🌿 Sign to include Aldeia Marakanã, first 100% indigenous university project in Brazil, in new Federal Indigenous University — and not conversion into a for-profit center.

📣 WHY WE ARE ASKING FOR YOUR SIGNATURE
In November 2025, the Brazilian Federal Government announced the creation of the first Federal Indigenous University in Brazil — a historic and urgently needed milestone. At the same time, the Chamber of Deputies approved the bill creating the Federal Indigenous University (UFIND), marking an unprecedented moment for the rights of Indigenous peoples in the country.

But there is a serious problem: Aldeia Marakanã risks being left out — and its territory risks being converted into something it must never become.

That is unacceptable. And that is why we are here.

🌳 WHAT IS ALDEIA MARAKANÃ?
Located in Rio de Janeiro, on a historically and symbolically charged site, the story of this territory spans more than 160 years of Indigenous memory, abandonment, resistance and rebirth:

🌳 Before 1500 — a sacred indigenous place for sacred meetings between indigenous peoples. 

👉 1862 — The building is constructed by the Duke of Saxe.
👉 Early 20th century — Donated to the Indigenous Protection Service (SPI), under Marshal Rondon, with the original purpose of preserving Indigenous culture.
👉 1953–1977 — Home to the Museu do Índio, recognized by UNESCO, receiving up to 3,000 visitors per day and housing a collection of 16,000 books.
👉 1977 — The museum is relocated to Botafogo under the pretext of a subway station that was never built.
👉 1980s — The space falls into abandonment, used briefly for a weekly market and administrative offices, none of which lasted.
👉 2006 — Indigenous peoples reoccupy the territory, reclaiming its original vocation.
👉 2013 — Violent eviction attempt during FIFA World Cup preparations, with proposals to demolish the building or convert it into a for-profit cultural center.
👉 2022 — The property is nearly included in a state auction list — before being removed following public outcry.
👉 August 4, 2024 — Representatives of Aldeia Marakanã University are finally consulted by the MEC on the creation of Brazil's first intercultural Indigenous university.

👉 2026 — A new protocol between the federal government and the State of Rio de Janeiro opens negotiations on the territory's future, with the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples expressing interest in converting the space into a cultural center.

This territory has survived demolition threats, forced evictions, auction lists and decades of institutional neglect.

⚠️ THE CRITICAL WARNING: A CULTURAL CENTER IS NOT ENOUGH
Recent news reports (Diário do Rio, 2026) confirm that a protocol of intent has been signed between the federal government and the State of Rio de Janeiro to seek a consensual solution for the Aldeia Marakanã territory. The Ministry of Indigenous Peoples has expressed interest in converting the space into a cultural center for traditional knowledge and culture.

We recognize this as a step forward — but we must be clear:

🚨 A cultural center managed by the state is not the same as an Indigenous university governed by Indigenous peoples. This distinction is not semantic. It is fundamental.

The history of this territory is a history of decisions made without Indigenous peoples — a museum created without them, relocated without them, abandoned without them, nearly demolished without them, nearly auctioned without them. 

We cannot allow the same logic to repeat itself under a more benevolent appearance.

In 2013, during the violent evictions linked to the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games, proposals emerged to transform the site into a commercial cultural center — a space that would have displaced the very Indigenous communities that had rebuilt it, replacing autonomous Indigenous governance with a state-managed, revenue-generating institution.

That model was rejected then. It must be rejected now.

The difference between a cultural center and an Indigenous university is the difference between:

🏢 Cultural Center: managed by the state; exhibits Indigenous culture; visitors consume culture; institutional agenda; risk of commercialization; top-down administration.

🎓 Indigenous University: governed by Indigenous peoples; creates Indigenous knowledge; students and communities live it; indigenous self-determination; rooted in ancestral and territorial rights; horizontal, circular, multiethnic governance.

