Abstract
Stephen Baines, who wrote on the Waimiri-Atroari in Critique (11:2), provides an update on a situation which is all too common. It often comes as a surprise to those unfamiliar with the Brazilian/Amazonian/Indian political nexus to realize that the brutal treatment of Indians is not due simply to shortcomings of the on-the-ground Indian Service (FUNAI), but that ethnocidal policies directed toward the Indians originate in and are supported at the highest levels of government. Indeed, it has been an important feature of development planning in Amazonia that the state be seen to acknowledge the 'Indian problem'. Being seen to acknowledge and actually doing something positive for Indians are, however, entirely different matters. As Baines's account shows, the forces against which the Indians and their supporters are ranged are extremely powerful and influential. For a comparably damning account of state and development aid agencies' success in dominating the politics of Indian rights and foreclosing free and open debate, see David Price's Before the Bulldozer: the Nambiquara and the World Bank (1989, Seven Locks Press).
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