Qualla: Sawre Muybu Indigenous Territory

Sawre Muybu Indigenous Territory: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greenpeace Brasil from Brasil, CC BY 2.0. The Munduruku call the territory Daje Kapap Eipi, the place where the creator Karosakaybu made humanity and the Tapajos River from a tucuma seed. On the stretch of river they call the Fecho, where the Tapajos narrows, the river first emerged from the ground. These are not metaphors the Munduruku use for tourists. The sacred sites of Ilha da Montanha and the Fecho are specific locations inside the 178,173-hectare territory, and when Brazilian engineers proposed to flood seven percent of that land under the reservoir of the Sao Luiz do Tapajos Dam, the Munduruku responded by picking up a GPS and demarcating their own borders.

Image: Greenpeace Brasil from Brasil | CC BY 2.0

Sawre Muybu Indigenous Territory: Where the River Was Born

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greenpeace Brasil from Brasil, CC BY 2.0. The territory sits on the right bank of the Tapajos River in the southwest of Para state, bounded by the Tapajos to the west and its tributary the Jamanxim to the east. The land is composed of what Brazilians call terra preta, the fertile dark earth that indigenous agriculturalis...

Image: Greenpeace Brasil from Brasil | CC BY 2.0

Sawre Muybu Indigenous Territory: The Dam Downstream

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wevertoncordeiro, CC BY-SA 3.0. The proposed Sao Luiz do Tapajos Dam would have been one of the largest hydroelectric projects ever built in the Amazon. Its reservoir, at 729 square kilometers, would have submerged thirteen thousand hectares of the Sawre Muybu territory, including the village of Boa Fe. Upstrea...

Image: Wevertoncordeiro | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sawre Muybu Indigenous Territory: Self-Demarcation

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greenpeace Brasil from Brasil, CC BY 2.0. FUNAI, the federal agency responsible for indigenous affairs, had begun the formal demarcation process for Sawre Muybu in 2007. The detailed identification study was finished in September 2013, with findings that the state was constitutionally obligated to recognize the territory...

Image: Greenpeace Brasil from Brasil | CC BY 2.0

Sawre Muybu Indigenous Territory: The Signs They Put Up Themselves

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greenpeace Brasil from Brasil, CC BY 2.0. In June 2016, the Munduruku announced they would install about fifty signs along the boundaries of the territory declaring that the area was protected and access by strangers was forbidden. Environmental activists helped. When journalists asked FUNAI whether the signs were legal,...

Image: Greenpeace Brasil from Brasil | CC BY 2.0

Sawre Muybu Indigenous Territory: What Recognition Forced

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greenpeace Brasil from Brasil, CC BY 2.0. On April 17, 2016, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies voted to impeach President Dilma Rousseff. Two days later, on April 19, FUNAI finally published the identification and delimitation study for Sawre Muybu that had been sitting on a shelf for two and a half years. On the same da...

Image: Greenpeace Brasil from Brasil | CC BY 2.0

Sawre Muybu Indigenous Territory: The Decree Signed

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Recognition is not demarcation, and demarcation is not a presidential decree. In November 2016, indigenous leaders from the Indigenous Missionary Council and Greenpeace environmentalists occupied the Ministry of Justice in Brasilia, placing 180 arrows on the ministry's lawn to ma...

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0