A Mebengokre Indian Village Goes Online
Wakonti-re Kukoipati & Kruapreti Bepkangati
photocredit: © Christine Burril / N-Imagens (nimagens@uol.com.br)
Members of Pukanu, a Mebengokre Indian village in Brazil, started the Pykany Trading Company to create sustainable business for their community. Now they are taking it online and setting an example for other small communities throughout South America.
Linda Jerome
and
Saulo Petean
Living deep in the Amazon rainforest, the Indians of Pukanu village took to the Internet to describe how they developed a rainforest-sustainable source of income in the global economy by negotiating a long-term contract with the British retailer Body Shop to export Brazil nut oil produced in a tiny factory for use in a worldwide line of hair and skin products.
Their Brazil nut oil business has attracted worldwide press attention since a description of its workings was chosen as the best case study entered in the first Fidamerica electronic conference of indigenous peoples and peasant communities. Fidamerica is supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad), an agency of the United Nations. [1]
One of the community groups from 18 Latin American countries taking part in the 1996 conference, the indigenous enterprise shared its socioeconomic development experiences with a 110-member working group of community leaders, field advisors, economists, aid officials, policy makers and academic researchers from around the world.
Conference participants faced numerous hazards before logging on. Chief Pykati-re of Pukanu village made several two-hour trips by single-engine Cessna across 240 miles of rainforest to connect with the Internet by plugging his community's Macintosh PowerBook into a phone line in the city of Redenção.
Other groups had to deal with power outages caused by electrical storms in Huehuetenango, Guatemala—also known as the "Capital of Thunderstorms"—and by Hurricane Hortense in the Dominican Republic. All obstacles surmounted, everyone came together to discuss the rural poor's common problems and to suggest solutions.
The sponsors of the Fidamerica network were surprised by the successful networking skills the participants displayed. The Pukanu village residents, for example, used the opportunity to explain their plan to set out on the road to a dignified life, stop the destruction of the rainforest, and develop an ethical and fair commercial partnership.
The First Fidamerica Electronic Conference and Pukanu village chief Pykati-re Kayapo's Internet skills have since become a paradigm of how the Internet can be utilized by even the smallest players in the global economy to find financing and technical assistance to set up their own company and locate an international partner to buy their products.
In June 1997, the World Bank and the government of Canada co-sponsored the Knowledge for Development in the Information Age Conference in Toronto, Canada, which was attended by nearly 2,000 participants from around the world and focused on the challenges facing developing countries at the end of the 20th century and the dawn of the information age.
In a front-page, July 7, 1997, Wall Street Journal article, Bernard Wysocki Jr., comments upon how Chief Pykati-re's participation in the Fidamerica Conference captured the imagination of those present at the Toronto conference as "just a tiny example of how the latest information technology might improve the lot of the rural poor."
"How much can the rural poor realistically gain from the Internet and modern telecommunications technology?" asks Heather Bourbeau in the August 12, 1997, Financial Times of London, questioning the "big leap" needed by developing countries to close the information gap between rich and poor peoples and nations.
Some participants at the Toronto conference suggested that simpler communication technology, such as the wind-up radio, would better serve the purpose. "You need to do both," stated James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, offering India as an example of a country that has both an educated elite involved with the latest communication technology and a poor majority with simpler needs.
Whatever the future role of the Internet in solving the problems of the rural poor, the Pykany Trading Company team's participation in the Fidamerica conference has brought it recognition, both as a small enterprise doing business in the global marketplace and as a practical example of development strategy for other indigenous and peasant communities.
As these experiments spread, they can form a body of best practices for even the most basic sorts of enterprises. And as they circulate via the Internet, they will bring the power of information, once reserved for giants, to even the smallest players in the global economy.
The Indigenous
CompanyIn 1992, Pukanu villagers set up the trading company as means of freeing themselves from financial dependence upon the gold miners and loggers working inside their forest reserve, a 49,000-square-kilometer [18,900-square-mile] area, called the Mekranoti, which was demarcated by the Brazilian government in 1994. [2]
The Pykany Trading Company, which functions under the principle "one village community, two systems," was formed to meet long-term business objectives, thus turning into reality the dream of nearly every indigenous community: locating an international partner who will provide help in financing a sustainable business.
