With the slogan “Our existence is ancestral: we’ve always been here,” the Indigenous people taking part in the 20th Free Land Camp, the movement’s biggest event in the country, are taking on government administrators, judges, members of congress, and the non-Indigenous people who insist on denying them territory and their rights. The historic cut-off point thesis is still the biggest threat to the Indigenous peoples of Brazil, since the Federal Supreme Court has stayed the legal proceedings questioning the constitutionality of the law passed by Brazil’s Congress. Based on this perverse legal rule, which has the support of Brazilian agribusiness and the ruralist lobby in Congress, the Indigenous people, who have always been here, will only be entitled to demarcation of territories they can prove they were inhabiting or contesting in court as of October 5, 1988, the date the Constitution was enacted. At the Free Land Camp, the joy in the resistance, the way of life in the territories, the struggle’s strength, the care, the courtesies, and also the frustration were documented by photographer Lela Beltrão, SUMAÚMA’s photo editor.
Text: Malu Delgado
Photos: Lela Beltrão
Proofreader (Portuguese): Valquíria Della Pozza
Spanish translation: Meritxell Almarza
English translation: Sarah J. Johnson
Copyediting and finishing: Natália Chagas
Coordination of editorial workflow: Viviane Zandonadi
Editor-in-chief: Talita Bedinelli
Editorial director: Eliane Brum