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The Arara today, along with the Gavião,
have a legal organization, called the Panderej Association,
which serves as the mechanism through which they maintain
legal relations with Brazilian society, for example,
through the elaboration of alternative economic projects,
claims for improvements in health programs, requests
for patrolling by the Ibama to remove fishermen from
the streams of the Indigenous Land, etc.
Despite having had problems in the past with squatters
on their lands, in the mid-1980s, the Arara and Gavião,
along with employees of the Funai and the Federal Police,
were able to remove the squatters, and since then, they
haven’t had any more problems of this type.
There are indigenous schools in the two villages, sponsored
and supported by the Seduc-RO (State Secretary of Education),
which has a system of hiring indigenous teachers by
contract and providing them with training (except for
literacy in their own language). From time to time there
are non-Indian teachers from the state and municipal
public schools who are sent to the villages to teach
Portuguese, mathematics and science on the suppletive
level.
The FUNASA is responsible for the health of the Arara,
and the agency has created and maintained a good infra-structure
in the villages, with bathrooms specifically designated
for each nuclear family, various wells with gasoline
pumps, amateur radios with a direct 24 hour line for
eventual emergencies, etc. the agency also maintains
by contract health and medical agents in the two villages,
and is responsible for their improved efficiency through
participation in courses and specific training. Future
projects which have already been prepared by technicians
of the Funasa for the Arara villages include the digging
of artesian wells and the piping of water to all the
houses.
The Arara have good relations with the Funai (head
of the Post, head of the Nucleus in Ji-Paraná,
other heads of Posts in other villages, etc.). Despite
the fact the indigenous post is next to the village
of Iterap, the head of the Post is in constant contact
with the population of the village of Paygap, helping
the Indians in the preparation of alternative economic
projects and in acquiring material consumer goods in
Ji-Paraná.
There is at the moment no NGO working in the area,
and two missionary organizations, one Catholic –
the Indigenist Missionary Council (Cimi) – and
the other Protestant – the New Tribes Mission
of Brazil (MNTB), have relations with the Arara, in
the case of the latter since the 1980s.
There are records of periodic conflicts between the
Arara and the regional population. In the last conflict,
which occurred about ten years ago, a group of Indians
went to the nearest ranch to acquire cattle, and the
meeting ended up in a drunken brawl which cost the life
of an Indian (Simião Arara).
While prospecting activities have never occurred in
the area (there are no mineral reserves on the Lourdes
Stream Indigenous Land), for a relatively long period
(from 1990 to 1996), there were lumbermen working in
the area either on their own account – unknown
to the Indians – or through verbal contracts with
indigenous leaders. After 1996, lumbering – an
illegal activity – gave way to other activities
presently developed by the Arara, such as cattle-raising,
fisheries, planting of fruit trees, coffee, (natural)
extraction of copaíba oil and thatch for the
making of furniture.
In relation to indigenous education in their own language,
the educators of the Seduc-RO have hired a linguistic
assessor to do this work, but she has no empirical knowledge
of the language, and the result has been disastrous
for the community. After this turbulent beginning, the
author of this entry elaborated a proposal for orthography
of the Arara language, which was taken before the assembly
and approved by the community. Once the orthography
was established for writing in Karo, it was possible
to elaborate, in co-authorship with the indigenous teachers,
two books: "Âk wenwen 'ya!", a primer
for literacy, and "Stories of the Arara in the
time of contact with the whites", containing stories
by a score of elderly Indians on their memories of the
time of contact.
The project for literacy in the indigenous language
continues to be developed at the present time in the
form of training indigenous teachers, so that they themselves
can subsequently pass on this knowledge to their students.
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