The Aldeia Marakanã community has resisted for these 20 years, protecting and sharing 50,000 years of ancestral wisdom, not to see it transformed into an exhibition in the future. This is a predatory logic that transforms living beings and knowledge into consumer goods. This logic does not connect with indigenous values.

🌿 WHAT ALDEIA MARAKANÃ HAS BUILT — AND WHY IT MUST BE PROTECTED

Since 2006, bringing together 17 Indigenous peoples in the heart of Rio de Janeiro, Aldeia Marakanã has constructed:

📚 A living Indigenous university — a multiethnic "pluriversity" entirely conceived by Amerindian peoples themselves.
🌱 A laboratory of environmental, climatic and ancestral knowledge.
🗣️ A center for the documentation and revitalization of Indigenous languages, having worked directly with CELIN at the National Museum before the devastating fire of 2018.
🤝 A unique model of horizontal, circular and multiethnic governance in an urban context.
🔥 A space of cultural, spiritual and political resistance of national and international relevance.
👩‍🏫 A pluriversity including leaders, researchers and professors such as Dr. Mônica Lima Mura Manaú Arawak, biologist and PhD from Colorado State University, professor at UERJ and coordinator of the indigenous association CESAC. First indigenous woman to become a PHD in Brazil. 
⚖️ A legal advocacy center promoting Indigenous rights, supporting communities, and advancing the implementation of Law 11.645/08 on Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous History and Culture in national education.

This is not an informal occupation. This is not a cultural center waiting to be built. It is a university that already exists, already functions, and already educates people.

💬 VOICES OF RESISTANCE

Dr. Mônica Lima (Indigenous name: Tripuira Kuarahy  — "The Bird that Sings at Dawn"), biologist, PhD and professor at Aldeia Marakanã University, speaks from science, ancestry and urgency:

"The way out of the environmental and climate crisis is ancestral. Only Indigenous, originary and ancestral technology can save the world from the legacy of destruction left by industrial technologies and the logic of accumulation. This is a living library where life happens in the Pluriversity. We are a multiethnic village — and each ethnicity is a university."

José Urutau Guajajara, one of Aldeia Marakanã's most prominent leaders, doctoral researcher in social anthropology, speaks with clarity and urgency:

"Everything around us works to erase Indigenous populations from urban centers in Brazil. Because we have been in this territory for 40 to 50 thousand years, perpetuating our knowledge... because we are alive, we exist. When the Europeans invaded this land, they broke our branches, cut our trunks—but they couldn't uproot our roots. The dominant culture, which only wants to sell football and carnival and erase traditional cultures, took everything from us.

We are witnessing the erasure of Amerindian culture. An irreparable loss. These words remind us of what is at stake when institutional negligence replaces Indigenous management of knowledge and memory. We are seeds, we are the land, the earth itself. And these seeds are here, throughout the Aldeia Marakanã Village."

These are not metaphors. They are diagnoses — and they are solutions 🌿 

At a time of global climate collapse, the unique indigenous university in Rio de Janeiro may hold answers that no other institution on Earth can offer. A center managed by external institutions cannot protect what only Indigenous peoples themselves know how to keep alive.

🌍 WHY THIS MATTERS TO THE ENTIRE PLANET

🌡️ Indigenous peoples protect 82% of global biodiversity — their knowledge systems are essential tools for climate governance, at a moment when the Amazon is approaching irreversible tipping points.

🏙️ Urban Indigenous populations are a growing global reality — Aldeia Marakanã is one of the rare established models of Indigenous education and governance entirely managed by Indigenous peoples in an urban context on the planet.

🗣️ UNESCO declared 2022–2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages — Aldeia Marakanã hosts one of Brazil's most important living centers for linguistic revitalization.

🎵 Indigenous culture speaks to new generations — artists like Kaê Guajajara, named by Forbes as one of the 10 most promising Brazilian singers of 2023, show that ancestral knowledge carries power, beauty and a future.

