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Podcast Episode Notes: Brazil's Miracle: An Indigenous Disaster
Podcast Overview Title: The Documentary Podcast Description: The Documentary Podcast from the BBC World Service showcases compelling stories and voices behind global issues, delving into topics such as environmental challenges, cultural narratives, and the impact of news on individual lives.
Episode Summary Title: Brazil's Miracle: An Indigenous Disaster Description: The episode explores the historical injustices faced by the Krenak indigenous people during Brazil's military dictatorship, reflecting on the recent state apology in 2024 and the complexities of forgiveness.
Key Themes and Discussion Points
Historical Context
- Military Dictatorship (1964-1985): Characterized by repression, forced displacements, and human rights abuses against indigenous communities.
- Krenak Experiences:
- Banned from speaking their language.
- Imprisoned in reformatories.
- Suffered physical and psychological torture.
Personal Narratives
- Giovanni Krenak: A Krenak leader whose personal history is intertwined with the collective trauma of his people. Born in exile due to forced displacement.
- Cristina Serra: A journalist recounting her experiences and observations of the dictatorship and its implications on indigenous lives.
The State's Apology
- 2024 Apology: The Brazilian state officially apologized to the Krenak community, marking a historic moment as the first governmental acknowledgment of their suffering.
- Eneas Deistuz y Almeida: The president of the Amnesty Commission, who emphasized the importance of collective recognition for indigenous peoples.
Resistance and Resilience
- Cultural Survival Efforts:
- The Krenak's ongoing efforts to reclaim their language and cultural practices.
- Restoration projects initiated to heal both land and community.
Legal and Political Implications
- Lawsuit for Recognition: The Krenak filed a civil lawsuit aiming to acknowledge their suffering and seek reparations.
- Genocidal Acts: Edmundo Diaz, a lawyer working with the Krenak, highlights the systemic nature of the abuses faced by the indigenous community, calling them genocidal.
Key Takeaways
- Understanding the Past: The episode stresses the need for historical awareness in Brazil regarding indigenous suffering during the dictatorship.
- Impact of Language: Losing a language entails losing a connection to culture and spirituality, emphasizing the broader implications of cultural erasure.
- Collective vs. Individual Recognition: Discussions around the challenges faced in seeking collective reparations for indigenous communities, highlighting the shift in perception brought on by the Amnesty Commission's apology.
- Hope for Future Generations: Elders express a desire for the next generation to reconnect with their culture and language, underscoring the resilience and determination of the Krenak people.
Reflection Points
- Forgiveness and Apologies: The episode raises questions about the adequacy of apologies and the need for actionable reparations beyond mere words.
- Cultural Restoration: It emphasizes the importance of restoring not just land but also cultural practices and identities that have been damaged over decades.
Conclusion The episode presents a poignant exploration of the Krenak's struggles and resilience in the face of historical trauma, capturing the complexities of seeking forgiveness and the ongoing journey toward healing and reclamation of identity.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
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1:00how to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. I'm in a car on a bumpy road with a journalist named Christina Sarah. A few kilometers back, we turned off the tarmac and onto this dirt road, marked by a handmade billboard. The sign read, Welcome to Krenak Indigenous Land. This land is located near the city of Hesplendor in southeastern Brazil. And Cristina and I are here trying to find the home of Giovanni Krenak.
1:45Giovanni is one of eight Krenak leaders who represents his community. When I meet him, he's dressed in ripped jeans and work boots. But what intrigues me are the words on his shirt. I don't speak Portuguese, but the question mark makes me wonder, what is it asking? Sefiji Kim. Cristina translates for me. She tells me it's a common question around here. Where do you come from? Or, more literally, whose son are you? People ask him where does he come from and what is his answer?
2:25He says, I'm the son of the great warrior Ichotok Krenak. That's a pretty good answer. Yeah. His father was a great Krenak warrior, and he was born on this land. But for Giovanni, the question, where do you come from, has a complicated answer.
2:55He tells me he was born in Sao Paulo in 1984. At that time, in Brazil, the country had been ruled by a military dictatorship for 20 years.
