In the legal system of Brazil Indigenous people are not regarded as human beings.

Let me say it again: Brazil does not see the Indians of the country as fully human, with full human rights. People here say, “os nossos Indios”, “os nossos Indios”! “Our Indians”!

This situation exists nowhere else in the world. Indigenous peoples of the Americas are badly treated in every country, but only in Brazil are we legally seen as less than human.

I know very well the excuse, the history and reasoning behind this phenomenon. I have heard the explanation from government officials and from anthropologists for more than thirty years.

I am here to say that now you must change.

Now Brazil has the opportunity to change.

There has been no future in the Americas for five hundred years. Brazil now has the opportunity to make a new future in the Americas.

There must be a better law. Indigenous peoples must be accorded full legal rights, human rights, as well as full protection under the law. No more ‘parks’, where Indigenous communities are treated like endangered species and no more landless Indians. Indigenous communities must have territories that are theirs by every right, and the right to economic and cultural development, education both in Portuguese and their own languages through the highest academic levels. Yet, there must be even greater protection of these communities from exploitation, an even greater legal protection of individual’s rights and lives, but with no more paternalism.

Because of the horrible history, this is certainly complicated, and cannot be approached simplistically or without thorough involvement by all Brazilians.

Here are some possible ideas for a beginning: recently in Australia I witnessed and participated in a new social tradition. Aboriginals ask all Australians to begin any public address with a statement of recognition of which Aboriginal group once had the land. So that, for example, here in Porto Alegre I might have begun my talk by saying that I acknowledge that I am in the land of the Guarani. Australians also have a national “Sorry Day”, on which the general public is asked to apologise for treatment towards Aboriginals. Of course there is racist mockery of the day, and much ignorant behaviour, but that can also serve, by its exposure.

One last thing: the São Paulo Biennale is known internationally. We imagine that if there had been a Johannesburg, South Africa, Biennale during the ‘apartheid’, most artists would not have participated.

Why not boycott the São Paulo Biennale? How not?

Some people have asked why I want to start trouble for Brazil now, when there is a better government for the first time. That is certainly a good reason; other governments would not have listened at all.

But more, it is the 21^st century. We ought to feel that it is intolerable for any country to make some of its people legally not considered fully human. It hurts us all.

Recently the Brazilian government declared that a fairly large tract of land would be given over as a ‘parque” for several Indian communities. That does not mean that the land is given to the Indians. It is more like they are given to it. They have no legal rights to it (nor to anything) and may not develop it or make money from it, only live in it as park animals.

So some of the Indians kidnapped some government officials in protest, because they had been working for different white people for at least a little cash and if they lived in  an ‘Indian Parque’ they could no longer work.

That every Indian community in Brazil should have a territory, rights and opportunities to education in their own language and in Portuguese, the right to economic development, the right to travel freely, to leave their communities for work, education or pleasure and to return of their own volition certainly should be considered minimum basic human rights.

During the 2005 Venice Biennale, some Xavante Indian “Warriors” were in Venice, as part of a Brazilian theatre project. (Indians in Brazil are more and more used as tourist attractions.) The posters looked very sophisticated, contemporary theatre from Brazil. Almost no one knew, of course, that the Xavante men were essentially captives, under government guard. Not free. The same as, except worse, the Indians who were brought to Venice a century earlier in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

Indians in Brazil have tried to make their own national Indian organization. On behalf the American Indian movement in the U.S., Maria Thereza Alves tried in the early 80’s to meet with one such organizer, Angelo Kretã, but he was killed before her trip was completed. The next year she did meet with another, Marçal de Souza, but he was also killed soon after. 

These events are not unusual in any country in the Americas, but in Brazil - - -there is this intolerable legal hammer.

Maria Thereza Alves and I are considering to begin an international boycott of the São Paulo Biennale. As well, we imagine the possibility of an “Anti-São Paulo Biennale” similar to the “Chechnya Biennale” begun in Paris. The São Paulo Biennale is not, of course, run by the Brazilian government, it is a private enterprise. Nevertheless, the attention might be effective.

                                                                                                Jimmie Durham