Employees of the National Indian Foundation (Funai) decided to go on strike until midnight this Wednesday (15). Due to the Corpus Christi holiday, the strikers are expected to hold a new assembly on Monday (20). They analyze that their agendas were not met and that the institution “ended the dialogue”. The group remains on vigil tonight in front of the foundation’s building, in Brasília (DF), to protest for more attention to the case of the disappearance of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips.
The servers, who started the strike on Monday night (13), bring three points of claim, with emphasis on state assistance to the families of the server and the journalist. “There wasn’t even decent communication with them,” he told the Brazil de facto a servant who preferred not to identify herself to the report.
Like other Funai employees, she said she fears “an even greater persecution” of the resistance movement by agents of the Bolsonaro government.
“Given the current situation, it was decided that we return on Monday (20) for another assembly to decide whether to continue the strike or return, but without losing the mobilization. Brazil de facto a member of the association Indigenistas Associados (INA) who also declined to be identified.
The strike also demands reinforcement of the security of the inspection teams that work in the Vale do Javari region, where Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips disappeared, and a retraction by Funai in the note published last Friday (10), when the institution reached deny that the indigenist had authorization to enter the indigenous land.
The servers point out that there was no compliance with any of the points of the strike booklet. in the case of official notea decision by the Federal Court of Amazonas determined, on Tuesday (14), that Funai must remove the text from the air, which, until the publication of this article, was still on the federal government website.
Among the actions planned for this moment, the servers decided to invest energy in melee also with the Ministry of Justice (MJ), where the segment went on Tuesday (14). The objective was to try a meeting with the holder of the portfolio, Anderson Torres.
“He was on a trip. We then tried to schedule an appointment with the executive secretary, and they put two of his advisors to talk to us. They listened to us, they were reasonable, they listened to our complaints. We asked him to take our agenda to the minister, but we still haven’t had a response”, says the INA member.
Solidarity
The movement of Funai strikers has counted on the solidarity of different entities, collectives and partner activists, among them the environmentalist Thiago Ávila, who has been going to the place where the civil servants gather to join the struggle agendas.
“Every time we think of a workers’ strike, we are thinking of the general situation of workers in the world. INA workers are defending the Brazilian people, the peoples that originated in this land, defending nature, which represents the present and everyone’s future”, said Ávila.
“It is something very important that as many sectors as possible, people interested in a future different from the genocide and ecocide that we are experiencing, show solidarity with the struggle of Funai employees and the indigenous people of this country”, he adds.
Vent
The indigenous Kamuu Dan Wapichana, who came from Roraima to live in Brasília, has worked at Funai as a public servant since 2007. A figure present in the mobilization of the agency’s employees, he says he feels desolate in the face of the disappearance of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips.
“This was not the first case and we fear it will not be the last. People who work at Funai have our principles, the first of which is the life of indigenous peoples. In my case, I am an indigenous person, a servant and I know exactly how it is being helpless, not having minimum security conditions, as was the case [dos dois]”, says Kamuu, who performs an administrative role in the environmental licensing sector.
He claims that he was removed from the commissioned position he held and that he was previously able to do a job “with more effect” than is currently observed. “Today I’m in a service where I practically only provide access to the processes”, he says.
Kamuu points out that working at Funai “has always been difficult, under any government”, but the segment feels an aggravation of authoritarianism in the body, hegemonized by the interests of agribusiness and large economic groups that seek to advance on lands of traditional communities.
“See that Bruno had to disassociate himself in order to continue his work. To continue his fight, he had to leave his body, while they could be encouraging him. They give medals to those who murder people when, in fact, a server like Bruno could be on this merit of guardian and receiving all the praise possible for giving his life to this”, compares Kamuu.
Funai
O Brazil de facto he contacted Funai again this Wednesday and is awaiting a response from the agency’s press office regarding the strike agenda. On Monday (13), the president of the foundation, Marcelo Augusto Xavier da Silva, broke the fast of more than a week of silence and spoke about the case.
In a statement, he denied the agency’s omission in the face of the disappearance and said that Funai teams were working “intensely” in the search. He also stated that the foundation would be distributing basic food baskets to indigenous people and providing protection, among other measures.
Editing: Thalita Pires
