Group is created to study IT delimitation equivalent to 27 thousand football fields

The president of Funai (National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples), Joenia Wapichana, created a technical group to carry out studies to identify and delimit the Arapuá Indigenous Land. The territory is in the Municipality of Alto Alegre, in the North of Roraima. It is one of four lands pending demarcation in the State.

According to the CIR (Indigenous Council of Roraima), the Arapuá community currently has 600 hectares and has 17 families and 57 people. It is surrounded by soybean and livestock farms. Macuxi and Wapichana indigenous people claim an area of ​​27,900 hectares, the equivalent of 28,000 football fields, an area that covers forests, streams, hunting and other sources of subsistence.

The studies will be anthropological, ethno-historical, sociological, legal, cartographic and environmental in nature. The group will be coordinated by anthropologist Carlos Alberto Marinho Cirino, and also has anthropologist Gustavo Hamilton de Sousa Menezes as an assistant and environmental engineer Inayê Uliana Perez as environmentalist and cartographer.

According to the ordinance of April 26, Funai employees will have 30 days to carry out field work in Alto Alegre. Furthermore, Joenia Wapichana set a deadline of 180 days for the group to submit the report.

Since 2022, Funai has responded to a public civil action filed by the Federal Public Ministry (MPF), which demanded that the process of demarcation of indigenous territory, through the working group, be completed by February 28, 2026. In 2023, the Federal Court approved an agreement on the deadlines.

Arapuá Indigenous Land

In the judicial process, the MPF explains that the Arapuá indigenous community, located between the Sucuba and Raimundão indigenous lands, privately owned farms and the headquarters of Alto Alegre, corresponds to a traditional indigenous occupation that dates back to the 1950s. claim formalized with Funai in 1975.

In 2018, the community had 49 residents in 12 houses, of which 37 are Wapichana and 12 Macuxi. They live by planting crops such as corn, cassava and pumpkin, raising pigs and chickens, harvesting buriti and bacaba, in addition to hunting and fishing.

Cited in the case file, a report by the Indigenous Missionary Council (Cimi) and the Indigenous Pastoral of the Diocese of Roraima concluded that the Arapuá community was ignored at the time of the demarcation of the Sucuba and Raimundão indigenous lands, mapped based on a legal framework prior to that established by the Constitution. Federal Law of 1988 and approved, respectively, in 1982 and 1997.

“Almost fifty years after the first territorial claim of the Arapuá community, the entity was omitted [Funai] to the point of not even beginning the identification procedure for subsequent demarcation and approval of indigenous land. The Union is co-responsible for such serious inertia on the part of the foundation, as it is responsible for ministerial supervision”, narrated the MPF.

The National Commission for Land Affairs, of the National Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil (CNA), monitors the process and works on preparing a report that will demonstrate the number of rural properties affected by any demarcation of the area. The body defends the development of agribusiness and the preservation of producers’ property rights.