organizations, sponsored a symposium titled "Tropical Rainforests: Strategies for Wise Management" in Miami. The organizers invited two Kayapó Indian leaders from Brazil, Paulinho Paiakan and Kube-i Kayapó, to speak about how Amazonian Indians conserve and…

The Cultural Survival Tibet Project

It has been 35 years since the Chinese invasion of Tibet (1950) and 30 years since the flight of the Dalai Lama and 100,000 refugees to Dharamsala. India (1959). During that time the Tibetan culture has been subjected to every technique of transformation known to the socialist ideology and virtually every technique for eradicating a distinct cultural identity known to Chinese assimilationist…

The Calha Norte Project - Multinationals, Mining and Militarization in Brazil's Last Frontier

The Calha Norte Project was designed by a multi-ministerial work group formed in June 1985 at the suggestion of the National Security Council. It defines a plan of action for the entire region north of the Solimoes and Amazon rivers. Special priority is given to the 4,000-km northern border with Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. The project affects most of the…

Plundering the Timber on Brazilian Indian Reservations

Because of the obvious bad consequences, lumbering has traditionally been prohibited, at least in principle, on Indian reserves in Brazil. Recently, however, this protective stance has been reversed: the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) itself has encouraged the greedy and wasteful destruction of Indian forests, with severe consequences for the Indians involved. This article presents a brief…

Kayapo Plan Meeting to Discuss Dams

Kayapó Plan Meeting to Discuss Dams An unprecedented attempt by Amazonian Indians to organize themselves to resist (by peaceful legal and political means) the destruction of their forest habitat and the expropriation of their traditional lands is now under way in the forests and native villages of central Brazil. This attempt, conceived by the leadership of the Kayapó tribe and joined by some 28…

Indians in Brazil: The Struggle Intensifies

This issue of CSQ documents the continuing violence that is being done to the Indians of Brazil. The government takes no action against the thousands of miners who are in Yanomamo territory, yet it forbids priests, anthropologists or any others who speak out for the Indians to remain in or even visit Yanomamo land. It does little about frontiersmen who kill Indians, yet it prosecutes two Kayapó…

Higher Education on Alaska's North Slope

The teleconference room on the first floor of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation building in Barrow, Alaska, houses the latest in telecommunications equipment. For those uninitiated in the complexities of North Slope life, this facility may seem out of place in the northernmost town of the United States. However, change has come to Barrow with the same unswerving force as the fierce winter…

Defending the Forests

Indigenous peoples are actively defending their forests, their cultures and their ways of life, not merely in a few isolated incidents but in places as distant and different as Brazil and Malaysia. Their heroic efforts are often undertaken at great personal risk, even under the threat of death. More than one person per day has died while attempting to prevent the invasion and destruction of the…

Burma Update: Urban Uprising and Frontier Rebellion

From August to October 1988, mass uprisings in Burma's towns and cities brought Burma to world attention. Millions of city dwellers from every stratum of society marched in the streets. Led by students and Buddhist monks, they called for democracy after 26 years of one-man, one-party misrule. These protests came as a shock to much of the outside world, which had long regarded Burma as a tranquil…