3:08In those decades, Brazil changed significantly. Mass deforestation made way for the Trans-Amazonica Highway. Industries like mining and agriculture boomed, and Brazil's exports increased. Some years, GDP grew by more than 10%. And of course, there was an increase in military activity. In Rio de Janeiro, President Vargas arrives to review the growing strength of the nation's modern army. For some, the dictatorship marked a bold new chapter for Brazil. They referred to it as the Brazilian miracle. It was during all of this that Giovanni Cranach was born in Sao Paulo. But he wasn't meant to be born there.
3:52He was supposed to be born on his ancestral land, more than 900 kilometers away from Sao Paulo.
4:04As a result of a military regime, I was born in exile, so to speak. The Krenak were forcibly displaced, imprisoned in reformatories, and physically tortured by military guards. And across Brazil, many other indigenous communities were suffering under the dictatorship. But for decades, very few people knew that any of this had happened. When this happened to indigenous people, it wasn't a scandal. It wasn't in the news. It wasn't in the magazines. But then, in 2024, members of the Crenac, including Giovanni, were invited to the capital city of Brasilia. There, the president of the Amnesty Commission got down on her knees.
4:59And for the first time, the state asked an indigenous group for forgiveness. And while this moment seems historic, there is a sense that the Brazilian public still doesn't know why it was needed. I think in Brazil, we don't have this understanding because most of the people don't know what happened with indigenous people. They don't know. So I've come to Brazil, and I've partnered with local journalist Cristina Serra to find out exactly what happened to the Krenak during the military dictatorship. I saw everything during the dictatorship. I saw everything. Is it still impacting them today? The military dictatorship doesn't end 10 years later.
5:55It is more present than we imagine. And after the state's apology, can forgiveness be granted? I think it's something that you have to learn and understand so you don't repeat never again. From the BBC World Service, I'm Pulama Kaufman. And I am Cristina Serra. And this is the documentary, Brazil's Miracle, an Indigenous Disaster.
6:27My name is Cristina Serra. I'm a journalist. I have been working as a journalist for almost 40 years. Before Cristina and I met Giovanni, before we even stepped foot on Krenak indigenous land, I set up two microphones in a hotel in the city of Belo Horizonte. There wasn't a table in the room, so we sat on pillows on the floor, and I asked Cristina to tell me about her life. This is a personal question, and I know a woman never tells, but when were you born? I was born in 1963 in Belém do Pará, in the north of Brazil, in the Amazon region. So you were born the year before the dictatorship started?
7:11Exactly. I was born one year before the dictatorship. And my, let's say, my youth, my adolescence was during the dictatorship. Yeah. In the early 1960s, João Goulart was the president of Brazil. Initially, he was popular and relatively well-liked. He campaigned for things like land distribution and more rights for workers. Today, we might consider him to be left-leaning or liberal. But back then, big powers like the U.S. thought his policies sounded a little bit like communism. Anti-communist propaganda began to crop up in Brazil. And at the same time, opposing parties spread the message that Goulart was going to drive the country into chaos.
8:00Protests and strikes increased. And around Brazil, support began to grow for the military opposition. And then, on the 31st of March, 1964, soldiers and tanks lined the streets of Brasilia. The coup happened quickly, and President Goulart fled across the border. The deposed president fled to neighboring Uruguay, and it appears that the new rebel government will find quick recognition abroad. By the 4th of April, Brazil was ruled by a military dictatorship. Christina was barely a year old, so she doesn't remember the coup d 'etat happening. But she remembers what came after. Do you remember the first time you became aware that there was a dictatorship?
8:47Yes, I really remember when I got to the college. By the time Christina went to university in the 80s, the dictatorship was well established. Military presence had become part of the day-to-day. Christina says she was aware there were military spies on her campus. So we have to take some security measures. For example, we had to stay every time in groups, not to be alone in specific situations, you know. Military presence was rarely a soldier in a tank. It was more omnipresent and covert. If you knew what to look for, you could spot it in the media. Certain topics were rarely covered in the newspaper.
