Hate and violence: the plight of Brazil’s Awá
by Fiona Watson
Kamará is an Awá Indian, from the Amazon state of Maranhão, Brazil. He and his family were contacted in 1998 by FUNAI, the government’s Indian affairs department. They were brought to live in Juriti, a community of about 40 of the most recently contacted Awá. It is very close to a road built by loggers.
In Oct 2006 Kamará, who is now about 50 years old, narrowly survived an attempt to kill him. He recounted the incident to Felipe Milanez who was then editor of FUNAI’s magazine ‘Brasil Indígena’. Felipe is currently assistant editor of ‘National Geographic Brasil’.
The loggers’ road cuts through the forest. © Uirá Garcia
The attempt to kill Kamará was a real assassination attempt; brutal. He was trembling as he told me one night whilst a young Awá man, named Ramokwanaha, translated for me.
He’d gone off fishing with his family when they bumped into a colonist who fired his gun at Kamará. ‘My daughter screamed and when I turned round with my arrows. I saw she was running into the forest’ he said.
What a terrible feeling it was, to see this Indian recoiling from fear in that way – the same thing I felt when I was held up at gunpoint with a revolver pointing in my face here in São Paulo. I was trembling and could hardly speak.
Kamará himself had survived a massacre when he was uncontacted. ‘My mother and my father died from the karai (or whites’) firearms. This happened when we lived in the forest. I was with them and I saw everything. One shot hit me here’, he explained pointing at his armpit. ‘My brother is still out there in the forest, uncontacted and I am really worried that they will kill him’.
Awá explore the road built by loggers.
© Uirá Garcia
I felt that the settlers around Juruti couldn’t bear seeing the Indians. They got really angry. There are lots of cannabis plantations in the area; the Awá don’t have the slightest idea about these things in our society.
There are attempts to steal their land, and there is always someone crossing the river to cut down trees and take the wood. I remember seeing three trucks along a small stretch of road laden with trunks.
And there’s a myth going round that if anyone bumps in to an Awá in the forest, the Indians will kill. Outsiders imagine they are violent. Travelling along that river is frightening. The FUNAI official is armed with a gun. Round any bend could be an ambush. It’s horrible. I was scared witless.
I spoke with some people living along the river, people who are not blood thirsty but who behaved in a shocking way towards the Indians, and felt that they could just go into their lands to hunt. The Awá are in a really terrible situation.
Find out more and help the Awá here on our website.