Pope angers indigenous Brazilians over Christianity and colonisation remark

Pope Benedict XVI angered indigenous Brazilians during his recent visit to Brazil after suggesting that their ancestors had been “silently longing” to become Christians when Brazil was invaded and colonised by Europeans 500 years ago.

A member of the Amazonian Satere Mawe community said that the Pope’s comment was “arrogant and disrespectful.” The Catholic Church’s Indian advocacy group in Brazil called the Pope’s statement “wrong and indefensible.”

When the Portuguese invaded Brazil in 1500, there was an indigenous population of between 5 and 13 million people living in around 1000 separate communities. Today the indigenous population is less than 7 per cent of what it was, with only around 220 communities left.

Indigenous Brazilian leaders had written to the Pope to appeal for support, stating that their ancestral lands are being threatened by huge government projects. They claim they are victims of a “a process of genocide” over hundreds of years through the dispossession of their lands, persecution and the sterilization of indigenous women.

Early anthropologists believed that indigenous Brazilians migrated from North Asia (Siberia) arriving in South America around 9000 BC – hence the fact that they are commonly referred to as Brazilian Indians. However, human remains found in South America believed to be 20,000 years old make this scenario most unlikely.

Recent remains found, known as the Luzia skeleton, discovered in Lagoa Santa, are said to be morphologically different from the Asian genotype, bearing greater similarities to the African and Australian Aborigines.

Stephen Corry, director of NGO Survival criticised the Pope for failing to meet with indigenous communities during his trip to Brazil. He said it was “tragic” that the Pope “made no reference to the genocide visited upon the indigenous peoples of Brazil over the past 500 years.”

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