9:34There were empty spaces where photographs had been removed. Journalists started speaking in code, hoping not to be censored. I was a journalism student, so that was an important issue. And when you were in university, what sort of things were coming out about what was happening to Indigenous people under the dictatorship? What sort of stories were you hearing? I remember there were a lot of big projects, for example, big roads like Transamazonica. And every time we had a project like this taking place, you were talking about indigenous people displaced. and in some occasions just murdered in all kinds of violations, all kinds of human rights violations.
10:27The way the press reported on this was mixed. Some outlets investigated indigenous treatment and some sensationalized it. There's a Jornal do Brazil article from 1973 that praised the development in the Amazon and called the indigenous people cannibals. There was a lot of propaganda to say that indigenous people, they were a problem, they were an obstacle to progress. So the dictatorship worked with this message all the time. We need progress, we need to be a big country, and so indigenous people is a problem that you have to deal with. And sometimes the way to deal with this is with violence.
11:14Christina was young, and she was a journalism student. Two things that made her question the military's actions. But she says most of the country didn't really know what was going on. Indigenous communities largely lived independently from the rest of the population. Tucked away, their change in treatment was hidden. Is that surprising to you that it wasn't more well known? It's not a surprise because here in Brazil, we know that we need to understand and research and talk and write about many, many things that happened during the dictatorship. We don't know a lot about the dictatorship here in Brazil still today.
12:02Is this the only entrance into the land? I don't know if it's the only entrance, but it's the main entrance. Brazil is big. By landmass, it's the fifth largest country in the world. So to get to the Krenak land, Christina and I have to drive south from the nearest city, over two hours away. How's your plant knowledge, Christina? Do you know what sort of trees are at? Ah, no, it's very big. The trees here are thin and have wide stretching canopies. They look well adapted to the heat, which is good considering it's autumn and it's 33 degrees. The land around us is expansive. I've never seen land that stretches so far, so completely uninterrupted.
12:52Over the crunch of our tires, I can hear the call of birds and the distant mooing of cows. I wonder out loud, who could want more than this? I am Giovanni Krenak,
13:12chief of the Icho-Chó village Krenak. Icho-Chó is my father's name, which is now the name of our village. Christina, Giovanni and I find some shade to sit in so we can talk. We are here in the Doce River Valley, in the sacred territory of the Krenak indigenous people. As we talk, I speak first, asking questions in English that Christina translates.
13:39She asks Giovanni when he first heard stories about the dictatorship.
13:48Ever since I can't remember, I have been aware and known these stories. The darkest and most brutal period was for my father and grandparents, because they lived through what happened in the 1960s and 1970s. My father was traumatized. I remember that he didn't even like being near the police because of what they did to him and what they did to my grandfather. After the Curitá, life in the Krenak villages began to change. Military officers showed up, and they started taking Krenak children to Portuguese-speaking schools. But Giovanni's father didn't want to go to these schools. My father didn't like to study because he wanted to stay in the river and play with the other children.
14:33The state's official goal was to, quote, integrate indigenous children into society. My father would often run away or go to the river to play or swim or fish. and then at one point, because he did this so much, he was tied to a horse's tail and dragged around the village. To serve as an example to other children. His father? Uh-huh. When his father was a child. I see. Earlier when we were walking around, we passed a lone horse in a stable. Now I look out towards the dirt road and try to picture this scene. A young boy bound by his hands to a horse's tail. The military guard who gives the order, maybe just a nod of the head.
15:22And then the horse starts to run. The children watching, the unspoken looming threat that it could be them. It sounds like something out of a horror film. And how about, I ask about his grandfather also. And what happened with your uncle?
15:44My grandfather was punished for going out of the territory to sell fish on the street. Sometimes, he'd stay a little longer in the city, arriving past the military curfew. He was arrested and tortured for that too. Under dictatorship rule, a boundary was set up around the Krenak territory. This made it easier to monitor and control the people who lived there. If you drank alcohol, you were punished. If you returned after curfew, you were punished. The rules were deliberately vague and changeable. At some points, Krenak were not allowed to date or sleep with each other. If a man and woman had relations, depending on the situation, you were arrested and punished because they didn't want the Krenak to stay with other Krenak.
