Indians fearing development on oldest preserve in Brazil

XINGU NATIONAL PARK, Brazil -- Naked children are leaping from mango trees and tumbling into the mild water of the Xingu River without a care.

But up by the grass-roofed long houses, the village elders fret that their way of life may come to an end soon.

"We're worried for our children and grandchildren," said Rea, a Kayabi Indian woman. "Our Xingu is an island, and if the white man enters with his machines, he'll break it all down in no time."

Xingu is Brazil's oldest and probably its most successful Indian reservation, a 10,800-square-mile sprawl of pristine rainforest where 14 Indian tribes live.

The reserve was established in 1961, a few years after many of the tribes in the region had had their first contact with white civilization after thousands of years of isolation.

It sat in the middle of a vast undeveloped stretch in the state of Mato Grosso, or "thick forest." Today, the park is surrounded by fields and pasture in the center of Brazil's fastest developing agricultural region.

The Indians, whose numbers have nearly doubled to about 5,000 since 1961, say they are feeling the pressure.

"In 20 years there won't be enough land for all of us. If you look at the park, it's just a triangle with a little rectangle on top," said Awata, the school teacher at Capivara, one of several Kayabi villages that line the river.

In the villages, there are signs of the encroachment of white civilization all around.

Shiny metal water faucets are common in most villages, thanks to a well-digging project that aims to protect the Indians from polluted headwaters outside the park. Once-crystalline rivers are muddied from erosion caused by farming and logging upriver.

"We can no longer fish with bows and arrows, so we need to buy fish hooks from the white man," said Mairawe Kayabi, the president of the Xingu Indian Land Association, who like many Indians uses his tribe's name as a last name.

The sound of Indians stomping and chanting is still heard in the villages, but now it is as likely to emerge from a cheap tape recorder as it is from a live ceremony.

In the Ngojhwere village, the cooking grill is a bicycle wheel with its spokes hammered down. Three metal car wheels turned on their side raise the grill over the wood fire burning on the dirt floor.

Breakfast is piraucu, a big, freshly caught river fish.

The Indians stew it in water, and when it's ready, wrap it in pieces of a big gummy pancake called "beiju," with hot pepper and store-bought salt.

The women now use steel pots instead of clay to fetch water and cook.

Satellite dishes sit outside many of the longhouses, feeding a handful of Brazilian TV channels to generator-powered televisions.

"All the stuff on the television puts stuff in the young people's heads," Mairawe said. "They are attracted to whatever comes from outside. This is a cause for a lot of disagreement among the leadership."

For ceremonies, the Indians still strip naked and paint their bodies with red powder from ground urucum seeds and the black ink of the jenipapo fruit. But most days they wear Western clothing -- the women preferring long, cotton dresses, the men shorts and T-shirts.

Kuiussi, the Suya Indians' chief, wearing a skimpy swimsuit, warned visitors not to take pictures of Indians wearing Western clothes.

"If people see the pictures, they'll say we're not Indians -- that we're mixed [race] -- and that's not true," he said. "We are all Indians here."

While Kuiussi worried about outside influences, his son, Wetanti, 25, saw no problem keeping a foot in both worlds. He proudly displayed a small album that begins with photos of him naked, painted, and feathered and ends with him looking disco-ready in white slacks, a black T-shirt, and wraparound sunglasses.

The Suya had their first contact with white men in 1959. Today the village sits on the edge of the Xingu reservation, face to face with white civilization.

"Right now, we have to fight to maintain our traditions. The world won't be the same for our children and grandchildren, so we have to hold on to what we have as long as we can," Kuiussi said.