💬 Negotiating the non-negotiable

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Court reaches end of indigenous conciliation process, without conciliation

On Wednesday afternoon, members of a Supreme Court conciliation committee over indigenous land rights completed their final meeting of a process designed to come up with a legislative proposal to replace a highly controversial law passed in late 2023 — however, the bill is not yet complete, and both sides are far from reaching reconciliation.

However, while the bill currently being proposed would definitively do away with the notorious “time frame argument” for land rights, indigenous movements say it is no reason for celebration — and that the conciliation process and resulting legislation conceal a severe backsliding in rights for Brazil’s traditional communities.

In September 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that the time frame argument for indigenous territorial claims was unconstitutional. Known in Brazil as the marco temporal, the understanding sought to set October 5, 1988 — the date the current Brazilian Constitution was enacted — as the cut-off point for land rights. If an indigenous group were unable to provide concrete proof that it was occupying or contesting its ancestral land on that date, it would have no legal claim to the territory.

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