Paulinho Paiakan
Paulinho Paiakan is a leader of the Kayapo people, an indigenous tribe of Brazil. He has led the Kayapo in their protests against destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
Background
Paiakan was hired by the Brazilian government in 1971 to facilitate the construction of the Trans-Amazonian highway system through Kayapo lands.[1] Once Paiakan saw the nature of the project first hand, he quit his job and began to mobilize his people against the project.[1] He took a splinter group of his home village and settled a new village named Aukre, where he set out to videotape the destruction of the rainforest and the Kayapo traditions.[1]
Paiakan became known on the world stage, touring Europe and North America with public appearances and speaking engagements, sponsored by Friends of the Earth, the World Wildlife Fund and the Kayapo Support Group of Chicago in a campaign against the Altamira Dam project. Speaking at the University of Chicago, he said:
The forest is one big thing; it has people, animals, and plants. There is no point saving the animals if the forest is burned down; there is no point saving the forest if the people and animals who live in it are killed or driven away. The groups trying to save the races of animals cannot win if the people trying to save the forest lose; the people trying to save the Indians cannot win if either of the others lose; the Indians cannot win without the support of these groups; but the groups cannot win wither without the support of the Indians, who know the forest and the animals and can tell what is happening to them. No one of us is strong enough to win alone; together, we can be strong enough to win.[2]
The World Bank announced that it would not grant Brazil a loan for the project after this campaign and the protest at Altamira that followed.
Rape charge and subsequent trial
Here is a little more of the story the creator of this page buried: “A CRIME IN BENEFIT OF LAND GRABBERS” by Alexander Cockburn Wed. Sept. 9. 1992 Rape charges against a Brazilian Indian leader smell of political frame-up.
The fight to save the world's tropical rain forests has spawned its heroes and its martyrs, none more renowned than Chico Mendes, the leader of the rubber tappers who was gunned down in the western Amazon four years ago. Since Mendes' murder, the man who has perhaps come best to symbolize the struggle to save the Amazon is an Indian chief named Paulinho Paiakan of the Kayapo tribe who live on a tributary of the Xingu river. Paiakan led the fight in the late 1980s to beat back a scheme, partially financed by the World Bank, to submerge millions of acres of rain forest in a network of dams. He has been instrumental in securing the rights of tribes to control their natural resources - timber and minerals - eyed hungrily by Brazilians chafing at Indian assertion of ancestral rights. Paiakan has become a familiar figure far beyond the borders of Brazil. He has toured the world raising money for the Kayapo cause. Hollywood is interested in his life story. But now Paiakan's stature as an environmentalist and indigenous leader is threatening to crumble. And if his career ends in disgrace and maybe a prison cell, the rain forest movement will itself have sustained a serious blow. Already Brazil's powerful timber, mining, and ranching lobbies are clamoring for an end to restrictions on exploitation of native reserves. Some environmental groups are starting to shun Paiakan, leaving the Kayapo without international support. Paiakan's potential downfall stems from charges of rape. Previous supporters have divided violently on the issue. Paiakan's allies charge racism abetting a frame up, exemplified by the cover of a mass-circulation magazine, Veja, that featured a cover photo of Paiakan with the words, "The Savage" splashed across it. Many Brazilian liberals see Paiakan as an uppity Indian getting his comeuppance. The case against Paiakan at first seems overwhelming. On the last Sunday in May, the Kayapo chief took his wife, Irekran, his little girl, Maia, and some relatives to a campground he owned outside Redencao, a town on the edge of the Kayapo lands. He also invited along a non Indian young woman of 18, Leticia Ferreira. At the end of the day, after a fair amount of beer drinking, Paiakan set off for Redencao with Irekran and Maia in the front seat of his white Chevette and Ferreira in the back. As Veja reported Ferreira's version, Paiakan stopped the car on the empty, dark road, turned off the lights and locked both doors. He and Irekran jumped over the seat and began to beat up Ferreria. Veja quoted Redencao police chief Jose Barbosa as saying that the car was so bloodied it looked as if an animal had been butchered inside. Doctors, said the magazine, confirmed that Ferreira had been raped. The truth may be physically less violent and politically more complex. Here are some of the facts omitted by Paiakan's accusers: The couple to whose house Ferreira made her way immediately after the incident say that she was calm and without the major injuries later asserted in the account in Veja. Scott Wallace, an American free-lance journalist to whom the couple spoke, also established that there were no blood stains in the Chevette. Ferreira's charges were relayed by her uncle, who is running for Mayor of Redencao on an anti-Indian platform. This uncle immediately enlisted the services of the legal assistant to the governor of the state of Para, a man under unremitting political pressure to erode Indian autonomy. Paiakan claims a "confession" was concocted by adroit videotape editing. The police chief told Wallace he was misquoted. The first doctor to examine Ferreira was being sued by Paiakan for allegedly performing a tubal ligation on Irekran without permission. Ferreira's uncle contacted Veja with the story before she went to the police.
Paiakan denies either raping or beating Ferreira. Irekran, who speaks only Kayapo, last week told anthropologist Darrell Posey, who has known the couple for years, that Ferreira invited herself to their picnic, got drunk and in the car on the way home, fondled Paiakan. Irekran said she told Paiakan to stop the car and then attacked Ferreira. "I can remember the blood under my fingernails," Irekran said, adding that she would do it again. She said Paiakan held her back while Ferreira escaped.
The case awaits trial amid much wrangling over the legal status of a Kayapo under Brazilian law. There are those, like Veja, who say that Paiakan's guilt is clear. But a strong case can be made for a political frame-up, where opponents of the Kayapo, explicitly citing the Mike Tyson rape case, have organized a trial-by-media to punish the Green lobby and the Indians who dare assert ownership of lands on which they have lived for centuries.
In 1992, Paiakan was accused of raping a young white woman whom he had hired to tutor his children. He was accused of biting off the nipples and inserting both hands in the woman's vagina, among other things (http://veja.abril.com.br/arquivo_veja/capa_10061992.shtml).[3] [4] In 1994, Paiakan was acquitted, but in a 1999 retrial, he was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison.[4] The entire affair stigmatized not only Paiakan, but the entire indigenous peoples movement of which he had been such a key figure.[4]:366 [5]
References
- 1 2 3 Whittemore, Hank (12 April 1992). "A Man Who Would Save the World". Parade.
- ↑ Turner,, T. (1993). "The Role of Indigenous Peoples in the Environmental Crisis - the Example of the Kayapo of the Brazilian Amazon.". Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 36 (3): 526–545. doi:10.1353/pbm.1993.0027.
- ↑ Brooke, James (5 July 1992). "Indian-White Rape Case Splits Brazil". The New York Times.
- 1 2 3 Moore, Donald S.; Pandian, Anand (2003). "Pulp Fictions of Indegenism". In Moore, Donald S.; Kosek, Jake; Pandian, Anand. Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference. Duke University Press. p. 365. ISBN 9780822330912.
- ↑ Cockburn, Alexander (9 September 1992). "A Crime in Benefit of Land Grabbers: Rape charges against a Brazilian Indian leader smell of a political frame-up". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 16 July 2012.