In the Brazilian Amazonia
In the context of Amazonia, Indigenous associations have played a central
role in the region's sustainable development. Anthropologist Bruce
Albert, a researcher of the ISA-CNPq-IRD agreement, discusses the
topic.
Indigenous associations in the 1990s:
between the new Constitution and the "projects market"
Since the end of the 1980s there has been a prolific increase in the
creation and registration of indigenous associations in the form of
"civil organizations" (COs). To give an idea of the scale
of the phenomenon, only ten such associations existed before 1988 (Upper
and Mid Solimões River, Manaus, Upper Negro River, Roraima);
now there are more than 180 associations in the six States making up
the Northern Region of Brazil (Amazonas, Roraima, Rondônia, Acre,
Pará and Amapá), and probably more than 250 in so-called
Legal Amazonia, which includes parts of the States of Mato Grosso, Tocantins
and Maranhão. In other words, the number of such associations
has increased twentyfold in little more than a decade. (see: Table
of indigenous organizations in Brazil)
These associations vary considerably in nature. The majority are local
(a group of communities, a river basin), representing a people or a
regional population. Many are based around a professional or economic
activity (teachers, health agents, producers, co-operatives). There
is also an important network of women's associations, as well as various
associations of indigenous students. Although so far only a few have
their own infra-structure, most of the associations are publicly registered
or in the process of being legalized, fulfilling legally recognized
internal and interethnic political functions.
Today, a considerable and ever expanding number of such indigenous
organizations have access to sources of external funding in the form
of local development "projects" pursuing a variety of aims:
territorial management, institutional maintenance, organization of assemblies
and meetings, health and education projects, initiatives promoting self-sufficiency
and market production, cultural awareness and revitalization, etc. In
this context, it is nowadays increasingly difficult to distinguish between
associations "with" and "without" projects: instead,
the difference lies between those with regular access to diverse funding
sources (generally urban regional associations) and those relying on
just a few limited and sporadic sources (usually local rural associations).
The sudden upsurge in indigenous organizations in Amazonia has its
origin in the combination of several wider socio-political processes,
interacting at both national and international levels. At a federal
level, we can firstly note the enactment of the 1988 Constitution, whose
Article 232 enabled these associations to be constituted as legal entities.
The second important factor at this level has been the Brazilian State's
withdrawal from direct management of the so-called "indigenous
question" within the country (by limiting itself basically to its
responsibilities in territorial matters) and the political and budgetary
cutbacks to the tutelary indigenist administration initially set up
three decades ago by the military regime as an integral part of its
policies for the development of Amazonia.
On the international level, the primary factor was undoubtedly the
globalization of issues concerning the environment and minority rights
during the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the increasing collaboration
between environmental and social NGOs in developing project that combine
conservationist aims and a concern for community development –
phenomena that reached a point of ritual culmination during ECO 92 in
Rio de Janeiro. A second decisive factor was the decentralization of
international co-operation towards sustainable development and stimulating
the implementation of local micro-projects, nowadays equally focused
on forming partnerships with organized sections of the local populations.
Thus, the enabling conditions for the recent boom in indigenous associations
have been both the progressive juridical framework of the new Constitution
and the "projects market" opened up by bilateral and multilateral
co-operation and by international NGOs, followed by increased national
public investments in the civil organizations sector (by the Ministries
of the Environment, Health and Education), considered from the viewpoint
of Brazilian State reform as elements of the "non-State public
sector" (Bresser Pereira and
Cunill Grau, 1999).
A mutation of the "Indigenous movement":
from political ethnicity to the ethnicity of results?
This combination of trends and dynamics has not only produced a rapid
growth in the number of indigenous associations in Amazonia, it has
led to a considerable qualitative mutation in the role played by the
"indigenous movement" in the often heated political debate
concerning the development model to be adopted in the region.
Indeed, the first few indigenous organizations created in the 1980s
were informal associations, politically active but with little institutional
structure, essentially focused on making territorial and welfare demands
on a custodial State perceived to default on its legal and social responsibilities.
Since the 1990s, Amazonia has seen the appearance of legalized associations
– complete with statutes, bank accounts and tax liabilities –
increasingly assuming functions that the State has ceased to perform
directly, largely deferring their execution or funding either to the
local public or non-governmental sphere (at municipal and state level)
in the case of education and healthcare, or to the globalized network
of bilateral and multilateral cooperative agencies and international
NGOs (in the case of projects involving territorial demarcation, economic
self-sufficiency and environmental protection).
