Find your way: : Indigenous peoples in Brazil> Who, where, how many> Encyclopedia >Karo >
CONTEMPORARY ASPECTS   
Print

CONTEMPORARY ASPECTS

::01

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.


01:: Photo: Nilson Gabas Jr., 1996.

Nilson Gabas Jr.
gabas@nautilus.com.br

linguist of the Emílio Göeldi Institute

March, 2004
 
Untitled Document
Who, where, how many| How they live| Languages | Indigenous organizations| The Indians and us | Rights | Sources| e-mail
© Instituto Socioambiental.
Express written permission from the Instituto Socioambiental is required for the reproduction of any part of this site.
Reproduction of photos and illustrations is prohibited.