thing. If we want a world of peace, we have to create a world where borders are not barriers. The idea of an imposed border, such as the demarcation of indigenous lands, is an aggression against the original peoples of the Americas. We call for the demarcation of indigenous lands by the Brazilian government, as if it were a lesser evil. Since we live in a culture in which borders indicate domain, our call for a border is more for an external rather than internal interpretation. Side effects What type of border does economic development based on the extraction of primary materials, such as mining, represent for the existence of indigenous reserves? It represents a constant threat and imminent risk of disaster. Extractivism, primarily when backed by financial capital, establishes an active and invasive border in different places, ecologies and territories. The Amazon lies inside the borders of Brazil, but the environment is not in the souls, hearts and minds of people who plan public policies. Our Ministry of the Environment is much more concerned with the management of urban ills, neglecting the great wealth we have. We need to call attention to the great importance of the Amazon, to the cultural complexity of the peoples who still live autonomously in this region. Because these peoples are not hostages to the market or the food industry, they are capable of self-sustained food security. In addition to invasion by predatory extractivism, there is the encroachment by cattle raising and monocultures, which conflict with traditional farming practices. These borders are constantly moving horizontally and vertically. Today, in southern Brazil, there is a serious threat to the Guarani Aquifer, one of the largest fresh water reserves in the world. Transnational corporations want to appropriate and sell off the aquifer, and the current Brazilian government is very susceptible to this type of pressure.
Behavior and micro-politics What do indigenous people understand by borders or limits? Once, I heard a story about a Kaiapó chief, from Xingu, who was speaking with a Guarani, from coastal São Paulo: “My relative, I’m very grateful to you. You spent 200 years on the coast enduring the presence of the white man while we were protected from this invasion in Xingu. They arrived on our land only in the 20th century, in the 1940s; and on your land, they arrived over 300 years ago. You have sustained great losses, protecting our border. Because of the siege of white culture, many of you no longer speak the mother tongue, and have lost important traditions from your ancestral culture.” It is a fluid border; it is not physical, it is cultural. Habits change completely with this interaction between cultures. There are people who believe that it is a natural tendency for all of us to form a type of global community, where differences are diluted. I see this dilution as a type of autophagy. It is a joint body of self-impoverishment. We are experiencing global impoverishment: that which appeared to be positive was actually a loss of quality of life for the peoples and the landscape. Experience in the discipline What other territories are drawn up through collaboration between indigenous peoples, as in the case of the União das Nações Indígenas [Union of Indigenous Nations – UNI] and the Aliança dos Povos da Floresta [Alliance of the Peoples of the Forest]? How are these interactions related to the idea of the Brazilian nation? There is an idea out there that all types of diversity—people, genders, of everything— have their place guaranteed. If we were to extend this idea to borders, in a world with all this mobility, what would this place be like? A hologram? A place in a constant state of reconfiguration? In the