Karipuna people sue Brazil government for alleged complicity in land grabs
by Shanna Hanbury on 6 May 2021
Leaders of the Karipuna Indigenous group in Brazil are suing the government for what they say is complicity in the continued invasion and theft of their land.
Findings by Greenpeace and the Catholic Church-affiliated Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) show 31 land claims overlapping onto the Karipuna Indigenous Reserve, while 7% of the area has already been deforested or destroyed.
The Karipuna Indigenous, who rebuilt their population to around 60 in the last few decades from just eight members who survived mass deaths by disease that followed their forced contact with the outside world in the 1970s, are seeking damages of $8.2 million, the right to permanent protection, and the cancellation of all outsider land claims to their territory.
São Paulo, Brazil
– The Karipuna Indigenous People filed a lawsuit against Brazil and the province of Rondônia, for allowing illegally registered private land plots inside their protected Indigenous land. The national environmental registry of rural property (Cadastro Ambiental Rural – CAR) is designed to ensure that all property falls within conservation and environmental laws, but is misused by groups or individuals to illegally claim land plots inside protected areas to expand their farm land for cattle grazing and legitimize illegal deforestation on Indigenous lands. These land-grabs, along with the lack of a protection plan for the Karipuna People’s territory by state bodies, are two of the main reasons that the Karipuna Indigenous land was among the top 10 most destroyed Indigenous lands in Brazil in 2020[1].