16:30Because he's saying that it was a strategy to mix the Krenak people with non-indigenous people. So you weren't allowed to date your own people. What other ways was the culture targeted?
16:50There were other methods like diseases, contamination and everything. But for him, the main tactic was that they were not allowed to speak their own language. If you want to kill a people, you kill their language. Since our people didn't speak Portuguese properly, they couldn't even communicate. We had to practically whisper our native language so they wouldn't hear. Giovanni then turns to me and says,
17:28Imagine if I just said to you, you can't speak English anymore. How would you communicate with each other? The truth is, I don't know. How would you ask for what you need? How would you find out important things that would keep you safe? The Krenak, Giovanni says, didn't have a choice but to assimilate. We were forced to learn a language that wasn't ours to escape an extermination. In 1969, the Krenak Reformatory opened on their land. It was set up by FUNAI, F-U-N-A-I, the federal government agency whose mission is to, quote, protect and promote the rights of indigenous people in Brazil. If you think that stands in contradiction to opening an indigenous reformatory, you're not alone.
18:22But you have to remember that this was a dictatorship. And Funai, like all other federal agencies, was under its influence. The Krenak Reformatory, despite its name, was not just for the Krenak. Indigenous people from across the state and neighboring states were arrested and brought there for a whole host of offenses. Some included drinking alcohol, speaking the native language, going outside of the territory. The night before, Cristina and I had met with a man named Edmundo Diaz. He's a lawyer in the state of Minas Gerais, and has been working with the Krenak and representing them for over a decade.
19:04He'd come by our hotel after spending the day with the Krenak leaders. They'd been discussing what to do with the ruins of the reformatory, but he described to us what it looked like when it was operating. At least 94 indigenous individuals from all the five regions of Brazil were arrested and brought to Cranach's land. When it was created, it was a mechanism of control. And what were the conditions like in the reformatory? In the beginning, they were in smaller cells, and as a form of control, as time passed, and according to the behavior of them, they could go to a larger cell, for instance.
20:01These cells, Edmundo says, had very little light and poor ventilation. The prisoners at the reformatory were controlled by Captain Manuel Pinheiro. He oversaw their daily labor, he doled out their punishments and beatings, and he commanded the officers of the indigenous guard. They created at that time an indigenous guard, which I think disaggregates indigenous peoples because you have the indigenous chief. but you don't have the power position of a guard inside these ethnic groups. So asking them to police themselves disrupts the power structures they already had in place. And it was a course to be an indigenous guard.
20:55When they completed this course, it happened a ceremony in Belo Horizonte. Like a graduation ceremony. A graduation ceremony, yeah. And in that ceremony, they saw a scene of an indigenous in torture. And they say this photo is the only photo of public torture in Brazil during dictatorship period between 1964 and 1985. Edmundo pulls out the photo and shows it to me. There are two indigenous guards dressed in military uniforms with big belt buckles and heavy boots and hats worn low over their ears. In the background of the image, I can see men in suits watching the ceremony. Many of these men, Edmundo says, were government officials.
21:56The two guards are carrying a branch about the thickness of a toilet paper tube. And there's a man hanging from it. The person here is attached by their hands and their legs. It would be incredibly painful. Yes, yes. So you can assume that the Indigenous Guard were taught how to use this because this photo is from their graduation. And so they were using it potentially at the reformatory. So they were teaching things like that. Then Christina and I listened to some audio. It's an interview with an elder who remembers how the Indigenous Guard treated the prisoners at the reformatory. He refers to them as Indians, which was more commonly used at the time.
22:44He tells that they use it to beat the Indians, and that is a case that they beat this Indian, and after that they drowned him in the river. Did he see this happen, this drowning, or he heard about it? Yeah, no, no, he saw the situation. Wow.