Once provided with technical assistance and a market for its products, the business was structured so that the Mebengokre could gain sufficient skills to run their own trade activities through a partnership of 34 villagers operating under the rules of the traditional community association.
The villagers honed the skills necessary for dealing directly with the market economy as equals, finding a market for a natural resource which they consider the heritage of future generations, and creating a sustainable form of economic development which would allow them to stop, or at least diminish, the pace of rainforest destruction by loggers and miners.
The growing power of "green consumers"—and their influence in preserving the forests and protecting endangered indigenous forest populations—is a factor in setting the price of Brazil nut oil without dependence upon intermediaries and a reason the British company agreed to pay a higher market price for the high-quality oil.
Not only did the buyer offer to pay the costs of long-term, interest-free financing for the Pykany Trading Company enterprise, it also paid for a consultant to work full time with the village residents until they had attained the skills needed to run the enterprise on their own and to distribute profits under job assignments consensus.
The village's status as preferential partner contributed towards the success of the undertaking, since the importer guaranteed the product a market for 15 years, underwrote the Mebengokre until they could achieve financial autonomy, and supplied technical aid and training to assure the product quality required.
The enterprise's managers are chosen every two years by consensus, according to the criteria of competence, trustworthiness, and willingness to exercise the duty. Uncompensated for their organizational work, the directors also take part in the Brazil nut harvest groups and oil manufacturing. They are paid only for their production work.
The Brazil nut oil extraction factory consists of two mechanical presses, 40 shelling machines and six nut grinding machines, four pots to heat the nut mass, and ten filter drums. The factory is housed in a 26- x 46-foot building constructed according to traditional techniques, with mud walls and a straw roof.
A cement floor was added to ensure the necessary cleanliness. To maintain high quality, the community built water tanks near the production unit, and in the following years the use of these tanks, and also of septic latrines, was extended to all the houses in the village.
One Community,
Two SystemsThe role of the business is better understood if it is seen symbolically as the coat and tie that Brazilian men are required to do in order to be admitted to governmental agency offices. The Mebengokre acquire the legal garments necessary to export Brazil nut oil and wear them to enter the Brazilian integrated foreign trade system: Brazilian commercial law governs the Pykany Trading Company's participation in the market economy.
Within Pukanu village, however, the company—formed exclusively by Indians residing there—is governed by the social organization, objectives and traditional communal laws of the village. Residents take off their symbolic coats and ties and wear their body paint as they make the decisions about production, marketing, investments, and profit distribution that remain under the control of the indigenous community's traditional systems and norms.
The traditional Pukanu village decision-making process certainly did not previously include terms like "marketing" and "profit distribution," nor did past community meetings center upon whether or not to make an investment, but now the existing institutions decide how profits are to be distributed: once those who participated in gathering the nuts and producing the oil are paid, the money is distributed according to the rules of kinship.
The entire process extends over eight months and involves two traditional kinship groups (moieties), composed of approximately 100 men and women in recent years, who collect nuts in the forest, transport them to the village and produce Brazil nut oil for sale.
The villagers must gather twenty tons of nuts yearly to produce two tons of Brazil nut oil. Once the work crews bring the Brazil nuts back to the village, the work shifts to the oil extraction process, conducted in the months of August and September, after the nuts have been left to dry under the village sun during the months of May, June and July, the time of little rain.
The business has meant an average increase of 70 additional workdays on the community calendar of annual activities—five weeks dedicated to Brazil nut collection and five weeks, to oil production. Since collecting Brazil nuts is a traditional village activity, the impact of this change on the community has been lessened.
While camping in the forest during the months of March and April, the Mebengokre dedicate part of their time to collecting Brazil nuts for oil production and part to hunting and to collecting the basket-making materials and the plants used in village work and traditional medicine.
The income obtained from the Brazil nut exports is managed by the business directors under the coordination of the communal association and effectively reaches the hands of those who conduct the Brazil nut harvest expedition, transport the nuts to the village, extract the oil, and deliver it for exportation.
When the enterprise was established, the 34 partners represented a significant part of the community (chiefs, warriors and youth), but their number was limited because the other villagers interested in participating in the enterprise did not hold the valid Brazilian identification documents required by legislation.
In view of this document problem, the community opened participation in the Brazil nut oil business to all the village members, regardless of whether or not they were partners in the enterprise. The collective team is chosen from among all village residents and organizes resource production, sales and management.
