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About the organizations | In the Brazilian Amazonia | Organizations table

About the organizations

 

Several Indigenous groups have been adopting ways of representation that are typical of our society as a way to find new forms of insertion into the national political scene. In these organizations the Indians hold meetings, choose their directors by vote, register their statutes in notary publics and open their own bank accounts. The appearance and development of those organizations has promoted the emergence of leaders and new forms of alliances.
Such organizations have many differences among themselves, be it in terms of mandate, of how large their focus is or of the kinds of alliances they make. There are Indigenous organizations that are linked to a single village; others represent several peoples established along a given river; there also cases of organizations with aspirations of political representation in the inter-local and regional plans.

The greater part of the Indigenous organizations are ethnic and locally based (on a village or a community), such as the Associação Xavante de Pimentel Barbosa (Pimentel Barbosa Xavante Association), or inter-local (a group of villages or communities), such as the Aciri (Associação das Comunidades Indígenas do Rio Içana – Association of the Indigenous Communities of the Içana River), or the CGTT (Conselho Geral da Tribo Ticuna – General Council of the Ticuna Tribe). There are also a few regional organizations, such as the UNI-AC (União das Nações Indígenas do Acre – Union of the Indigenous Nations of Acre), the CIR (Conselho Indígena de Roraima – Roraima’s Indigenous Council), the FOIRN (Federação das Organizações Indígenas do Rio Negro – Federation of the Indigenous Organizations of the Negro River) and, with a wider range, the COIAB (Coordenação das Organizações Indígenas da Amazônia Brasileira – Coordination of the Brazilian Amazonia’s Indigenous Organizations).

After the short-lived experience of a national representation of the UNI (União das Nações Indígenas – Union of the Indigenous Nations), which was never formally institutionalized, in 1992 was founded, in a COIAB meeting, the Capoib (Conselho de Articulação dos
Povos e Organizações Indígenas do Brasil – Council for the Joint Action of the Indigenous Peoples and Organizations of Brazil), under the assistance, and promoted by, the Cimi (Conselho Indigenista Missionário – Missionary Indigenist Council -, an official organ of the Conselho Nacional dos Bispos do Brasil – National Council of Brazil’s Bishops -, CNBB, belonging to the Roman Catholic Church).

In general, Indigenous organizations tend to be volatile, which illustrates the difficulties Indians face for building stable forms of representation with such a diversified and spread out base. In Brazil, the demographic, linguistic and spatial diversity among Indians make the question of political representation very peculiar when compared, for instance, to the situation in Bolivia (where 57% of the population is Indigenous), Peru (40%) or Ecuador (30%). Here, Indigenous politics proper, autonomous and permanent, is an essentially local reality (of each village, community or family), factional (in the case, for example, of villages whose social organization is based on ritual halves to which a chief each is associated with) and decentralized (with no recognition of a center of power.