23:11There's a train track that runs through the Krenak land. The sun is setting when I sit by the river and listen to it approach. I think about the children forced to go to non-indigenous schools, Giovanni's father being pulled through the dirt when he didn't attend. I think about Krenak elders being told that they can't speak their language, of all the stories that were lost. I think about the young men who were drafted into the indigenous guard and forced to police their friends and family and of the people who were imprisoned and punished sometimes for no apparent reason but that was all before 1972 before the train came and took them away
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25:16The next morning, Christina and I are still in Krenak territory and we pull up outside of a small, low-lying house.
25:27A woman is sweeping the patio and small children are playing under the covered porch In a plastic chair, watching over the activity, is Dijanera. My name is Dijanera de Souza Krenak.
Read the full transcript
25:44I was born in haze here in this land. We belong to this Krenak land. Dijanera tells us that she thinks she's 80. The day I was born was August 2nd, but I don't know the year. We didn't keep records of those things then. She remembers that she was young when the Krenak Reformatory was built. She watched as the people were imprisoned and died there. The prisoners were mistreated. I remember how they screamed when they took them to the riverbank and beat them with their buttons. We all wanted to save them, but we knew there was no way. We knew we would get beaten too. In 1971, amidst the horrors that were taking place on the Krenak land, an unlikely thing happened.
26:45The federal court of Minas Gerais granted the Krenak official titles to 4 ,000 hectares of their ancestral land. But Captain Pinheiro heard of this, and he made a plan with Funai. Together, they created a deal and traded the Krenak land for one over 400 kilometers away, called Fazenda Guarani, or the Guarani Farm. By doing this, they could legally justify the forced displacement that came next. The police came, rounded us up, put us in a train and took us away and threw us in the Guarani farm. In 1972, prisoners at the reformatory and Krenak living on their land were forcibly relocated. They were displaced because of economic power.
27:43That's Edmundo Diaz, the Krenak's lawyer. He spent over a decade investigating the dictatorial treatment of the Krenak and representing them. The political and economical power in this region wanted to grant titles of property of Krenak land to farmers of this region. So your research, just to be clear, your investigation showed that the reason the forced displacements happened was so that they could sell the Krenak land. Not exactly sell, to give, to give to the friends, to people from economic power. Krenak elders described how Captain Pinheiro led their forced removal. They were rounded up and confined by the indigenous guard.
28:38Some say those who resisted were met with threats of death. In October 2019, I entered with a criminal lawsuit, accusing Captain Pinheiro for the crime of genocide. Do you think he committed genocide? Yeah. Why do you think that? Because forbidding some people to speak their language is a form of extinguishing their culture and therefore extinguishing an ethnic group, of course, and displacing them is also a form of extinguishing their culture. the way that they lived before of that, before 1972. And therefore, it's a way of extinguishing an indigenous people. Christina and I made numerous attempts to get in contact with Funai over months.
29:45We asked them about their role in the reformatory, their dictatorship-era assimilation policy, and their relationship with the Krenak in the past and the present. They did acknowledge our communication, but they did not respond to our questions. In 2020, the federal prosecutor office formally denounced Captain Pinheiro for genocide, but he died in 2023, blocking the potential for any criminal charge against him. An elder we spoke to said there was an entire decade when no Krenak lived on their land, but in the early 1980s, a handful of the Krenak decided to return.
30:29My father, he said, no, I'm not going to stay here. I was born in Crenac land, and I'm going back to that land because I am a Crenac. He said they would have to kill us if they wanted to stop us from returning. He said, we are going back to Crenac land, back to our place. At first, only 26 Krenak came back And what they found was devastating When they came back, the forests of Krenakland Was stolen by these farmers They really devastated it So it wasn't just agriculture, it wasn't just pasture for farm animals It was also deforestation to sell the wood To sell the wood, yeah That's why when they came back in about 1980, they found their lands devastated.
31:28A few years after they returned, in 1985, the dictatorship ended. It had lasted 21 years. And for the Krenak, the wounds were deep. They had lost a language. Their culture had been criminalized. Grandparents and parents had died in reformatories. and many people never returned after displacement. But for nearly 30 years, the Brazilian state said nothing of what the Krenak had endured. And then... In 2012, President Dilma Rousseff shared her plan for a national truth commission.
