For the first time in five years, Brazil’s federal government has officially recognized new Indigenous territories. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed documents demarcating six Indigenous lands in May 2023 C.E., ending a long freeze under his two predecessors and covering more than 1,536,500 acres across four of Brazil’s major biomes.
At a glance
- Indigenous land demarcation: The six newly recognized territories span the Amazon, Cerrado, Caatinga, and Atlantic Forest biomes, totaling over 1,536,500 acres and home to roughly 4,000 Indigenous people.
- Forest protection: Between 1990 and 2020 C.E., demarcated Indigenous lands in Brazil lost only 1% of their native vegetation, compared to 20.6% lost in private areas over the same period, according to MapBiomas satellite data.
- Carbon emissions: Illegal deforestation and mining on Amazonian Indigenous lands produced 96 million tons of carbon emissions between 2013 and 2021 C.E., with 59% occurring in just the three years of the Bolsonaro administration, according to research published in Nature.
Six nations, four biomes
The six territories confirmed in May 2023 C.E. are spread across Brazil’s geographic and ecological breadth. They are Arara do Rio Amônia in Acre state, home of the Arara people; Uneiuxi in Amazonas state, home of the Maku Nadёb people; Avá-Canoeiro in Goiás state; Kariri-Xocó in Alagoas; Tremembé da Barra do Mundaú in Ceará; and Rio dos Índios in Rio Grande do Sul, home of the Kaingang people.
Together, those lands cover 621,800 hectares — a combined area larger than Brunei. Brazil now has 496 demarcated Indigenous territories out of 733 total. The remaining 237 are at various stages of a multi-step process that includes anthropological study, a period for legal challenges, a declaration of physical boundaries by the Minister of Justice, and a final presidential signature.
Joenia Wapichana, president of Brazil’s Indigenous agency FUNAI and herself a member of the Wapichana people, also signed an ordinance at the same event to resume demarcation proceedings for two additional lands: the Sawré Muybu territory of the Munduruku people in Pará state, and the Krenak de Sete Salões territory of the Krenak people in Minas Gerais.
Why demarcation matters for forests — and the climate
The ecological stakes of this policy are significant. Research consistently shows that formally recognized Indigenous territories are among the best-protected landscapes on Earth. MapBiomas data covering 1990 to 2020 C.E. found that Indigenous lands — both demarcated and pending demarcation — lost just 1% of their native vegetation, while private lands lost more than one-fifth of theirs.
That protection extends to carbon. A study published in Nature in May 2023 C.E. found that illegal deforestation and mining inside Amazonian Indigenous territories released 96 million tons of carbon between 2013 and 2021 C.E. More than half of that damage occurred in just three years, from 2019 to 2021 C.E., during Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency.
President Lula framed demarcation as inseparable from his climate commitments. “We are working to demarcate the highest number of Indigenous lands possible, not only because it is their right, but because if we want to reach zero deforestation by 2030, we need those lands demarcated,” he said at the event, organized by APIB, the umbrella group representing Brazil’s Indigenous peoples’ organizations.
Melissa Curi, director of education at the Brazilian Institute for Development and Sustainability, put it plainly: without state recognition, there is no legal barrier to mining, dam construction, or road-building on Indigenous ancestral lands. “Demarcations are vital for the defense of the original peoples’ inherent rights,” she said. “It is the recognition by the state of the peoples and their traditions, which go through their relationship with the land.”
This recognition is part of a broader pattern of Indigenous rights wins documented worldwide, as governments and courts increasingly affirm land protections that activists and communities have long fought to secure.
Rebuilding dismantled institutions
Beyond the land signatures themselves, Lula also used the May 2023 C.E. event to reinstate two institutions that the Bolsonaro government had dismantled. The National Policy for Territorial and Environmental Management in Indigenous Lands (PNGATI) and the National Council for Indigenous Policy (CNPI) were both revived by presidential decree. PNGATI coordinates natural resource conservation on Indigenous territories; CNPI gives Indigenous organizations a formal voice in policy decisions affecting them.
The event took place during the 19th edition of Camp Terra Livre (ATL), a major gathering of Brazil’s Indigenous movement in the capital Brasília. For many attendees, the signings represented an overdue fulfillment of Article 67 of Brazil’s constitutional transitional provisions, which required the state to complete all Indigenous land demarcations within five years of the 1988 C.E. constitution — a deadline the country has never met.
Real gains, real limits
The May 2023 C.E. signings were welcomed, but they also fell short of expectations. Indigenous policy experts had anticipated 14 demarcations that month, including the Aldeia Velha land of the Pataxó people in Bahia, the Cacique Fontoura land of the Karajá people in Mato Grosso, and the Morro dos Cavalos land of the Guarani people in Santa Catarina. Some Indigenous attendees at the Brasília event were visibly upset and demanded answers.
Minister of Indigenous Peoples Sônia Guajajara — herself a member of the Guajajara people — explained that documentary evidence was still being assembled for the outstanding territories and that political pressure from rural farming interests had also contributed to delays. She did not set a deadline for the next round of demarcations.
Guajajara noted a separate structural challenge: about 93% of all demarcated areas are concentrated in the Amazon, even though 40% of Brazil’s Indigenous population lives elsewhere. Almost 10% of formally demarcated lands still lack the physical protections the constitution guarantees, she said, facing invasions, land grabbing, illegal logging, and drug trafficking.
The longer-term trajectory of demarcation also depends heavily on the fate of the marco temporal — a legal doctrine, then pending before Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court, that would restrict Indigenous land claims to areas occupied at the moment Brazil’s 1988 C.E. constitution took effect. A pro-agribusiness Congress has backed the measure, and its outcome remained unresolved at the time of the Brasília event. For a deeper look at how that legal battle eventually played out, see our coverage of the Supreme Court’s ruling on marco temporal and Indigenous land rights.
Márcio Santilli, co-founder of the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), called each demarcation “an administrative solution to the state of territories that resumes the demarcation process and fulfills the constitution, which has been pending for several years.” The signing of six lands is a real step. What follows depends on political will, legal outcomes, and how much pressure rural landowners are able to apply.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Mongabay
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled against marco temporal — what it means for Indigenous land rights
- Washington State launches a missing Indigenous people alert system
- The Good News for Humankind archive on Indigenous rights
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