A BRIEF HISTORY OF BRAZIL’S XAKRIABÁ PEOPLE
AS TOLD BY NEI LEITE XAKRIABÁ

Our contact with non-indigenous people began at the end of the 17th century with the arrival of the bandeirantes—slavers, fortune hunters, and adventurers from Brazil’s São Paulo region.

In 1728, my people received a “gift” of land that was already ours. (This “gift” was registered in 1856.) Missionaries arrived to convert us to Roman Catholicism, teach us Portuguese and their European way of life. And to lose our cultural identity. We were forbidden to speak our native Akwë language, and forced to speak Portuguese.

Then the landowners arrived. My people were expelled by ranchers to places that were less fertile more than 40 km from the banks of the São Francisco River that used to be our territory and that of other indigenous peoples in the region.

Xakriabá Indigenous Land is still located there today.

In 1970, the leaders of the Xakriabá people began a struggle to regain our land rights. The area of the Xakriabá Indigenous Territory was demarcated in 1979, but the ranchers insisted that our people leave so they could use our land for their cattle herds.

On February 12, 1987, then Xakriabá Vice-Chief Rosalino Gomes was murdered in full view of his wife and children. After this slaughter, the Indigenous Land was ratified and the posseiros were removed. Posseiros are people who invaded indigenous land and pretended to have been living there a long time in order to try to sell “their” land to farmers. It’s often a strategy used by farmers to produce an apparently legal document to take more land.

However, the area demarcated and registered as ours was only one-third the size of the traditional Xakriabá territory, which covers just over 53,000 hectares.

In 2022, Celiá Xakriaba was elected as the first indigenous Parliamentary representative from the State of Minas Gerais following an extensive indigenous political movement. In 2023, the new government of President Inácio Lula da Silva created the Ministry of Indigenous People and named Sônia Guajajara, an indigenous woman, as its director. In addition, the direction of the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI) passed to Joênia Wapichana.

The presence of these three women in such important positions sends a strong, and hopefully positive, message about the future of Brazil’s indigenous people who still cope with historical violence.

All photos: Edgar Kanaykõ Xakriabá