Brazil decrees Indian reserves
2004-10-28 12:00
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Brasilia - President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed a decree on Wednesday creating 14 new Indian reservations across Brazil.
The decree declares some 2 500 square kilometres of Brazilian territory as ancestral Indian lands mostly in the Amazon rainforest.
Eleven of the reservations were in the state of Amazonas. Reservations were also declared in the Amazon states of Acre and Maranhao as well as in the central western state of Mato Grosso do Sul.
The Indians to benefit from the declarations included the Mura, Tikuna, Tora, Apruina, Kulina, Diahui, Kaiowa, Tenharim and Krikati, said Mario Moura of the federal Indian Bureau.
Moura said several reservations were declared for isolated tribes, whose lands were demarcated by the bureau without the tribes having ever been contacted by anthropologists.
Brazil has some 400 000 Indians living on ancestral lands, the vast majority of them in the Amazon.
- SAPA