Thus, we can observe a shift from a movement of informal ethno-political
organizations and mobilizations in conflictual dialogue with the Federal
State over the legal recognition of autochthonous lands (1970s and 1980s),
to the institutionalization of a vast array of organizations that have
increasingly tended to assume economic and social functions in liaison
with a network of national and international funding agencies, whether
governmental or non-governmental (1990-2000).
At the same time, we can note the transition from a dynamic of political
effervescence and identity-building, sustained by a group of charismatic
indigenous leaderships (employing neo-traditional politico-symbolic
discourses with a strong impact on the media), to a phase displaying
a kind of "routinization" of ethnic discourse (in the wake
of the international rhetoric of "ethno-sustainable" development
adopted from the financing agencies), supported by a new group of young
members of indigenous organizations increasingly familiar with the administration
of associations and project management.
At the end of the 1980s and start of the 1990s, there was a gradual
turn from a kind of strictly political ethnicity, based on territorial
and legalist demands (centered on application of the Statute of the
Indian), to what could be called an ethnicity of results, in which reaffirmation
of identity became the backdrop to the search for access to the market
- above all, to the international and national "projects market"
opened up by the new decentralized development policies (local and sustainable).
Thus, in the context of the Stateís progressive withdrawal from
the indigenist scene, the traditional roles of these organizations in
political negotiation and representation (whose intensity tends to lessen
as territorial disputes are resolved) are today increasingly supplanted
by support work, managing territorial demarcation and surveillance projects,
as well as sanitation, education, cultural and social projects (such
as APITU's support work for Indian pensioners in Amapá) and many
kinds of economic and commercial projects (agro-forestal and cattle
breeding projects; fish farming projects, arts and crafts, forest products,
etc.).
Employing a subtle blend of protest action (in the general or specific
defense of indigenous rights) and pursuit of active participation, these
associations are today increasingly recognized as vital actors in the
region's socio-environmental development, negotiating directly in official
forums in pursuit of their own agendas, not only with public administrators
but also with co-operation agencies, NGOs and businesses (whether buyers
of "green" products or sources of indemnity payments).
As a result of this growing legitimacy, indigenous organizations have
been able to develop their projects with funds provided by a wide range
of national and international sources. International funding sources
include both multilateral co-operation agencies (such as the World Bank
and the European Community) and bilateral co-operation agencies (where
Northern European countries predominate), as well as funds from various
secular NGOs or those linked to a network of religious financiers (NGOs
that also frequently act as mediators for co-operative financing). In
some cases, funding may also be acquired through projects supported
by "traditional" businesses interested in products with a
high ethno-ecological added value, such as The Body Shop (Britain),
Aveda (United States) and Hermès (France), or may
even be replaced by preferential commercial partnerships with "militant"
businesses from the "equitable commerce" sector (such as the
companies importing Sateré-Mawé Guaraná in Europe:
Guayapi Tropical in France and Cooperativa Terzo Mondo
in Italy).
In terms of national financing sources, funds are provided through
agreements established with municipal, state and federal bodies in the
areas of education, healthcare and the environment, as well as occasional
indemnities paid by large state enterprises (or former state enterprises
that have since been privatized), such as Vale do Rio Doce and Eletronorte.
Finally, some funding is provided by national NGOs, though these funds
very often also derive from international NGOs and co-operation agencies
and are simply passed on to indigenous organizations.
Indigenous lands: from legalization to natural resources
stewardship
The evolution of the process of territorialization of indigenous groups,
begun as part of the military governmentsí vast public projects
for the development of Amazonia (based on the administrative and juridical
framework of the 1973 Statute of the Indian), can be likewise seen as
a decisive factor in the recent change to the issues surrounding indigenous
peoples in the region.
The most intense phase of identity reaffirmation and ethno-political
mobilization of the indigenous movement – its phase of "social
uprising" properly speaking – took place during the intense
and difficult process of "conflictual dialogue" with the State
for the demarcation of indigenous lands during the 1970s and 1980s.
After almost three decades, this process – although still yet
to be concluded – at least now shows the first signs of a conclusion
on the horizon. Amazonia's 170 indigenous peoples now have 377 reserved
areas, of which 77.19 % (286) enjoy some degree of legal recognition
(52 demarcated lands and 234 approved or registered lands). Legal regularization
of the region's remaining indigenous territories is moving forward at
a fast pace, even though several important cases still await resolution
(such as the Terra Raposa–Serra do Sol, in the State of Roraima)
and the majority of indigenous territories in Brazil still experience
some form of land invasion. However, an idea of the pace at which such
territorialization is taking place can be gained by noting that, from
January 1990 to June 2000, 268 indigenous lands were approved in the
country, covering an area of 728,026.56 square kilometers (a little
less than the total area of Chile).
