Ora, o SENHOR disse a Abrão: Sai-te da tua terra, da tua parentela e da casa de teu pai, para a terra que eu te mostrarei.
E far-te-ei uma grande nação, e abençoar-te-ei e engrandecerei o teu nome; e tu serás uma bênção.
E abençoarei os que te abençoarem, e amaldiçoarei os que te amaldiçoarem; e em ti serão benditas todas as famílias da terra.
Gênesis 12:1-3
RIKBATKSA: PT1
BRAZIL - 2019
In the north of Mato Grosso state, along the banks of the Juruena River, the Rikbaktsa people live across three demarcated territories in the Brazilian Amazon. Between the late 1940s and early 1950s, Catholic missionaries — financed by rubber barons — entered Rikbaktsa lands with the stated aim of “pacifying” Indigenous communities. The contact, however, brought devastation: around 75% of the Rikbaktsa population died from diseases such as influenza and measles, to which they had no immunity.
In the years that followed, Rikbaktsa children were taken from their families and placed in religious boarding schools, where they were prohibited from speaking their native language. This break in cultural transmission deeply affected the survival of the Rikbaktsa language, now spoken fluently by only a few elders. In response to the looming loss of this vital part of their identity, Rikbaktsa communities began a collective effort to revitalize their language and reaffirm cultural practices.
In 2019, more than sixty people — elders, youth, and children — embarked on a seven-day expedition along the Juruena River basin, aboard ten small boats. The goal was to map sacred and historically significant places known only through oral tradition, while also sharing knowledge in context: words of their language, traditional fishing and hunting techniques, and ancestral navigation skills.
Back in the villages, the process continued. Young people learned to craft necklaces, headdresses, and bracelets — objects that are not only artistic expressions, but also essential vessels of cultural memory, identity, and continuity. Yet these traditions remain under threat. Proposed hydroelectric dam projects in the region risk flooding sacred lands and irreversibly altering the Rikbaktsa way of life, endangering both ecological and spiritual balances rooted in the territory.
This two-part series closely follows the Rikbaktsa’s efforts to protect what is theirs — language, land, and memory — in the face of enduring and emerging challenges.
