Brazil wants international agency to organize indigenous games

Sports Minister George Hilton said Brazil will put forward the proposal for the countries participating in the first edition of the World Indigenous Games to create an international agency to organize the event every three or four years. "We will make an inquiry to all countries and as soon as their national committees accept the possibility to create it, Brazil is already bidding to host the agency, because it performs a central role on indigenous culture issues," he declared.

The games will occur between October 23rd and November 1st, in Palmas, capital of Tocantins state, and will bring together 23 national indigenous peoples from 22 countries. In Brazil, ethnic groups were selected by the Intertribal Committee on Indigenous Memory and Science (ITC in the original acronym), which took into the ethnic geography and Brazil's biomes: Caatinga, Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, Amazon Rainforest, Pantanal and Pampas. To take part in the event, the indigenous people needed to be have their villages as their place of origin, to speak the native language of their community, and to know their own culture. Within the ethnic group, the cacique [leader of the group] and the head of delegation were responsible for recruiting athletes. The event is tly ed by the Sports Ministry and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

According to Hilton, Brazil has organized 12 national indigenous sporting events, and their main purpose was to celebrate the culture, and discuss vital issues and the demands of communities around the world, not the sporting dispute itself.  During the games, technical forums on topics such as health, education, family agriculture, land demarcation and digital inclusion will be provided, noted the minister in an interview to EBC on Thursday (Oct. 22).

To build the arena and all the sporting infrastructure, the ministry invested approximately $12.7 million. "We have all the necessary conditions to hold the event, not only thinking about traditional modalities, but other [modalities] that are truly indigenous and have no [official] competition as well. There are 22 countries and they will present some sort of modality that some of us may not be aware of," he said.

Translated by Amarílis Anchieta

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of several indigenous populations already in Brazil