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Indigenous people protest Brazil not safeguarding ancestral lands

Several thousand Native demonstrators marched chanting to drum beats on Thursday to the catbird seat in Brazil's capital to demonstration versus the government's failure to secure their ancestral lands.

The annual occasion this year focused Indigenous anger over plans to develop a railway to transport grain from farm states to Amazon ports for export that they fear will destroy the environment of tribal communities near the Tapajos river.

For a mock-up of the Ferrograo train the marchers utilized a. tractor-trailer truck dubbed the Bed rails of Destruction and. painted with the names of international grain traders ADM,. Bunge, LDC and Cargill.

Ferrograo is the train of death, of logging, said. Alessandra Korap Munduruku, winner of the Goldman ecological. prize. The railroad is not going to carry individuals, as they. claim, but grain production of international companies funding. this task.

Kleber Karipuna, head of Brazil's largest Indigenous. umbrella company APIB, stated the communities had not been. spoken with on the train, whose announcement by the government. has actually set off a wave of land grabbing along its organized course.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva got a group of 40. Native leaders who led the march to a square located between. the Planalto presidential palace and the Supreme Court.

It is my moral responsibility to do what I can to reduce the. suffering of Native people and ensure their rights, Lula. said on X.

However the leaders came away with bit more than pledges.

We left well aware that our struggle continues. We have a. government that speaks to us, but a farm lobby that stops it from. governing, Chief Edinho of the Macuxi tribe in Roraima state. told reporters. He stated 8,000 individuals had signed up with the march.

Their main problem was the failure of Lula's federal government to. provide on promises to formally acknowledge Indigenous. bookings that have finished the separation process. establishing that they are ancestral lands. The recognition is. important to secure their areas from invasion by prohibited. loggers, wildcat gold miners and land grabbers at the front of. an agricultural frontier that is expanding into the Amazon.

Lula's minority government is likewise unsure on whether to. authorize the railway project that has strong backing from. Brazil's effective farming sector.

The farm caucus in Congress said it is pressing for the. building of the 950-km (590-miles) railway that was initially. proposed in 2015 to bring soy from Mato Grosso state to the port. of Miritituba on the Tapajos, an affluent of the Amazon river.

We are in favor of Ferrograo, a federal government task. of extreme importance for the delivery of grains, the caucus. said in a statement to . The train will cut freight. costs by 25% and release less CO ² into the atmosphere that the. trucks that presently carry the grain.

Indigenous leaders on Wednesday also advised the nation's. Supreme Court to rule on a pending case on the fundamental right. of their individuals to ancestral lands as established in the. Constitution, a right that Congress has actually voted to restrict in time.

They slammed lawmakers for advancing costs that would. allow business agriculture and mining on reservation lands,. which they fear will increase unlawful logging and deforestation.