Xavante Education Fund and Xavante Oppose Tocantins-Araguaia Hidrovia

Laura Graham

Lino will be one of only five Xavante to seek a post-secondary education. He will be the first Xavante to receive advanced training in Western medicine. Medical attention for the approximately 6,000 Xavante is highly deficient. A few communities have health posts, however, medical facilities are non-existent in most of the six Xavante reserves. Lino, a survivor of a measles epidemic that devastated Xavante communities in the early 1960s, seeks to make health care and information about public health accessible to Xavante, by a Xavante, in the Xavante language. For the last two years Lino has been involved in a public health initiative in several Xavante communities. The project, sponsored by the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), is designed to inform Xavante about public health concerns, specifically about sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. As Xavante increasingly interact with outsiders they risk exposure to STDs. In fact, today two Xavante men from communities near the Brazilian town of Xavantinha have contracted STDs. HIV looms as a threat for Xavante and other Brazilian Indians. Three Indians from central Brazilian groups (Karajá and Guajajara) receive medical attention for HIV at the FUNAI Casa do Indio where Lino works as an intern. As part of the FUNAI-sponsored project, Lino has traveled to several Xavante reserves to provide information about STDs and HIV in Xavante. He and other project members are producing a video to further disseminate their message to Xavante. In June 1997, through legal action advanced by lawyers at the Brazilian NGO Instituto Socioambiental in Brasília, the Xavante succeeded in obtaining a federal court order prohibiting work on the Hidrovia. Lack of an environmental impact statement and the failure to meet constitutional requirements for projects affecting indigenous peoples, including "consultation" and obtaining a special congressional authorizing act, were cited as reasons for the injunction. Since then, federal officials from the Ministry of Transport and FUNAI (National Indian Foundation) have attempted in vain to coax Xavante leaders to accept compensation, including fishculture and agricultural projects, and "millions of dollars." Subsequent to their victory in the courts, representatives of one village unsuccessfully attempted to attack a soy barge that passed the Pimentel Barbosa reserve, in spite of the construction embargo on the river. Shortly thereafter, members of another Xavante village boarded a barge in the illegal port of Agua Boa and and stole everything on the vessel. Xavante from Pimentel Barbosa are using small boats supplied by the World Wildlife Fund, which has a wildlife management project in the area, to patrol the stretch of river bordering their reserve.

Xavante Education Fund and Xavante Oppose Tocantins-Araguaia Hidrovia

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