Fr. Robert DE VALICOURT recently followed a formation
program of three weeks in order to work more competently among the Indians of
Brazil.
During this course I chatted at length with an Indian chief who was nursing a serious illness. He told me how his people, the Surui, lived forty years ago. They lived in a primitive state, naked, nomadic, hunting and fishing to survive.
Contact with the “whites” (as they call non-Indians) was cruel. They
were decimated by influenza, because their organism was not equipped for these white
diseases. Now they are more numerous and engaged in farming cassava, corn,
rice, black beans ... and some livestock. They have 250,000 hectares and live
in 25 villages.
The children and adolescents study in both languages in public schools built in the villages. The youth are studying in the nearby town. Some are at the university. If you have problems with your computer, they will fix it for you. In forty years, they are progressively moving
from the bow and arrow to modern studies.
On their reserve, there are still some isolated tribes which have never had contact with whites. The National Foundation for Indians, which knows that contacts are deadly, has adopted a different policy: there are reserves created to protect them. There are still 69 such small and isolated groups throughout Brazil. Unfortunately the gold diggers or timber merchants do not respect these reserves; they go into the forest and kill the defenseless Indians.
The Indians of Brazil are a tiny minority: about 350,000 among 190
million. But they are among those minorities who suffer discrimination. These
are the poor whom Jesus prefers.
I am excited about all these discoveries and I
would like to be 30 years younger, but… (Audacieux
pour l’Évangile, avril 2011)
