Final Declaration of the Indigenous Peoples Participating in the Xingu Forever Alive Encounter, May 19-23, 2008

Date: 
Friday, May 23, 2008

We, peoples of the Xingu River, do not want to hear any more about this story of dams on the Xingu River.

We do not want our fish and our animals dead, and our children going hungry.

We want our forest to remain standing; we want our fishes alive, our game alive; we want our gardens and we want to keep our remedies.

We need the river to be clean in order to take a bath, and to drink water without getting sick.

For these reasons, we are saying once again that we do not want any dams on the Xingu River; we prohibit you from building any kind of dam on the Xingu River.

he small dams built in the lands of the Xingu Park have already begun to change the river; it has begun to dry up.

We want to live in peace; we do not want more aggression. Our rights must be respected. We want to stay on our lands, happy, celebrating with our children and grandchildren.

We do not want to have to always be going to cities to continually defend our rights. Our rights must be respected.

That´s all we have to say to you.

Altamira, Pará state, 23 May, 2008.