Brazil Senate approves bill restricting Indigenous land rights

Despite a recent Supreme Court judgement declaring the endeavour unlawful, Brazil’s Senate adopted a bill on Wednesday that limits Indigenous peoples’ rights to ancestral lands. The so-called “time-frame argument” at the heart of the debate contends that Indigenous peoples should not be allowed to establish protected reserves on grounds where they did not exist in 1988, when the country’s current constitution was enacted. Indigenous organisations, on the other hand, maintained in a lawsuit that such an approach infringed their rights, given that many indigenous people were pushed off their ancestral lands, particularly during the military dictatorship that governed Brazil from the 1960s to the 1980s. Last week, the country’s highest court ruled in favour of Indigenous activists and climate activists. But the Senate on Wednesday approved the bill centered on the “time-frame argument,” with 43 votes for and 21 against. Last year the bill, championed by the country’s powerful agro-business lobby, had cleared the legislature’s lower chamber. Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco insisted “there is no confrontation” between his chamber and the Supreme Court. “This is simply a position of the Senate, given that we believe that matters of this nature must be deliberated by parliament,” he said. Environmentalists had joined Indigenous activists in pressing for the top court to reject the time-frame argument. Numerous studies have found that protected Indigenous reservations are one of the best ways to fight deforestation and, with it, climate change.