In this final phase of the territorialization process began in the
1970s, the indigenous movement has found itself acting in a context
where its main point of contention with the State – one which defined
it politically – is gradually vanishing. But while this founding
confrontation with the State over the land question is evaporating as
the number of disputed areas diminishes, its importance is also lessening
as a result of the State's own withdrawal from indigenous affairs, today
more often limiting itself to playing a hesitant or opportunist role
of arbitration between non-governmental pressure groups and local politico-economic
interests.
In fact, both a lack of political interest (macro-economic priorities)
and a conceptual void (failure to reform an obsolete indigenist administration)
seem to have forced the State to abandon formulating any indigenist
policy of direct intervention. Its activities are now mostly limited
to the legalization and protection of those national territories designated
for exclusive use by indigenous populations. Simultaneously, it has
transferred the bulk of its responsibilities for those public services
targeted towards indigenous populations either to the local sphere through
decentralization (indigenous education and healthcare taken over at
a state or municipal level) or to the global sphere through third parties
(so that responsibility for providing economic support to indigenous
communities has mainly been transferred to international co-operation
agencies).
In this context of "post-territoriality" and the State's
retraction, indigenous societies nowadays face not only the traditional
problems of territorial control and full citizenship, but also new challenges
such as the maintenance of complex external socio-political networks
with the aim of ensuring access to financing sources for social, health
and education programs adjusted to their cultural reality, and above
all the enactment - with the support of these selfsame channels - of
a model of economic-environmental stewardship of their lands' natural
resources. This last point is crucial in so far as it constitutes the
basic condition for maintaining the territorial gains from the preceding
decades.
In facing these new challenges, indigenous societies no longer dialogue
primarily with an omnipotent, patronizing, tutelary State, but with
a multifarious network of public administrations and funding bodies
with whom they must negotiate a range of multi-partnerships in order
to ensure their continued cultural and social reproduction in a new
context of permanent interconnections between the regional, national
and international levels.
Indigenous lands and the Amazon environment
The autochthonous population of Legal Amazonia numbers 231,610 people,
or 1.2 % of the region's total population. At first glance, this meager
demographic representation could lead a casual observer to minimize
the relevance of indigenous peoples to the question of sustainable development
in the Amazon Region, except in the case of a naive and nostalgic ecologism.
However, evaluating the environmental dimension of the indigenous question
from this angle is evidently simplistic.
As a result of their historical rights to exclusive use of the lands
they have traditionally occupied (guaranteed in article 231 of the 1988
Constitution), the indigenous peoples of Brazilian Amazonia nowadays
have a considerable amount of reserved lands, the result of over three
decades of legal demands against the Federal government and sometimes
violent confrontations with representatives of different regional economic
interests. Today, these areas form an archipelago of 377 indigenous
lands covering a surface area of 1,038,009.45 square kilometers (a little
less than the entire area of Bolivia), forming about 20% of Legal Amazonia
(24% of the six States of Northern Amazonia). In environmental terms,
these numbers mean that 23.79 % of the region's dense and open tropical
forest falls within the boundaries of indigenous lands.
These numbers can be compared to the land surface covered by federal
and state conservation areas in Amazonia. The region contains 167 such
areas, covering 596,116.19 km2 of the region, or a little less than
12% of its total (92 Federal areas - 7.22% -, and 75 regional areas
- 4.66%). However, it needs to be pointed out that in many cases, these
conservation areas partially overlap each other or indigenous territories
or even overlap zones reserved for uses that are incompatible with preservation
of the environment, such as lands set apart for military purposes or
mineral extraction. These overlaps therefore reduce the real surface
coverage of Amazonia's conservation areas to a little less than 9% of
the region. This means that the total area of indigenous territories
in Legal Amazonia is at least twice the size of the zones reserved for
environmental conservation; it also implies that only 13.46% of the
region's tropical forest fall within these conservation areas, almost
half of the total found within the boundaries of indigenous territories.
The geographic and environmental importance of indigenous lands should
alone give them special weight within the policies of ecological preservation
and the promotion of sustainable development in the region. However,
other factors reinforce their ecological importance. Indigenous lands
are reserved zones within the public domain and the Brazilian Forest
Code (Law number 4771 of 15th September 1965, Art.3, ß3) designates
them to be permanent conservation areas. In general, they tend to be
regions of high priority for the study and conservation of the region's
biodiversity. A recent survey showed that 76 % of the zones classified
as areas of "extreme" or "high" biological importance
in Amazonia are located within legally recognized indigenous lands.
