Few sporting pleasures can rival th

Few sporting pleasures can rival that of the post-victory brag. Shortly after the Kuikoro had seen off their Amazonian rivals, the Karajá, in arguably the most hotly anticipated event of the first World Games for Indigenous Peoples, the tug-of-war, one of the athletes could not resist emphasising the ease of their 40-second victory. “It was really simple,” Pique Kuikoro said. “To win, you just have to stay prepared, breathe at the right time and keep your feet planted in the sand.” Not all the games at this nine-day event in Palmas, a sleepy city in the sweltering agricultural heartland of Brazil, are quite so straightforward. There’s football, of course, and archery, but also spear-throwing, log-carrying andxiknahiti – a game that’s like football but played on all fours and only with the head. Almost 2,000 competitors from over 20 countries, from the Aeta people of the Philippines to the Neyihaw of Canada’s Saskatchewan province have gathered for a series of sporting contests billed as the indigenous Olympics. Unlike the Olympics, the goal of the event is not to win medals – after all, every participant will be entitled to one – but to raise awareness of indigenous culture worldwide.
On Saturday, a protester from the Enawenê-Nawê people in the central-western state of Mato Grosso was shot during a confrontation with a group of farmers and lorry drivers. Last Thursday, a group of more than 100 activists from indigenous groups and social movements invaded the local assembly in Mato Grosso do Sul to call for a boycott of the state’s agricultural products due to a land dispute.
“Given the context of the current situation in Brazil, we are strongly critical of these games,” Cléber Buzzato, the executive secretary of Cimi, said. “The government is trying to promote the idea that we celebrate indigenous peoples, while in reality both their rights and sometimes their actual bodies are under attack.”
The games have coincided with a string of protests against PEC215, a constitutional amendment currently being debated in congress which would strip the federal government of its powers to demarcate indigenous territories, handing them instead to a legislature stacked with deputies funded by the agricultural industry. It would also grant congress the power to revise the boundaries of pre-existing reserves.