#kapinawa people

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

In the Brazilian outback, the half-century Kapinawá struggle for sacred ground

The Catimbau Valley, in the backlands of Pernambuco state, is one of the most biodiverse areas in the Caatinga dry forest and also an archaeological treasure, with the second-largest collection of rock inscriptions in Brazil.

It’s also the sacred and ancestral territory of the Kapinawá, a people who discovered their Indigenous identity in the mid-1970s amid a war against land-grabbers.

Part of the Kapinawá territory became an Indigenous land, but an area was overlapped with the Catimbau National Park, created in 2002; those who live there complain about the numerous restrictions they face.

While fighting to reclaim their lands, the Kapinawá turn the Caatinga into a laboratory for experiments in agroecology, combining biodiversity preservation and food production.

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