These territories are inhabited by peoples whose ways of exploiting
natural resources are mostly traditional or neo-traditional and whose
knowledge and techniques, accumulated over thousands of years of agronomic
and biotechnological experimentation, make up a considerable heritage
of practical knowledge and useful plant varieties. Finally, the density
of human occupation in these regions is in general very low: an average
of 0.19 inhab./km2 for the indigenous territories in the six States
of Northern Amazonia - the average for the whole of Brazilian Amazonia
(or "Legal Amazonia") being 3.6 inhab./km2. There are clearly
some exceptions to this low demographic density: the Tikuna lands of
the upper Solimões have an average of 15 inhab./km2 (5 inhab./km2
in the case of the Indians of the middle Solimões), as well as
very atypical cases such as the "Umariaçu Indigenous Territory"
(next to the town of Tabatinga), which has 88.6 inhab./km2, or the "Santo
Antônio Indigenous Territory" with 102 inhab./km2. However,
at the opposite end, Amazonia includes some vast indigenous territories
with densities lower (sometimes much lower) than the regional average
(see Table below):
Table: demographic density of the most important Indigenous Lands
in Amazonia
|
Indigenous lands
|
inhab./km2
|
|
Aripuanã Park
|
0,02
|
|
Tumucumaque Park
|
0,03
|
|
Javari River Valley
|
0,04
|
|
Mid-Negro River II
|
0,08
|
|
Kayapó land
|
0,09
|
|
Yanomami land
|
0,12
|
|
Xingu Park
|
0,14
|
|
Nhamundá-Mapuera
|
0,15
|
|
Upper Negro River
|
0,18
|
Indigenous lands and sustainable development
Concrete studies have already demonstrated the importance of indigenous
lands in the preservation of the Amazon forest. Satellite photos by
the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais - National Institute of
Space Research - (INPE) reveal, for example, the Xingu Indigenous Park,
in the State of Mato Grosso, as a block of forest surrounded by intensive
deforestation. However, there is still a certain reluctance among those
environmentalists favoring integral preservation (whether official or
non-governmental) to accept the indigenous territories of Amazonia as
potential areas for environmental preservation and sustainable forest
use. Three counter-arguments generally oppose this proposal, almost
certainly based on a degree of unfamiliarity with the social and environmental
reality of indigenous lands.
The first counter-argument points out that most of indigenous territories
have already suffered some kind of illegal occupation - by mineral prospectors,
timber extractors, large landowners, small farmers and so on - and that
such invasions will certainly intensify with the development of economic
activities and populational migration to regions where most of the less
affected forest areas are located. Such pressure on indigenous lands
and their predictable intensification would thus render them unsuitable
as areas of environmental preservation.
However, this situation of impending ecological damage is not in any
sense exclusive to indigenous territories. Few conservation areas in
Amazonia are effectively implemented and controlled (IBAMA has only
one staff member for each 2,000 km2 in the region's protected areas).
Many areas have been invaded and their natural resources exploited indiscriminately.
In addition, it is estimated that approximately 50% of the reserved
areas have traditional resident populations (such as the Pico da Neblina
Park, homeland of the Yanomami Indians, the Jaú Park, where many
people live along the rivers, and the Serra do Divisor Park, inhabited
by rubber tappers).
Nonetheless, the only solution provided by the new law of the Sistema
Nacional de Unidades de Conservação - National System
of Conservation Areas - (Law no 2,892, Art. 42) in response to the presence
of "traditional populations" within these "Areas of Integral
Protection" is their removal and resettlement (except where they
overlap with indigenous areas – Art. 57). This rather inflexible
"solution" of emptying reserved areas of their traditional
populations, rather than more pragmatic solutions (such as use contracts
or re-classification), seems to undermine the law"s objectives
by weakening the real possibilities of preserving such areas. Experience
from the last decade in Amazonia has tended to demonstrate that no realistic
conservation policy can exist without the social, political and economic
involvement of organized local populations.
