Eliane Potiguara is coordinator of GRUMIN, the Indigenous Women’s Education Group in Brazil . GRUMIN works with indigenous women to promote their economic, political and social self-determination. Among its many activities, GRUMIN publishes the GRUMIN newspaper and organizes courses on both indigenous history and handicrafts such as basketmaking and painting.
Multinational Monitor: What problems are presently confronting the Potiguara Nation?
Eliane Potiguara: The Potiguara Nation is a group of 5,000 people. Half of our land, about 22,000 hectares, is owned or is being held by AGICAM , a sugar cane processing company. These land owners invaded the Indian land with government support to plant sugar cane. Today, the land where their plantations are and surrounding the sugar cane factory is totally destroyed. The destruction has caused the rivers to be polluted. The fish are contaminated and dying. The shrimp are also dying due to the infusion of a chemical into the rivers called vihoto, which is produced when the sugar cane is processed into alcohol. Bites from mosquitos exposed to the chemical are very bad for children’s skin.
We have talked to the Brazilian government and stopped the invasion of our land. Shortly we shall be given some reparations, perhaps money, for the damage that’s been done to our land. But I don’t know if this return is going to be sufficient to rebuild the land, to replenish it to its former state.
MM: What is the process by which the government agreed to reparations?
Potiguara: Research was done in which all the people whose land had been invaded were surveyed. The court listened to the victims who proved that the community was indeed suffering from the land invasion. But we are afraid, because the Northeast of Brazil is a conservative area. There is a strong group of landowners who are very united and who have enough power to act against any action which opposes their interests.
MM: How does the destruction of Potiguara land affect your people?
Potiguara: We are suffering directly from the impact of environmental degradation. It damages the physical condition of the indigenous peoples as well as the psychological sanity of the people. There is a high rate of alcoholism in the community. There is a high rate of infant mortality and maternal and infant malnutrition. Many women have breast or uterine cancer. Our community has been totally abandoned. There is no health care, no education and no employment. We are a people in the process of extinction.
All of this is the [result] of environmental degradation. Yet the government is not allowing us to conserve the environment. [Officials] are not talking with indigenous peoples who have a sustainable form of development in their areas.
MM: Why is there a high rate of alcoholism among the indigenous population?
Potiguara: The refinery that invaded our area brought the alcohol. They paid our laborers with a Brazilian alcoholic drink. Our indigenous leaders made others realize that we should not [accept] alcohol as payment. And a lot of Indians stopped drinking.
But there are other reasons why the Indians drink. We are often taken over by the process [of invasion and forced assimilation]. That is why our group works with the empowerment of the individual and the growth of consciousness. There are cases of suicide in our tribe. There is lack of perspective and lack of hope for the future.
All of this is motivated by misery and poverty. Before this process of destruction, we had food in our homes. Now our food is contaminated and we can’t eat. Our culture has been molested. We have witnessed our homes being destroyed due to invasion. There is lack of equilibrium in our homes and our families are in chaos. We are really making an appeal for help - we are crying for help.
MM: What programs are you implementing for community empowerment?
Potiguara: We have educational programs to maintain our cultural heritage and to train indigenous teachers. We are working on the project of [obtaining] a milkgoat for each family. We are facing the problem of malnutrition and other health issues for infants, children and women. We are working on the empowerment of women in the family, and finding ways to support women who lack prospects for the future. We are working to [support] indigenous spirituality, because we believe that women have a very sacred relationship with the land and with God. This relationship is going to help us to be strong, to fight for our rights and to put our projects into effect.
MM: What should be the role of the Brazilian government in the establishment of indigenous rights?
Potiguara: What we want at a concrete level is a work group to reforest our lands that were deforested by government. We want our rivers back, our fish back, our environment back.
Above all, we want our land to be demarcated, and the demarcation to be respected. Many Brazilian politicians do not recognize our need to have our land. Congress has been lobbied to disregard our right to the demarcation. We need a campaign to call the attention of the politicians to our plight.
We want a health and education program within our community that we control - not the priests, the anthropologists, the historians or the government. We should be in control of the money and the program.
The governments have paid some attention to us only in the past few years. The meetings we’ve had to discuss development so far are useless. Why are they meeting with us now? To solve our problems or to solve their own problems? We want the government to sit and talk with us. They should ask us what kind of work we want done within our communities.
During the last 500 years, we have been tortured culturally and spiritually. We want to say what we believe. We want our indigenous organization. We want the preservation of our culture, our language, our spirituality, and to retrieve our dignity which was lost during this whole process.