32:15This is from her announcement speech. She's saying Brazil deserves the truth, the new generations deserve the truth, and above all, those who lost friends and relatives deserve the truth.
32:32The final report was released in 2014, and it was long. The section detailing crimes against indigenous people was over a thousand pages. 13 Indigenous groups were used as case studies, including the Krenak. The investigation confirmed the Krenak's forced displacement, torture and imprisonment. And it found that across the country, at least 8 ,350 Indigenous people were murdered during the dictatorship. The important thing is that the Truth Commission says in the report that probably the number of indigenous people murdered during the dictatorship is bigger, much bigger, because it's difficult to collect information and evidence about these assassinations because it was a problem that was almost invisible during the dictatorship.
33:29This report was big news. My name is Maria Rita Keo. I was a member of the Truth Commission. Maria Rita Keo was part of the team that looked at Indigenous treatment for the commission. Christina and I wanted to know how the public received the findings of her investigation. When the findings of the Truth Commission were released, what was the general public's reaction to what you uncovered?
33:58Even before the Truth Commission's work was finished, The reaction was terrible. A lot of people, Maria says, didn't know about the negative impacts of the dictatorship. There was the so-called Brazilian miracle. It was a booming time, you know. I remember my father, who was an engineer at a small firm. He bought a house with a pool for us, just like that, in the 70s.
34:32So there was a lot of support for the dictatorship. And many years later, during the commission, there were a lot of people who criticized us, who thought the dictatorship had been a good thing.
34:51Christina and I are back on that same dirt road, heading into Krenak land. Each house we pass holds a new significance for me now. In every home, there's a person who returned and rebuilt. One of these homes belongs to Ailton Krenak. When we pull up outside, he's already waiting for us and waving.
35:22Christina introduces me. Welcome. She and Ailton are old friends, and soon he's showing her around his home. Inside his study, he shows us a black-and-white photograph from 1909. And it's around here by the river, this picture was taken. In it, there are about 15 people of all ages. There's a woman with a baby on her back and a man holding a long pointed stick. Some of the men are wearing simple loincloths, but almost everyone is completely naked. Three or four generations before his generation. Maria Rita reminded me that, for some people, the dictatorship was the Brazilian miracle. But I want to know what Ailton thinks of that phrase.
36:11So we crowd around a small table, and he tells me. Yeah, this idea of an economic event justifying violence, wars and everything. There's this idea that economic growth justifies violence. Brazil was in that same situation. They believed in progress, development, the economical miracle. I think some people consider that the price to be paid for the miracle was this trampling of life was all the violence.
36:52The Brazilian miracle is an exclusively economic notion that doesn't take people's lives into account. They destroyed the forest, destroyed everything, and they call it a miracle. The Crenac are no strangers to suffering, But Ayutam believes the dictatorship was very nearly the end of them as a people. I believe that period of violence marked our history, our existence as a people. Before the dictatorship, we were already suffering invasions. But it seems the dictatorship was the decisive moment where we were either going to disappear completely or we were going to survive. We could have disappeared.
37:44And now they are taking the pieces, the pieces of them and putting everything together. Putting everything together. It's helpful for me to think of it in this way. I imagine ideal Krennic life as a finished jigsaw puzzle. There are pieces that make up their land, their language, and their culture. The military dictatorship broke the puzzle apart and scattered it across the floor. And they didn't put it back together when the dictatorship ended. The Krennic are still doing that today. First, they worked to reassemble their land. In 1997, they won back the title to the 4 ,000 hectares that were originally demarcated to them.
38:34With more land came more people. When they came back, there were nine families. And now they are 160 families. But Ayutan says the land suffered during the dictatorship. And while new generations are being raised here, they also have to work to restore it. Presently, the Krenak are working with a non-profit called Instituto Terra to help them restore some of the decimated rainforest. The quality of the land changes somehow, but still is a good land to plant. Giovanni showed Cristina and I their first site, where they are growing some fruiting trees and edible plants. It's like the beginning of the project.
