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Native people oppose Brazil not securing ancestral lands

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

The yearly occasion this year focused Native anger over strategies to construct a railway to carry grain from farm states to Amazon ports for export that they fear will ruin the environment of tribal communities near the Tapajos river.

For a mock-up of the Ferrograo railway the marchers used a. tractor-trailer truck called the 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, stated. Alessandra Korap Munduruku, winner of the Goldman ecological. reward. The railway is not going to carry individuals, as they. claim, however grain production of global companies financing. this project.

Kleber Karipuna, head of Brazil's largest Native. umbrella company APIB, stated the communities had not been. spoken with on the railway, whose statement by the government. has actually triggered a wave of land getting along its planned course.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva received a group of. Indigenous leaders who led the march to a square situated in between. the Planalto presidential palace and the Supreme Court.

Their main problem was the failure of his federal government to. provide on promises to officially recognize Indigenous. reservations that have finished the separation procedure. developing that they are ancestral lands. The recognition is. important to safeguard their territories 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 also uncertain on whether to. approve the train task that has strong support from. Brazil's powerful farm lobby.

The farm caucus in Congress stated it is pushing for the. execution of a project that was very first proposed in 2015 for a. 950-km train to bring soy from Mato Grosso state to the port. of Miritituba on the Tapajos, an affluent of the Amazon river.

We favor Ferrograo, a federal government project. of extreme importance for the delivery of grains, the caucus. said in a statement to . The railway will cut freight. expenses by 25% and release less CO ² into the environment that the. trucks that currently carry the grain.

Native leaders on Wednesday likewise advised the nation's. Supreme Court to rule on a pending case on the fundamental right. of their people to ancestral lands as established in the. Constitution, a right that Congress has voted to limit in time.

They criticized legislators for advancing expenses that would. permit industrial agriculture and mining on appointment lands,. which they fear will increase prohibited logging and logging.