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Terra indígena Raposa/Serra do Sol (
Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...
for ''Fox/Sun Hills Indigenous Land'') is an indigenous territory in Brazil, intended to be home to the Macuxi people. It is located in the northern half of the Brazilian state of Roraima and is the largest in that country and one of the world's largest, with an area of and a perimeter of about .


Location

The area includes two major natural landscapes: plains occupied by a type of vegetation similar to that of ''
cerrado The ''Cerrado'' (, ) is a vast ecoregion of tropical savanna in eastern Brazil, particularly in the states of Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Tocantins, Minas Gerais, and the Federal District. The core areas of the Cerrado biome are th ...
'' and steep mountains covered with thick rainforest. The
Pacaraima Mountains The Pacaraima or Pakaraima Mountains ( pt, Serra de Pacaraima, es, Sierra de Pacaraima) are a mountain range primarily in southwestern Guyana, and into northern Brazil and eastern Venezuela. Geography The range extends from west to east for ov ...
in the north of the territory separate Brazil from Venezuela and Guyana. The territory contains the Monte Roraima National Park, created in 1989.


Population

Raposa Serra do Sol indigenous territory is home to about 20,000 people, most of them Macuxi. Other peoples represented there are the
Wapixana The Wapishana or Wapichan (or Wapisiana, Wapitxana, Vapidiana, Wapixana) are an indigenous group found in the Roraima area of northern Brazil and southern Guyana. Location Currently the Wapishana are located in the State of Roraima, Brazil, no ...
s, Ingaricós, Taurepangs and
Patamona The Patamona are an Amerindian people native to the Pakaraima Mountains of Guyana and northern Brazil.Patamon ...
s, as well as non-indigenous farmers. The inhabitants of the reserve vary wildly in language and degree of cultural contact with the mainstream Brazilian culture. The Macuxis have a good degree of contact with the local non-indigenous society, while others are still outside its reach. Most of the indigenous people in the reserve do not speak
Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...
. Most of the contact the indigenous peoples have had with the mainstream society has been through FUNAI researchers, missionaries, military men, gold miners and farmers, who grow rice in the damp plains. The presence of non-indigenous inhabitants in the reserve is not recent, but has seen a boom recently, since the reserve was proposed, because the Brazilian government usually refunds ''bona fide'' settlers for the land they forsake.


History

The creation of Raposa/Serra do Sol has been the subject of sharp controversy ever since it was first proposed in 1993, for a series of reasons including concerns of national security and territorial integrity. After being identified as an Indian homeland by FUNAI, it was mapped during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration but was only accepted formally by
president President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) *President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
Luís Inácio Lula da Silva Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archaic ...
in 2005. In May 2009 the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled that the reserve should be inhabited only by indigenous people, and an operation began to remove the remaining non-indigenous inhabitants. Concerns about the reserve started back in the 1970s, when Brazilian
indigenist Indigenism can refer to several different ideologies that seek to promote the interests of indigenous peoples. The term is used differently by various scholars and activists, and can be used purely descriptively or carry political connotations. D ...
Orlando Villas-Boas gave a now-famous interview in which he said that the creation of Indian reserves close to border areas was a risk to the integrity of the Brazilian territory and that the action of missionaries in Brazil sought to build up national conscience among the most numerous indigenous peoples, like the Macuxi and the
Yanomami The Yanomami, also spelled Yąnomamö or Yanomama, are a group of approximately 35,000 indigenous people Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a ...
, with the covert goal of establishing independent or semi-independent national entities and fragmenting the control of the Amazon jungle. The fact that the Raposa/Serra do Sol lies right along the border with Guyana and Venezuela adds to this concern. Another major source of concern was that, after the creation of the reserve, the state of Roraima—still the least populous and the most scarcely populated Brazilian state—would have more than 54% of its area occupied by Indian reserves or national parks, which was seen by the locals as an obstacle to the state's present economic boom. Most of the rice crops of the Brazilian northern region are from within the limits of Raposa/Serra do Sol and the creation of the reserve would reduce Roraima's GDP severely. Besides large parts of other
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, there are an entire town, Uiramutã, and four non-Indian villages inside the territory of the reserve. Another complicating factor is that part of the indigenous community was against the creation of an indigenous territory, because they have been coexisting with the non-native community since the beginning of the 20th century. In 2006, three missionaries were kidnapped, and freed three days later by rice farmers and the indigenous people who opposed the creation of the reserve. The Monte Roraima National Park existed only on paper until 2001, when the
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provided money to implement and manage parks in Brazil. The indigenous people became concerned when the
Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources ( pt, Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis, IBAMA) is the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment's administrative arm. IBAMA supports anti- ...
(IBAMA) began to implement the management plan. This included erecting a headquarters building, and potentially removing the indigenous Ingarikó and
Macushi people The Macushi ( pt, Macuxi) are an indigenous people living in the borderlands of southern Guyana, northern Brazil in the state of Roraima, and in an eastern part of Venezuela. Identification The Macushi are also known as the Macusi, Macussi, Ma ...
from the park. On 15 April 2005 the area was completely assigned to Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI: National Indian Foundation) through the "dual affectation" legal device create by the federal government with recognition of the Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous Territory. Under the decree of 15 April 2005 the boundaries of the Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous Territory were ratified and Monte Roraima National Park was made Union public property with the roles of both maintaining the constitutional rights of the Indians and conserving the environment. In December 2008 the
Supreme Federal Court The Supreme Federal Court ( pt, Supremo Tribunal Federal, , abbreviated STF) is the supreme court (court of last resort) of Brazil, serving primarily as the Constitutional Court of the country. It is the highest court of law in Brazil for const ...
issued a high-profile decision in favour of the continued territorial integrity of Raposa Serra do Sol. Non-indigenous rice farmers had protested their deportation from the TI, arguing that the reserve undermined Brazil's national integrity and the state's economic development, and proposing that it be broken up. The ruling established a legal precedent that affected more than 100 similar cases that were before the Supreme Court at the time.


References


Sources

* * * {{authority control Indigenous Territories (Brazil) Indigenous peoples in Brazil History of Roraima Protected areas of Roraima