FILE - Indigenous people painted with red ink representing spilled Indigenous blood and clay representing gold, protest against the increase of mining activities that are encroaching on their land, in front of the Ministry of Mines and Energy, in Brasilia, Brazil, April 11, 2022.
The collective retreat comes as Bolsonaro insists Indigenous territories contain mineral resources vital to bringing prosperity to both the nation and native peoples. Brazil’s Constitution states that mining can only take place on Indigenous lands after getting informed consent and under laws that regulate the activity. More than three decades later, such legislation still hasn’t been approved.
“Interest in the Amazon isn’t about the Indian or the damn tree. It’s the ore,” he told a crowd of prospectors in capital Brasilia in 2019. The prospectors' sites often grow over time, creating vast damage, destroying riverbanks, contaminating waterways with mercury and disrupting Indigenous peoples’ traditional ways of life. By contrast, industrial-scale mining in the Amazon produces deep scars in the forest, but mostly limited to the area of the deposit, as is the case with Carajas, the largest open-pit iron ore mine in the world, operated by Vale.
Another reason, Jungmann said, is mounting pressure at home and abroad to adopt friendlier socio-environmental practices.