Thus, we can assert that Amazonia's conservation areas not only suffer
the same threats as the indigenous territories, their situation is further
aggravated by the refusal to allow the presence of populations whose
very survival depends on the sustainability of forest use and who are
therefore disposed to social mobilization to defend their boundaries
and the environmental integrity of their lands. The intransigent ideology
of integral preservation appears to exacerbate the vulnerability of
these areas, in the name of the double utopianism of maintaining "human-free"
islands in Amazonia; utopian both in light of the region's socio-geographic
realities and in light of the lack of resources allocated to the body
responsible for protecting the areas, namely IBAMA.
The second – and most frequent – counter-argument is that
Indians, as a result of their new social and economic aspirations in
a situation of increasing contact, may develop – and in many cases
are already developing – economic activities that are environmentally
destructive. A series of objections can be opposed to this argument.
Firstly, while all indigenous peoples maintain some kind of economic
relationship with the market, in the vast majority of cases such relations
occur within a range of activities producing low environmental impact,
taking the form of sporadic exchange/paid employment, traditional systems
of barter or community projects mediated by support institutions (FUNAI,
missions, NGOs).
Indeed, it is rare for Amazonian indigenous communities to depend on
the market for their basic survival and consumption, such as the case
of certain Tikuna villages, confined in small and densely populated
indigenous areas (which are nonetheless still subject to plundering
by land invaders) and located on the periphery of urban centers on the
upper Solimões river (also the case of the Munduruku of the Praia
do Mangue and Praia do Índio areas, on the periphery of Itaituba
in Pará State).
Equally rare among Amazonia's indigenous peoples - although regularly
highlighted in the media - are those groups associated with predatory
activities carried out on their lands by economic workers from frontier
regions, such as mineral prospectors and timber extractors. In addition
to being exceptional, such situations, far from representing collective
economic systems, generally involve just a few individuals (leaders
and their families), as in the case of the sale of timber among the
Cinta Larga (Rondônia and Mato Grosso) and the Kayapó (Pará).
In fact, this commercialization is selective and involves neither large
scale exploration nor systematic deforestation.
Thus, the local scale of these activities cannot be compared with the
magnitude of "white" economic enterprises in Amazonia, while
their environmental impact remains relatively negligible due to the
population density of indigenous territories, which is generally extremely
low (0.02 inhab./km2 for the Cinta Larga of Aripuanã, 0.09 inhab./
km2 for the Kayapó Indigenous Territory). Above all, these predatory
activities by segments of some indigenous societies can usually be reversed
when alternatives to the economic models adopted from Brazil's frontier
regions are offered and supported. Examples include the project of sustainable
timber management developed by ISA with the Kayapó-Xikrin (Pará),
CTI's low environmental impact mining project with the Waiãpi
(Amapá) or the projects for breeding dairy cattle developed by
the Italian NGO MANITESE with the Tembé and Assurini (Pará).
The third counter-argument used against supporting Amazonia's indigenous
territories as areas of environmental preservation takes the position
that the process of intensifying external contacts would eventually
induce a migration of indigenous peoples (or a substantial part of them)
to regional towns or state capitals in Amazonia, provoking the gradual
abandonment of indigenous areas and so the increased likelihood of non-indigenous
forms of exploration. The claim is that indigenous peoples are liable
to follow a general trend in the Amazon Region, where urbanization reached
61% of the population in 1996 as opposed to 45% in 1980.
Indigenous presence in Amazonian cities is undeniable and relatively
important. Despite the fact that its fluctuations make any census precarious,
this presence was estimated at 20,075 people in the six States making
up Brazilian Northern Amazonia in the 1991 IBGE Census, amounting to
10.8% of the region's total indigenous population. This displacement
towards urban centers can be traced back to a number of factors, including
traditional conflicts and mobilization patterns, and not only to the
spontaneous search for social mobility (employment, education) and/or
inducement on the part of contact agents (missionaries, indigenists,
regional economic agents).
However, the argument of an eventual evacuation of indigenous lands
caused by emigration derives from a sociological model that is both
inadequate and obsolete. Based on a caricatured opposition between "villaged"
and "un-villaged" Indians, and the reductive idea of a one-way
flow from one social status (rural/traditional) to another (urban/acculturated),
this model in reality simply inverts the traditional colonial-evolutionist
outlook, according to which moving from the forest to the city was to
follow the path from a primitive state to civilization.
The current cultural and sociological reality of indigenous peoples
has, of course, very little resemblance to this "retro-evolutionist"
ideology and its rural/urban duality. Indeed, far from this, what can
be seen today in several regions is a kind of re-distribution of indigenous
collectives in the form of transversal social spaces - veritable "multi-local
communities" at a regional scale - that organize kinship networks
and the flow of goods and people between various poles located in the
forest and in the town(s). Such trans-local expansion of indigenous
social fields and their dynamics of internal mobility between village
and town cannot be confused, without falling into a kind of conceptual
blindness, with a migration process from villages to the cities.
