José Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Júnior ( Ribeirão Preto, 1948) is a Brazilian that works for FUNAI, the agency that protects native Americans in Brazil. He is a specialist in uncontacted peoples.

Early life

Meirelles was born in Ribeirão Preto, in a family of explorers and cattle herders. He was raised in the small town of

Santa Rita do Passa Quatro Santa Rita do Passa Quatro is a municipality in the state of São Paulo (state), São Paulo in Brazil. Elevation is . The population is 27,600 (2020 estimate) in an area of . The municipality holds the Cerrado Pé de Gigante Area of Relevant Eco ...

(São Paulo). When he was young, he gave up his studies in engineering and moved to the city of São Paulo. He took a course on indigenous studies and after a short introductory course, he was sent to

Maranhão Maranhão () is a state in Brazil. Located in the country's Northeast Region, it has a population of about 7 million and an area of . Clockwise from north, it borders on the Atlantic Ocean for 2,243 km and the states of Piauí, Tocantins and ...

to work with the Urubu-Kaapor and then the Awá (Guajá), with whom first contact had been made.

FUNAI

Meirelles quit engineering in 1970 to work at FUNAI. In 1976, he became head of a FUNAI outpost in

Acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imp ...

, near the Iaco River. There, among the Manchineri and Jaminawa peoples, he would spend ten years of his life. In 1988, he became one of the principal advocates of the policy of preserving the isolation of Indians who showed no interest in contacting “whites”. This policy followed the traditional stance of anthropologists and governments, based on contact to "protect", "acculturate", and "integrate" indigenous peoples.''PARALELO 10''
(catálogo informativo sobre o filme de Silvio Da-Rin) Meirelles has been part of the leadership of the FUNAI's Isolated Indians group ('' Índios Isolados da FUNAI'') since its creation in 1987 by

Sydney Possuelo Sydney Ferreira Possuelo (born 19 April 1940, in Santos Dumont), is a Brazilian explorer, social activist and ethnographer who is considered the leading authority on Brazil's remaining isolated Indigenous Peoples. Life and career Sydney Possuel ...

, a specialist in indigenous issues, and he also coordinates the Ethnoenvironmental Protection Front of the Envira River (''Frente de Proteção Etnoambiental do Rio Envira (FPERE)) '', in

, headquartered in the city of Feijó. In this capacity he has faced various dangers: he was shot in the face with an arrow in 2004 and, in the 1980s, his group was attacked by isolated Indians. Meirelles killed one of them in order to keep his father-in-law from being killed, something he now considers one of the great traumas of his life.Como Meirelles matou índio em "situação dramática"

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Meirelles, José Carlos 1948 births Living people People from Ribeirão Preto Brazilian environmentalists Indigenous activists of the Americas Orders, decorations, and medals of Brazil