39:25The idea is to expand for other areas inside the Krenak land. The hope is that one day they will be able to sustain themselves off the land again. The next crucial step is to repair the damage to their cultural practices and language. The impact is very strong, very perceptive. Giovanni is saying that the dictatorship's impact on their language is long-lasting.
39:57The consequences of this today are that I'm here speaking in a language that isn't mine, that isn't of my essence. But he does hope for a future where his children and all future Krenak are fluent in Borun. I think people who have never been told they can't speak their language think that losing a language just means losing words. But could you explain what else you lose with the words when you can't speak the language? What else goes with it?
40:32There is no way for us to connect with the sacred in the Portuguese language. Because for us, when our God created us, He placed us here. He gave us our language so we can speak with Him. And when we lose that language, we lose our ability to communicate with Him. So it's modified an entire cosmological structure. To me, the Krenak story is one of resilience, of a people who were pushed to the brink of extinction, but are still here. And since returning, they have made huge strides to pick up the pieces, but they needed some help to restore what was lost, and they wanted recognition that they didn't inflict these wounds on themselves.
41:16So, in 2015, the Krenak, with the help of Edmundo Diaz, did two things. They filed a civil lawsuit against the state of Minas Gerais, the federal government, and Funai. The lawsuit requested an apology and helped to restore their land, language, and culture. Secondly, using what the Truth Commission's investigation revealed, they filed a request to have the Amnesty Commission recognize the collective suffering of the Krenak. And it was the first request of collective political amnesty in Brazil. At the time, under Brazilian law, the Amnesty Commission only considered requests from individuals.
42:03And so the Krenak's plea to have recognition from Brazil was denied. But then... My name is Enea Deistuz y Almeida. In 2023, Enea became the president of the Amnesty Commission, and she developed the idea of collective recognition. Because when you are talking about indigenous peoples, the problems are not a bunch of individual problems. There are only one problem, and it's a group problem. It's a collective problem. Under Enea, the guidelines changed and the Krenak's request was reconsidered.
42:55And so on the 2nd of April of 2024, the Krenak became the first group to be granted collective amnesty.
43:07For the first time in the country's history, the state of Brazil apologized to an indigenous community and asked for their forgiveness. Em nome do Estado brasileiro, eu quero pedir perdão. I cannot express in words what happened that day. Pelo que aconteceu durante a ditadura. Eu tô pedindo perdão. Dijanera Krenak stood in front of Aneia as she apologized. I could not stand up before her. I needed to get down on my knees to ask for her forgiveness. When you were thinking about your speech, had you planned to apologize on your knees or just in the moment you felt you couldn't stand? In the moment, because I was talking on behalf of Brazilian state.
44:01And I knew at that very moment that that was a historical occasion because it was the first time that Brazil was on its knees asking for forgiveness to indigenous peoples. Do you think that the Brazilian state deserves forgiveness from the Krenak? No, because it was a genocide. And we do not talk about this. And this genocide has not stopped it. We have several things happening all the weeks, all days against indigenous peoples. So I think that Brazil has not learned the lessons. And we are the bad guys. in this situation. In April of last year, the Amnesty Commission asked for your forgiveness.
45:04I asked the same question to Giovanni. Do you think they deserve your forgiveness? Do you think the state, the Brazilian state, deserves your forgiveness? Não. A história dos povos indígenas não é marcada por isso. The history of indigenous people is marked by destruction, by extermination, by massacre. And now they come to say sorry but the Brazilian state isn't even close to an accurate apology. I can even visualize the ideal way for them to apologize. Because how do you apologize? How? If I apologize, it means I want to do things differently. If you take a language from a people, how can you give it back to them by apologizing?
45:54An apology in itself is nothing. There's no point in me going somewhere, killing people, and then saying, sorry, I killed your relatives. That's worthless. It is an important step, but the words mean nothing. The Amnesty Commission's apology came with a list of recommendations. Things like land demarcation, cultural preservation, and a working group for reparations. These recommendations are not legally binding, and as Giovanni says, they're just words. But Enea believes they do carry influence. The idea of these recommendations is to enforce that particular group to fight for their demands. They will have to fight for each one of these recommendations in different sectors of local government or federal administration.
