Permanent Secretariat

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© Generalitat de Catalunya 2008

Since the Portuguese discovered Brazil in 1500 and began to exploit the natural resources that the paradisiacal country presented, its original inhabitants were treated indiscriminately as Indians and they were submitted to an enslavement and acculturation process. The implication of that procedure is observed even nowadays - extinction of several povos (denomination attributed to several tribes spread over Brazilian territory) and their habits and customs were adapted to the white man's culture that holds the strength and power. During several centuries which followed the discovery, Brazilian territory was allotted, exploited and also cultivated by colonizers initially, and at the end of the 19th century by immigrants from different countries - Italians, Japanese, Spaniards, Poles - granting to the indigenous population the situation of invaders, and as such, subjected to be banished from the land that belonged to them and their ancestors. Five hundred years have gone by since the indians' condition changed from land owners to invaders. Nowadays the Indian along with their cultural manifestation have been included in environmental and animal's preservation projects. Several povos are more organized now and they are conscious of their roles to pursuit ways to guarantee their rights which have been taken away from them along the centuries. They try to rebuild the group identity which has been attacked in different ways since the process of catechesis and Christianization developed by Jesuit priests, which has changed their eating habits and the way they dress as well as going though polytheism to monotheism and from semi-nomadism to settlements in specific areas in Brazilian territory. The huge diversity of Indian people makes the word índio to have similar meaning of "human being" to refer to men and women from different places of the planet. The rescue of their identity and the preservation of their ancestral cultures have been widespread among the nations in search of events to join them and to exchange information. An example of this effort is the Indigenous People Games, that is a cultural and sporting event to celebrate and to fraternize the indigenous people. In its fifth edition, the most important thing is to take part in the event that in addition to the sporting competitions, it has other cultural activities like singing and dancing as well as handcraft exhibition and body paintings and plumage contest. In order to celebrate a great gathering the Indigenous People Games bring back the concept of arête which is fundamental to the Olympic Movement history and an existential condition of man in the Homeric period which established indelibly the Olympic proposal and the heroic condition of those athletes.