Like subsistence planting, hunting group expeditions, and nomination festivals, the company business became one of the indigenous community's principal activities during its annual life cycle. Bekwyi-i, Bekwyi-ti and Pykati-re, the three village chiefs, coordinate their respective production groups, each aided by two assistants.
Careful Profit
DistributionArrival of the export payment—which usually occurs in the month of October—is the high point of the Brazil nut business, but during the eight-month Brazil-nut oil production cycle the Pykany Trade Company workers begin each work day by discussing how the money will be used.
Since earning money for the individual and collective needs of the community is the enterprise's principal purpose, this daily discussion is a key component in the production process because group unity could be undermined by any future doubts about the proper management and distribution of the company's finances.
Production expenses are recorded in a cash book by the financial directors Doto Takak-ire and Teka-re Kayapo, who give an accounting as often as necessary so that the production groups can plan the allocation of money to individual distribution, to the investments to improve the community's standard of living, and to an emergency expense fund.
With the members of the village production groups and chiefs in attendance, the decision-making process culminates in a meeting lasting for one or two days, which is held in the "men's house" (ngabe), a space in the center of the village reserved for the men's gatherings but where the women also are present when important decisions are made.
At the meeting the directors use a blackboard to display the balance of the receipts and the expenditures: the total amount of money obtained from exportation; the expenditures summarized by item; and the balance on hand. The corroboration of the expenditures remains available for detailed verification in the meeting room awaiting final approval.
The accounting period covers the production season lasting from March to October. Group members evaluate the results and explain their proposals, while the chiefs and assistants lead the discussion of the various distribution and investment ideas to be approved by community consensus. Everyone has the right to speak with no time limit.
Profits are distributed to individuals according to each member's participation in the collection of Brazil nuts in the forest (measured in sacks collected); and in the production of Brazil nut oil, its exportation, and the management of the business (measured in days of work). The money is then distributed according to the rules of kinship.
Sales for the accounting period of May 12 to October 30, 1995, for example, were US$ 68,230.00. After covering the expenses of production and the needs of the village (US$ 31,701.77), the 63 men and 39 women received US$ 34,025.00 as individual profit distribution, based upon each person's participation in the nut collection and the oil production.
In the last five years, income has been utilized in the following proportions: 40% to be distributed among the members of the production groups according to the amount of work accomplished by each member; and 60% to go towards investments and community expenses, including money set aside for the next year's Brazil nut harvest.
Community expenditures sustained by the enterprise include air transport, medicine purchases, treatment and lodging for sick Indians in the city of Redenção, hospital stays, supplies and ammunition for the hunting expeditions, and expenses for fuel and maintenance for the village electricity generator.
The community utilized a portion of their first year's profits from the Brazil nut oil business to buy an iron-sided boat with a 12-ton capacity and a 116-horsepower MWM motor, valued at US$ 30,000; two pieces of radio-communication equipment; and solar energy panels.
The business has meant an increase of approximately US$ 70,000 in the community's annual gross income. Yearly exports average 2,000 kilos (4,400 pounds) of Brazil nut oil at the price of US$ 35 per kilo. Managed by the directors under control of the communal association, the money all goes to the benefit of the indigenous community.
Responding
to CriticsBut the Pykany Trading Company was not created merely as a source of income. It was also founded as a response to media accusations that the Mebengokre were enriching themselves at the expense of plundering their natural resources. Earlier in the decade, newspaper, magazine and television reports in Brazil, the USA and Europe accused "the icons of the global green movement" of destroying their own forest and environment.
Matt Moffett, writing in the December 29, 1994, Wall Street Journal and referring to the Mebengokre as "the Kayapo," explained that in the late 1980s the Indians leaped to the center of the international environmental debate with their opposition to a hydroelectric project that would have submerged a vast expanse of the rainforest.
"But now," Moffett continued, "the erstwhile environmental heroes have acquired a less flattering moniker, `Kayapo Inc.'" He maintained that the chiefs of the Mebengokre villages were cutting illegal deals with loggers and miners who had set their sights on the natural resources in the Mebengokre reserve.
