This is the Brazilian government body that establishes and carries out policies relating to indigenous peoples. In 1967, the 7,000-page Figueiredo report exposed the true extent of the criminal actions and genocide carried out against the indigenous population of Brazil, and the National Indian Foundation, or FUNAI, was established in response. ![]() For instance, when Brazil’s military dictatorship took over in 1964, it implemented a policy of “assimilating” indigenous people to reach its goal of national unification, which included wiping out those peoples who refused to cooperate, by dropping bombs or feeding them sugar laced with arsenic. In Maranhão, the Awá had moved into the territory of the Guajajara, the largest tribe in Brazil with more than 20,000 members, and they remained unable to secure or defend any land for growing crops.īy 1973, when the Awá were contacted by outsiders for the first time, they had fully adapted to living a nomadic lifestyle, and had lost all of their farming skills and even the knowledge of how to make fire.įollowing the unwelcome invasion of the Portuguese, the Awá, and many other indigenous Indians, continued to suffer great atrocities at the hands of loggers, colonists, and ranchers. Enslaved by the Portuguese, and with their numbers greatly reduced by the introduction of smallpox, the remaining Awá eventually fled east to Maranhão, perhaps prompted by the bloody revolt on the Portuguese plantations, the Rebelião da Cabanagem, which took place between 18, and claimed as many as 30,000 lives.įearful of their vulnerability as sedentary agriculturists, the Awá now became nomadic hunter-gathers, able to build a shelter within hours and abandon it only days later, melting back into the forest. Originally from Pará, a state to the west of Maranhão, the Awá were living in villages and farming crops when the Portuguese settlers arrived 500 years ago.
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