🌿🎤As stated by Priscila Fischer, a Brazilian journalist and activist, — through the international partnership between Aldeia Marakanã and UMUPUKATU Forest Portal (UMUPUKATU Portal Forestier in France) — during her speech at the International Day of Conscience 2026, organized by institutions with ECOSOC status at the United Nations in Geneva:

"In Brazil, 391 peoples speak 295 languages and don't wage wars — Amerindian peoples hold the PEACE TECHNOLOGY 🕊️ within their social architecture."

 ✊ WHAT WE ARE ASKING FOR

To the Brazilian Ministry of Education (@MEC), Ministry of Culture of Brazil (@MINC) and Ministry of Indigenous Peoples (@MPI):

✅ Immediate inclusion of Aldeia Marakanã as an official campus or founding structure of the new Federal Indigenous University (UFIND);
✅ Legal recognition of autonomous Indigenous governance already exercised since 2006;
✅ Permanent territorial protection of the 14.3 hectares of ancestral territory, in accordance with an already recognized federal court ruling;
✅ Full and equal participation of Aldeia Marakanã's Indigenous leaders in all decision-making processes regarding the territory's future;
✅ Rejection of any model that converts this space into a state-managed cultural center without Indigenous self-governance — including any arrangement that risks commercial use, vertical institutional control or displacement of the existing Indigenous university structure;
✅ Transfer of the property to Indigenous management under the framework of the UFIND, not to external institutional administration. 

To UNESCO:

✅ Recognition of Aldeia Marakanã as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity;
✅ Support within the framework of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022–2032);
✅ Monitoring of the territorial negotiation process to ensure compliance with cultural heritage protection standards.

To the UNITED NATIONS:

✅ Active monitoring of Indigenous rights compliance throughout the UFIND creation process and territorial negotiations; 
✅ Inclusion of Aldeia Marakanã in international frameworks on education, climate and biodiversity; 
✅ Referral to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples for assessment of ongoing risks. 

To the EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT:

✅ Support for international cooperation with autonomous Indigenous education systems; 
✅ Recognition of Aldeia Marakanã as an international reference in climate and cultural diplomacy;
✅ Support for the France–Brazil partnership model (UMUPUKATU Forest Portal) as a replicable framework for international Indigenous knowledge exchange.

🖊️ SIGN NOW
Every signature sends a message to Brazil and to the world:

Indigenous peoples are ALIVE, they are not museum pieces. They are not exhibits. They are not content for cultural tourism.

They are knowledge-holders, educators, scientists, leaders and rights-holders — and they deserve a university of their own, governed by themselves, on their own ancestral territory.

🌿 Sign. Share. AMPLIFY.

Because the difference between a cultural center and a university is the difference between being displayed and being heard, participating actively of Ecological Transition. 

🌳🌎 Recognizing Aldeia Marakanã as a university is recognizing a new paradigm of planetary education.

This petition is grounded in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, 2007);  ILO Convention 169; Article 231 of the Brazilian Federal Constitution; UN 2030 Agenda; UNESCO Cultural Heritage Conventions; UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022–2032). 

 
🔗 Learn more:

www.aldeiamarakana.com
www.instagram.com/tekohawmarakana​ 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/umupukatu-portail-forestier

Federal Government announces first Indigenous federal university: https://www.gov.br/povosindigenas/pt-br/assuntos/noticias/2025/11/governo-federal-anuncia-a-primeira-universidade-federal-indigena-do-brasil

Chamber of Deputies approves UFIND: www.camara.leg.br/noticias/1244543-camara-aprova-projeto-que-cria-a-universidade-federal-indigena

Diário do Rio — Territory negotiations (2026) : https://diariodorio.com/predio-da-aldeia-maracana-deve-ser-recuperado-para-abrigar-centro-cultural-do-ministerio-dos-povos-indigenas

 
#AldeiaMarakanã · #IndigenousUniversity · #UFIND · #IndigenousRights · #UNDRIP · #LivingHeritage · #TechnologyOfPeace · #IndigenousSelfDetermination · #EducationForTheFuture · #AmazoniaViva · #PluralKnowledge