In a follow-up story, the Brazilian newspaper Gazeta Mercantil proclaimed the Mekranoti Reserve and the protection given by the government to the Indians a national scandal and added, "Ten square kilometers [4 square miles] of land were distributed per Indian, or, in other words, including women, children and the newborn."
Portraying the Mebengokre as multimillionaires and owners of a considerable parcel of the national territory and calling this land distribution "mouth watering," the Gazeta Mercantil observes, "In President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's government, the theft of public heritage disguised as aid to the Indians cannot continue."
Four months later, Chief Pykati-re Kayapo toured five European countries—Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Holland and the United Kingdom—to respond to the accusations directed against the Mebengokre and to explain Pukanu village's successful entry into the global economy.
At the United Nations' Geneva session of the Working Group of Indigenous Populations, he declared, "In the same mistaken way that the non-Indians have mixed up even the name by which we are known, by calling us the `Kayapo,' even though we call ourselves the `Mebengokre,' we are now being mistaken for those who are destroying the forest and contaminating the rivers of the Amazon."
In addition he stated, "It was the economic activity of the non-Indians infiltrating our lands that led to the cutting down of the forest in order to extract gold and timber. Brazilian farmers have destroyed large tracts of Amazônia for pasture to breed cattle. Traditional Mebengokre culture lives off the forest without destroying it."
Chief Pykati-re blamed the economic expansion into the rainforest for the depredation of the Mebengokre Reserve's natural resources:
"Instead of fulfilling its obligation of protecting and giving education and health care to the indigenous peoples, the Brazilian government has abandoned us in the face of the advance of prospectors, timber companies and commercial farmers on our lands.
"Without the training that would have permitted a more controlled use of our natural resources and prevented the destruction of the forest and the pollution of the rivers, we were forced into accepting the deals proposed by the miners and timber companies in return for small commissions on the gold and timber extracted from our lands.
"Without assistance from the government to regulate these activities and control the white man's economy, we have never been able to tell exactly how much gold and wood is being extracted from our land nor the value of the goods which we receive in payment."
With their use of the Internet to make public the internal workings of the Pykany Trading Company, the inhabitants of Pukanu village are continuing this campaign to show the world that they can be responsible players in the global marketplace, while at the same time preserving their customs and traditions.
Who Are the
Mebengokre?Pertaining to the Ge linguistic family and the Macro-Ge language group, they call themselves the "Men'bengokre," which means "people from within or between the water(s)," and reside in 25 villages, each one constituting a politically and economically independent unit and social organization.
Often referred to as the "Kayapo," they are a group of nearly 4,500 Indians occupying the indigenous reserves of Bakaja, Bau, Kayapo, Kararao, Katete and Mekranoti, located in an area measuring approximately 120,000 square kilometers (46,000 square miles) in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Pará and the northern part of Mato Grosso State.
Before contact with mainstream Brazilian society, the Mebengokre relationship system was characterized by matrilocal residence and movement between group hunting expeditions and base villages. Relationships also focused upon institutions emphasizing categories of age, gender, communal association and ceremonial moiety structures.
The most radical change caused by the Mebengokre's fairly recent contact with mainstream society was the loss of their relative self-sufficiency. Coming in part from their need to defend themselves against the advancing settlers, this change was also due to their growing dependency upon Brazilian society for essential goods, like guns and tools, as well as for "luxury" items, like beads and cloth.
The Mebengokre were one of the last indigenous peoples in Brazil to establish peaceful relations with Brazilian society. But even before this occurred in the 1950s, the Mebengokre had begun to leave behind their previous way of life as socially, politically and culturally autonomous groups based upon a system of large communities in which the villages had two "men's houses" in the east and west parts of the plaza surrounded by three concentric circles of houses
The internal structural changes and the functional adaptations that took place in Mebengokre society, such as the dependence upon Brazilian goods and technology, occurred—or, in most cases, at least began— before peaceful contact was established because the Mebengokre's attacks upon, and other conflicts with, Brazilian society were, above all, caused by the Indians' wish to obtain that society's goods.
For the Mebengokre, therefore, the treaties signified nothing more than the continuation of the war by other means but with the same objective: obtaining guns, tools, beads, cloth, flashlights, medicine, services. This explains why one group after another entered into peaceful contract with Brazilian society so rapidly.
