Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro holds a ceremony to present his cabinet members at the presidential palace in Brasilia on Wednesday.Credit:AP
The ministry has traditionally championed the interests of industries that want greater access to protected lands, including parts of the Amazon rainforest.
The certification was previously overseen by the National Indian Foundation, a government agency tasked with safeguarding the rights and welfare of indigenous communities.
In a flurry of activity the day after he was sworn in, Bolsonaro has also used an executive order to give his government secretary potentially far-reaching and restrictive powers over international non-government organisations working in Brazil.
The temporary decree, which will expire unless it is ratified within 120 days by Congress, mandates that the office of the Government Secretary, Carlos Alberto Dos Santos Cruz, "supervise, coordinate, monitor and accompany the activities and actions of international organisations and non-governmental organisations in the national territory."
Bolsonaro, a far-right former lawmaker and army captain, presented himself to voters as the polar opposite of the leftist Workers' Party, which championed the advancement of poor and disenfranchised communities. The party lost the presidency during impeachment proceedings in 2016 as Brazil was beset by a recession, rising violence and a corruption scandal.
As a candidate, Bolsonaro appealed to conservative groups, including the powerful agricultural lobby, the military and Evangelical Churches, by promising to boost economic growth by rolling back regulatory burdens and enforcement of environmental protections.
This right-wing coalition helped him crush the once-dominant Workers Party at the polls, giving him a strong mandate to bring about the changes he promised and elevating his small party to the second-largest in Congress.
An uncontacted indigenous man seen amid the forest, in Rondonia, Brazil in May, 2018.Credit:AP
Bolsonaro defended the new decree in a message on Twitter on Wednesday, arguing that indigenous groups and descendants of formerly enslaved black Brazilians have been given the right to more than 15 percent of the country's land area.
"Fewer than a million people live in those isolated areas of Brazil, in reality, and they are exploited and manipulated by non-governmental organisations," he wrote. "Together, we're going to integrate those citizens and take care of all Brazilians."
The measure was one of a handful that appeared designed to appease the core groups that propelled the unlikely rise of Bolsonaro to the presidency.
On Wednesday, the government also announced it was dismantling a division of the education ministry that promoted human rights and sought to expand access to higher education for historically disadvantaged communities, including black Brazilians.
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro smiles amid members of his cabinet as he presents them during a ceremony at the presidential palace.Credit:AP
Bolsonaro has accused his leftist political rivals of using the public school system to indoctrinate children, a charge that several educators and experts have called unfounded.
"One of our strategies to get Brazil from the lowest spots of the educational rankings is to tackle the Marxist garbage in our schools heads-on," Bolsonaro wrote in a message on Twitter in English. "We shall succeed in forming citizens and not political militants."
Brazil's 1988 Constitution, passed as the country emerged from a 21-year military dictatorship, established strong protections for Brazil's historically marginalised groups, seeking to make amends for decades of institutionalised discrimination and brutality.
One of the most concrete measures was a process to recognise the right of indigenous communities to control areas that had been home to their ancestors.
Under the era of military rule, the Brazilian government regarded indigenous communities as impediments to the development of areas that were rich in minerals or that could be turned into farmland. Rather than respecting their autonomy, it sought to force their integration into the wider society.
Leila Sílvia Burger Sotto-Maior, an anthropologist who worked at the National Indian Foundation until recently, called the new decree "a clear affront to the constitution."
It felt like a fatal blow for those who have spent their careers trying to deliver on the vision of a constitution that sought reparations for indigenous groups after decades of abuse, she said.
"There's fear, there's pain," Burger said, adding that she and several of her former colleagues are distraught. "This feels like defeat, failure."
There are 436 territories that have been formally designated as autonomous indigenous lands; in roughly half of those, the government has yet to fully expel non-indigenous people. More than 120 territories that indigenous groups claim as theirs are under study. But Bolsonaro, as a candidate, said he would ensure that indigenous communities don't get "one more centimetre" of protected land.
As the government has pared back protections of indigenous territories in recent years, miners, farmers and loggers have established a presence in hundreds of sites, in violation of the law. Indigenous leaders who have resisted their presence are often threatened.
Marina Silva, a former presidential candidate and environment minister who was hailed for curbing deforestation in the Amazon during her tenure between 2003 and 2008, called the measure a travesty.
"The Bolsonaro government is giving the butcher an opportunity to be even more violent with those who, throughout history, were its main victims," she wrote.
The New York Times
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