Brazil's first minister of Indigenous peoples starts job amid crises

By Amanda Coletta and Marina Dias
February 18, 2023 at 4:52 p.m. EST



Sonia Guajajara, Brazil's first minister of Indigenous people, campaigns for Congress last year in São Paulo. (Rafael Vilela for The Washington Post)


RIO DE JANEIRO — She was a month into her new job, and Sonia Guajajara’s plate was already full. Brazil’s first minister of Indigenous peoples was in Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima state, responding to a crisis she had called a “genocide.”

She had visited a hospital where scores of Yanomami, an Indigenous group in the Amazon, had been taken to be treated for disease, a consequence of the illegal mining that had surged in their territory under the government of former president Jair Bolsonaro.

Brazil’s environmental law enforcement agency had just launched a massive operation to drive out the illegal miners, or garimpeiros, but expected it would take months. A Yanomami man had the day before been killed, allegedly by miners.

Still to come was a hearing on the ongoing kidnapping of Guajajara people in her home state of Maranhão, where she began a career as one of Brazil’s most prominent Indigenous activists. That career has reached a new height with her appointment to a significant — and historic — role in the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The more-than-896,000 Indigenous people in Brazil have never had their own ministry — let alone one headed by an Indigenous woman whose activism earned her a spot on Time magazine’s list of the 100 Most Influential People of 2022.

More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/18/sonia-guajajara-brazil-indigenous-yanomami/

or:
https://archive.is/aFSpK