Along with the increase in contacts and the lessening of external hostilities, changes in the Mebengokre's social organization acquired a new dimension and significance. The inability to reproduce the original community's customary structure of halves (moiety structure) brought about a marked reduction of the groups' mobility, both in terms of the physical relocation of villages and in terms of the frequency and duration of the community hunting and collection expeditions.
This fragmentation into smaller communities resulted in the accumulation of private property in the form of Brazilian merchandise, the consequent erosion of the extended matri-uxorilocal family, and a growth in the importance of communitarian rituals to counterbalance the centrifugal tendency brought about by contact with Brazilian society.
The Indians and
Brazil NutsTraditionally the Mebengokre collect Brazil nuts (pi-y) to eat and to extract nut oil (pi-y kango) used in body massage as treatment for physical and nervous exhaustion. Fond of the taste of unripe Brazil nuts, the Indians climbed the trees to pick them. This technique proved to be rather dangerous and is no longer used; the nuts are now collected after they fall to the floor.
In the 1960s and 1970s the Brazilian Federal Indian Agency (Funai), the executive agency of the Brazilian federal government's indigenous policy, compelled the Mebengokre to collect Brazil nuts at a low rate of pay. At that time Funai sold about 300 tons of Brazil nuts annually to exporters in the city of Belém.
At the end of the 70s, unhappy with the low price and with their relegation to the position of mere Funai employees, a status which ignored their legal standing as owners of the natural resources existing on their lands, the indigenous communities halted their Brazil nut work.
At that time the Assurini Indians in the Xingu River basin and the Parakateje, Kuikateje and Suruí in the Tocantins River basin were also engaged in Brazil nut collection. In 1975, the latter three groups declared their independence from Funai and until 1979 ran the entire Brazil nut business themselves, beginning with collection in the forest and ending with sale to the exporters in the city of Belém.
Nowadays, Brazil nuts constitute one of the most important non-timber forest products to local extractive communities for both subsistence and commercial purposes. A large number of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in the central and eastern Amazon region subsist either partially or entirely upon Brazil nut harvest and sales.
Several new Amazon extractive reserves have been decreed or proposed in recent years with the sole purpose of safeguarding these traditional practices. Brazil nuts have become a key forest product since the end of World War II brought about the collapse of the second Amazon rubber boom due to the scarcity of Asia rubber.
[This article was written at the request of the Mebengokre Indians living in Pukanu village to make public the internal workings of the Pykany Trading Company. The information given and opinions expressed are the sole responsibility of the authors.]
[1] The authors of the prize-winning case study are Pykati-re Kayapo, chief of Pukanu village and president of Pykany Trading Company; Doto Takak-ire, financial director; Claudia L'Amoreaux, web consultant; Aldo Gamboa, journalist; Renato Athias, anthropologist; and Saulo Petean, indigenous peoples specialist.
Fidamerica, a network of 28 projects and institutions in 17 countries, is dedicated to fighting rural poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean by means of improving information and knowledge systems to increase the efficiency and the impact of sustainable agricultural development initiatives in poor rural areas.
Twenty-seven organizations from 14 Latin American countries submitted case studies to the conference. Fidamerica maintains an English-language Website (http://www.fidamerica.cl/fidaing.htm ) and has posted the Pykany Trading Company case study in English (http://www.fidamerica.cl/wbrasili.html) and in Spanish (http://www.fidamerica.cl/te2p51.htm).
[2] Located in the southern part of Pará State, 240 miles west of the city of Redenção, Pukanu village is situated on the left bank of the Iriri River, a tributary of the Xingu River.
© Copyright by Linda Jerome and Saulo Petean
Linda Jerome (lindajerome@compuserve.com) is an American freelance translator of Portuguese and Spanish. Her translation of The Man Who Dribbled Time by Cristovam Buarque, the ex-governor of Brasília, is in press. Her study of Latin American dictator novels, Iludidos por uma Civilização de Empréstimo [Led Astray by a Borrowed Culture], may be published in Brazil.
Saulo Petean (saulopet@hotmail.com), a 47-year-old Brazilian, has lived and worked with indigenous peoples for two decades. From 1990 to 1996 he was contracted by Body Shop to mediate and help the trade links with the Mebengokre. Currently he acts as an independent consultant researching ethical markets for Indian communities.
This article was first published in Brazzil, February 1999.
