Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
coincidence that little legal progress had been made on the land claim
since 1997. Regardless, the Totobiegosode right to land was indisputable
and assured by both national and international law.
Assisted by an international law specialist, in 2007 Jochade, Dejai,
Yakayabi and I traveled to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Is-
sues in New York to present the Totobiegosode land claim case. While at
the meeting, we met up with Indigenous leaders from Ecuador and Peru.
These leaders were in the process of forming an international coalition in
defense of isolated people's rights with funds from the same groups I had
met earlier at the UN Regional Seminar. At the time, Iniciativa Amotoc-
odie was actively excluding the Totobiegosode from international venues
where “isolation” was being discussed. Instead, this NGO was promoting
UNAP as the sole representative of all concealed Ayoreo, a position the
Totobiegosode stridently rejected. After all, among the leaders of UNAP
were people who had actively hunted down Totobiegosode bands and
captured them. At the Permanent Forum, we were able to make our case,
and we invited the Ecuadorian and Peruvian leaders to include a visit to
the Totobiegosode communities on the agenda for an impending trip to
Paraguay. When the leaders followed through with their promise several
months later, I thought it was a success.
The visitors arrived at Chaidi. Few of the former Areguede'urasade
joined the meeting. Those that did sat quietly in the background. After
the usual pleasantries, the visitors described their initiative. They said it
was funded by the IDB and that it aimed to assert Indigenous protago-
nism in protecting the rights of isolated peoples. They invited OPIT and
the Totobiegosode leaders to join their coalition. During the subsequent
discussion, Dejai performed a dual discourse. He used the occasion to
deliver a message in Ayoreo about what it meant to remain in the forest,
even while he agreed in Spanish to sign the convention to protect them.
While leaders like Dejai may interpret contact in distinct terms, they are
also keenly aware it has become an effective way to be Indigenous.
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In this case, the legal category of isolation and its translation by NGOs
often created the problems it presumed to solve. Totobiegosode people
were forced to respond to this external image of themselves as one of the
only possible resources for gaining financial or political leverage in the
severely attenuated spaces of post-contact life or as a form of moral rea-
soning to which they stood in principled opposition or both at the same
time. For many Totobiegosode managing isolation was part of the daily
pragmatics of survival. This paradoxical situation was possible because,
on a transnational scale, legitimate Ayoreo life was increasingly intel-
ligible only as isolated life.
