The Kayapo are a South American indigenous tribe with 50 villages and more than 8,000 members. When western settlers came to South America the Kayapo resisted assimilation with brutal violence and retreating further into the rainforest. Since then they have become known for being very aggressive, many of the articles I have read talk about how they would kill off their neighbors and anyone else they found near or on their land. This violence was their way of trying to reserve their home. The area in which the Kayapo live is over 11,000,000 hectors, which is twice the size of Nova Scotia. The Kayapo are very skilled hunters that use blowguns and they relied on their land for providing all of their resources, up until very recently. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that the Kayapo tribe had any contact with the modern world. The Amazonia exhibit talks about this a little bit saying, “It wasn’t until the 1950’s and 60’s however (that) their isolation was broken by the Brazilian government, whose policies advocated for active integration of indigenous groups.” The exhibit mostly focuses is the on Kayapo protest in 1989 that went global.
In 1989 the Kayapo were defending their political rights and protesting the Kararao dam that was supposed to be built on their traditional land by the Brazilian Government. The Kararao would not only flood and displace the whole kayapo tribe, but it would also destroy thousands of square miles of untouched rainforest and disrupt fish and animal migration patterns. The Kayapo gained so much support globally that the world bank decided they could no longer fund the Brazilian Governments project, and the Kararao damn was never built. That was in 1989 though and the Amazonia exhibit does not mention any of the progress that has happened since then.
20 years later in 2008 the Kayapo again faced off with the Brazilian government’s plan to build the Belo Monte dam, which is going to be the third largest dam in the world. Through many legal disputes, indigenous protests, and human and environmental rights campaigns the Belo Monte dam construction broke ground in 2011. The dam’s first turbines started spinning in 2016 and the whole project is expected to be finished in 2019. The International Rivers organization in their Belo Monte facts sheet explains that the dam displaces over 20,000 indigenous people and famers, the amount of earth that is needed to be moved to build the dam is lager than the amount for the Panama Canal, and more than 1,500 square kilometers of land will be destroyed. The dam has been called one of the worst environmental crimes in the history of the planet.
When reading about the Belo Monte dam I can’t help but make connections between this and the (obviously much smaller, but close to home) Dakota access pipeline and Standing Rock protest. Both the pipeline and the dam destroy some of the last traditionally indigenous people’s land in the world. Both of these projects justify destroying the land by promising that they will be more efficient. Due to the 3-4 month dry season in Brazil the Belo Monte dam is actually expected to be very inefficient. The Dakota access pipeline that was supposed to be one of the most efficient pipelines ever made leaked 210,000 gallons of crude oil with in the first year of being built.
When I read about all the barriers and fines that these governments have to deal with to get these projects in motion I become so frustrated. These fines and barriers happen for reasons, reasons being that they are irreversibly intruding on human rights and environmental rights. Once the amazon is gone, it’s gone and will never truly come back. Once indigenous peoples land has been taken away and destroyed by deforestation, pipelines, and construction you can’t give it back. It feels like a downward spiral that at every turn has more unanticipated negative outcomes. I believe though that the biggest problem of this all is that the global community does not emphasis the importance of the land until there is a dam, pipeline or some major project that is going to destroy it. It isn’t until a project has been proposed that people begin to get involved. If the world had a better history of respecting others land, the thought of intruding on indigenous lands would not even be a thought in large oil and energy companies minds.
Sources
“Belo Monte Dam.” International Rivers, International Rivers, www.internationalrivers.org/campaigns/belo-monte-dam.
Link to International Rivers Belo Monte Dam facts sheet: https://www.internationalrivers.org/sites/default/files/attached-files/Belo_Monte_FactSheet_May2012.pdf
Cuevas, Mayra, and Steve Almasy. “Keystone Pipeline leaks 210,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota.” CNN, Cable News Network, 17 Nov. 2017, www.cnn.com/2017/11/16/us/keystone-pipeline-leak/index.html.
Parry , Bruce. “Bruce Parry’s Amazon – About The Journey – The Kayapo.” BBC, BBC, 18 June 2014, www.bbc.co.uk/amazon/sites/kayapo/pages/content.shtml.
Watts, Jonathan. “Belo Monte dam operations delayed by Brazil court ruling on indigenous people.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 Jan. 2016, www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/15/brazil-belos-monte-dam-delay-court-indigenous-people.
Zimmerman, Barbara . “Kayapo.” Kayapo.org, kayapo.org/about-the-kayapo-3.html.