page_title: Xingu Indigenous Park
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Xingu Indigenous Park / History
caption_attribution_description: Flauta Uruá. Aldeia Kamaiurá, Alto-Xingu autor: Noel Villas Bôas 1998 A história é muito interessante e esta pagina traz muitas informações sobre o Parque Nacional do Xingú. Com certeza é uma bela fonte de estudo!
context_page_description: The Xingu Indigenous Park is an indigenous territory of Brazil, first created in 1961 as a national park in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Its official purposes are to protect the environment and the several tribes of Xingu indigenous peoples in the area.
context_section_description: The national park was created after a campaign by the Villas-Bôas brothers for protection of the region. 
  An account of the exploration of this area by the Villas-Bôas brothers and their efforts to protect the region is documented in the film Xingu (2012) and in the book by John Hemming, 'People of the Rainforest: The Villas Boas Brothers, Explorers and Humanitarians of the Amazon' (London, 2019).
  The Villas Boas and three anthropologists and activists had the radical idea of creating a vast area of forest protected solely for its indigenous inhabitants and invited scientists.  This was put to the vice president of Brazil in 1952, at which a much larger park was proposed. However, the proposal was opposed by the state of Mato Grosso which began granting land within the proposed area to colonizing companies. Nine years of bitter political and media struggle ensued, until a new president of Brazil, Janio Quadros (a family friend of the Villas Boas) rammed it through as a presidential decree, but at a greatly reduced area to satisfy the state government. The park came into existence by decree 50.455 of 14 April 1961. (Adjustments were made on 31 July 1961, 6 August 1968 and 13 July 1971. The final demarcation of the perimeter was made in 1978.)
  The area was soon given the designation of "Indigenous Park" to cover the dual purpose of protecting the environment and the indigenous people, with all others excluded. It was the first such vast protected area in the world, and was the prototype of large indigenous territories throughout Amazonia which now protect a significant proportion of surviving tropical rain forests.  The Xingu Indigenous Park was initially a presidential department, but is now subject to both the indigenous agency Funai and the environmental agency Ibama.
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  By the late 1990s livestock and soya farms to the north east of the park were starting to reach the park, as was deforestation to the west of the park. The effects of human activity outside the park were starting to pollute the waters of the park.
  The park remains as an island of forest and rivers increasingly threatened by polluting activity and deforestation outside its perimeter.
caption: Kamaiurá village at Xingu, yard. Indigenous people playing the uruá flute.
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