46:50but they are not alone because they have with them our recommendation. Six days after the apology, on the 8th of April, 2025, the regional federal court passed a ruling on the civil lawsuit Edmundo filed in 2015. They determined that the federal government, Funai, and the state of Minajirais were all responsible for crimes against the Krenak during the dictatorship. Collectively, they have been ordered to issue a formal and public apology. When you apologize yourself, you are recognizing that that violation occurred. It's a way that allows a reconciliation between Crenac people and Brazilian state.
47:44In addition, they need to demarcate the remaining land that was taken from the Krenak during the dictatorship. And not just demarcate it. They need to help restore it. The territory needs to be restored. There has always been abundance in our territory. Water, fruit, animals to hunt. Then, little by little, this was lost. So we need to restore it. because I imagine that we can resume these practices that were lost with the dictatorship. And finally, they were instructed to create programs that promote the Krenak culture and language. When Christina and I sat with Dijaner Krenak on her back porch, she was surrounded by family.
48:34Her daughters and grandchildren moved around the house. Her great-grandchildren played at her feet. But the moment felt poignant, and I asked her, What are her dreams for her grandchildren? Quais são os sonhos que a senhora tem, o que a senhora deseja para os seus children? The dream I have for my grandchildren is for them to learn about the culture, to learn the culture and our language, how to speak our mother tongue, and that they have good health, that they gain access to the land. that's my wish for them. For Dijanera and other Krenak elders, this ruling may have come too late in their lives to repair what they suffered during the dictatorship.
49:19But for her grandchildren, and for generations to come, there is hope. The Krenak are putting their pieces back together, but they are only one small section of a much bigger puzzle. Indigenous people across Brazil suffered during the dictatorship. Whole communities were displaced, families were separated, and some groups were completely extinguished by diseases that were introduced by industry employees. The Krennic suffering has only recently been investigated and reported on widely. But reparation and recognition should not stop with them. After we stopped recording with Edmundo and we were walking to dinner together, he was talking about the recent decision and he said it's not just historic for the Krenak, but it's for all of Brazil.
50:16I'm curious about why he thinks this decision for the Krenak is going to affect all of the country. It's important for the country, for Brazil, to recognize that we, as a society, we allow this kind of violations to indigenous peoples. And then we also recognize that we have to repair as a group, as a society, as a country. We have to make these steps. We have to show other people, other countries that we can do better. And when we were sitting at dinner with Edmundo, there was a placemat that had a saying on it. The sentence that was written on the table is in Portuguese.
51:14And the meaning is, when we are together with good people, we become better people. So I think it's a short way to say that if we are able to repair the Kranach losses during the dictatorship, we are going to be a better people. In all of Brazil. In all of Brazil, sure. I'm Poulama Kaufman, and you've been listening to the documentary on the BBC World Service.
51:51Hi, this is Oliver Conway from the Global News Podcast. Big news from Washington. The US Supreme Court has ruled that President Trump exceeded his authority when he imposed sweeping tariffs on America's trading partners. The 6-3 ruling is a major blow against his economic policy. We have the details. Search for Global News Podcast wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
From the publisher
During the Brazilian military dictatorship, the Krenak indigenous people were banned from speaking their language, imprisoned in reformatories and forcibly displaced from their land. In 2024, the State asked them for forgiveness. Can it be granted?
Journalist Pūlama Kaufman travels to the remote city of Resplendor in the south-east of Brazil to meet up with Brazilian environmental journalist, Cristina Serra. Together, they are welcomed into the Krenak Indigenous territory where they speak with Krenak elders, philosophers and community leaders.
The Documentary uncovers the many layers to what Brazilian Civil Prosecutor Edmundo Dias calls an intentional, “genocide” of the Krenak, lead by Brazilian federal agencies. For decades, very little was known about what the Krenak suffered during the dictatorship, but now they are speaking out. And in 2024, the Amnesty Commission made its first ever apology to an Indigenous group when the president of the Commission got down on her knees in front of the Krenak.
