Kayapo: A Fight for Rights

What strategies did the Kayapo use to try and prevent the construction of the Altamira dam? The Kayapo rallied other Brazilian Indians to attend a reunification of the tribes at Altamira-the proposed site of a massive hydro-electric dam that will flood large parts of the Xingu valley. The gathering also served as a media event as the Kayapo and their allies demonstrated their case to the assembled international press. The Indians of the rainforests as a group are becoming Political power houses, living in isolated areas have been coming to think of themselves as one. They used this strength to demonstrate their cultural importance to ElectroNorte, Brazil's state dam company. Early in the film the Kayapo chief's went to another dam to see how it had effected the environment and how it worked. They discovered that the damage the dam had caused was massive, destroying peoples lives, removing people from their homes, destroying massive amounts of resources produced by plants that provided these people with a way to survive. Not only did it do this but it also endangered many lives of different animals who in turn also provided to the people in some sort of "Circle of Life" thing. Back at the reunification the kayapo used mass media and media icons such as sting to represent them and get the word out in order to influence the matter at hand. The attempt was so conclusive that it had ensued an international outcry that cause the world bank to remove its support. The success of this initiative at Altamira profoundly changed political reality and expectations for Indian people in Brazil and beyond. One example of this legacy is the current effort of the Wauja' of the Upper Xingu to reclaim peacefully, under Brazilian law, traditional fishing grounds and a sacred ceremonial site, Kamukuaka. Both are currently being invaded or occupied by ranchers and poachers. At Altamira some 600 Kayapo Indians, together with contingents from 40 other Indigenous nations of Amazonia, gathered along with over 400 representatives of the Brazilian and world news media, documentary film-makers, photographers, and diverse non-governmental organizations. Through all of this they succeeded.

What Characteristics of Kayapo culture enhance the ability of this indigenous group to shape the course of development? The Kayapo are a group of Indians who live in the rainforests of southwest Brazil. Originally they were once united together as one by a single resource, a corn tree, they all used this resource until it was no longer usable at that time they spit up into several sub-groups separating and changing their ways of life. Even though this had happened, today they still keep in contact with each other by using radios. Furthermore they have been warrior figures in their area for long past. They are a very family and religiously unified group of people and I believe that these were the few aspects that helped them in solidifying their case at Altamira. The Kayapo sense of the human-ecosystematic interdependence receives expression in ritual, myth and the evolution of the Universe. It is a perspective which essentially makes a threat to the continued existence of the one equality to a threat of destruction of the other. This was not an eventuality that the Kayapo had to confront until their recent encounters with Brazilian projects for the economic exploitation and development of their territory. Once these encounters were perceived to pose just such a threat, however, Kayapo ideas and attitudes about the forest and riverain environment became a potent basis for political mobilization and resistance.