Indigenous associations and sustainable development:
potentialities and questions
In the debate about the potential role of indigenous lands as areas
of environmental preservation and sustainable development, we should
thus avoid both the stereotype of the ecologist ("authentic")
Indians and the reverse caricature of predatory ("acculturated")
Indians, based on the reductionist idea that the simple access of indigenous
societies to the market fatally transforms their members into agents
for the destruction of the natural environment.
In reality, the ways in which the use of natural resources by indigenous
societies change depend on the range of socio-economic and political
options available in terms of their relationship with the so-called
"enveloping society" (regional, national and international).
Thus, for the Indians, the "enveloping society" is no longer
limited to the local dimension of interaction with the traditional protagonists
of regional expansion (mineral prospectors, colonists, timber extractors,
landowners, etc).
The universe within which indigenous societies interact with the "white
world" has become increasingly complex during the last three decades.
In the 1970s and 1980s, indigenous societies began to occupy a space
in the contemporary national political scene due to a powerful movement
of territorial, social and cultural demands that was echoed by the 1988
Constitution. In the 1990s, they saw this space expand to a global scale
and develop into a range of specific options in terms of aid for development.
The Indians of Amazonia no longer have as the sole post-contact economic
point of reference the predatory model of local frontier expansion or
the neo-colonial agricultural model of tutelary indigenism (FUNAI's
"Community Development Projects"). The process of decentralization
and the growing interconnection between the local and global spheres
beyond the State's mediation, places indigenous peoples within reach
a complex universe of funding sources, technical resources and decision
channels that range from local municipalities to the World Bank.
This array of potential partners makes up the socio-political context
in which Amazonia's more than 240 indigenous associations have developed
and now work to expand their economic and social development projects.
Thus, the mediation that these associations ensure between the indigenous
population and the global network of available partnerships provides
the basis for defining the social and political conditions for the environmental
preservation and sustainable development of Amazonia's indigenous lands.
Four fundamental political and social parameters, external and internal,
will very likely determine the success of this dynamic.
The first one concerns the potential for these organizations to continue
to mobilize their support networks and the national and (above all)
international media in terms of ethno-environmental issues, thereby
sustaining enough pressure on the Federal Government to force it to
uphold the territorial advances made by the indigenous movement in the
last 25 years against growing local economic interests and regional
migratory influxes.
The second parameter, associated with the first, rests on the political
efficiency of the associations in stimulating the development of public
and non-governmental policies at an appropriate scale, designed to invest
in knowledge of their lands' bio-diversity and sustainable economic
management, closely involving their inhabitants and taking into account
their specific social projects
The third parameter, this time internal, concerns the ability of indigenous
associations to translate their politico-institutional expressivity
into economic autonomy for the populations they represent. The challenge
is to satisfy the new material and social expectations of their communities,
involving their members in local projects for exploiting natural resources
in ways that are simultaneously non-predatory and capable of promoting
a certain degree of economic self-sufficiency for the indigenous areas.
In this context, we should not ignore the role played by the complementary
diversification of extra-local economic activities and resources (see
the above observation on the new trans-local space of indigenous communities),
which allows use of the forest's natural resources in the composition
of the communities' income to be reduced, thus contributing to the environmental
preservation of their areas.
Last but not least, the fourth parameter relates to the determination
and political clarity that will be necessary for the directors of the
indigenous associations to avoid new forms of subordination in the management
of the new social-environmental projects, not only in the context of
the relationships that are imposed on them by funding agencies (or commercial
bodies), but also in the context of the relationships that they themselves
form with other members of their societies. To this challenge we can
add the complex task of managing the forms of social and cultural differentiation
that emerged in the process of socio-economic transformation induced
by these new projects for long-term ethno-development. (Bruce Albert,
september/ 2001).
[Acknowledgements: I would like to thank M. Carneiro da Cunha,
M. Droulers, M. Fraboni, P. Léna, F.-M. Le Tourneau, W. Milliken, F.
Pinton, C.A. Ricardo, F. Ricardo, the editorial staff of the Instituto
Socioambiental (ISA) of São Paulo and the anonymous evaluators of Recherches
Amérindiennes au Québec for their reading of the versions in Portuguese
(Povos Indígenas no Brasil: 1996-2000, pages 197-203. São Paulo:
ISA) and French (revised and updated).]
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