***The cholera epidemic which broke out in Peru has now reached the Amazon, where it threatens to exterminate indigenous populations. Marcos Terena, leader of Brazil’s Union of Indigenous Nations, writes that the threat to the Amazon tribes illustrates the histbric neglect of the world's indigenous peoples.

WHEN Tlkuna tribal leader Pedro Inacio sent Brazil's health ministry a document In January warning of a cholera following a similar outbreak in Peru, his letter was apparently seen as Just another report for the bureaucrats to file.

But Inacio knew what he was talking about.

The Ttkunas have lived for centuries along the Solimoes river, the point In the Amazon river from which the dreaded epidemic has spread, washed downstream and leaving devastation in its wake.

The Tlkuna people number some 25,000. A few have made their way to city hospitals where they have been diagnosed as having cholera.

This people, which has steadfastly fought for legal recognition of their lands, has managed to survive despite the almost complete lack of health, social and educational support from the government.

Tlkuna lands are under permanent threat of Invasion and exploitation by logging interests and other forest predators. That Is why the Tlkuna and other indigenous peoples regard the establishment of recognised territorial limits as a fundamental right.

The Portuguese who colonised Brazil found "lands as far as the eye could see". Indigenous lands were treated as If they had no owners.

Under Brazil's new constitution in 1988. the government is Obliged to demarcate these lands, and It has until October 1993 to do so.

The tracing of the bound arles of • Indigenous lands serves to protect and defend the indigenous family, as well represents formal recognition of ancestral holdings.

The Tikunas depend for their food on one of the great Amazon rivers and its tributaries and,’like these waters, they know no borders, even if the white man has divided them into lands called Brazil. Peru and Colombia.

Now cholera, the most feared modern-day plague, has arrived and with it, confirma tton of the Tlkuna leader's warning: the white man, with all his technological structures and progress, has not been able to halt the advance of the disease.

What the epidemic has shown is that the Tlkuna lack the adequate level of medical attention recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO). They have no clinic, not even a doctor. Their plight lays bare the fact that the government has no emergency mechanisms to extend aid to them or to other indigenous peoples.

At the beginning to the year, Brazil’s indigenous com munities presented the government with a project to create a general assistance network, directly linked with the office of the president.

They also called for the creation of new bodies to safeguard their cultural and .recreational heritage, including de fence of the environment, to* Inject a moral code Into the National Indian Foundation (Funai) and strengthen defence of their rights.

They were ignored. Not only did the government maintain Funai despite Its Inefficiency. it also proceeded to strip the foundation of any power It had to defend indlge nous Interests.

The question of demarcating land boundaries passed to an tnter-ministerlal group, educational assistance was frans ferred to the education min Istry and medical programmes came under the health ministry.

The problem Is that these ministries are not familiar with the special characteristics of the different Indigenous peoples. and their inefficiency Is highlighted by the long queues outside hospitals and other community assistance centres.

The only time indigenous people receive attention or concern Is when catastrophe strikes. This is the history of the TUpinamba, the Yanomami. the Kai was and, now, the I Tlkuna.

The whole world is showing its concern for environmental Issues, with the future of the Amazon a number one concern. Yet here we are today, poised to watch the spread of an epidemic through the waters and winds of the Amazon, which started off decimating the peoples on the Pacific Coast and will probably cross the entire Amazon region before hitting the Atlantic coast

The Amazon shelters indigenous peoples which have preserved thetr natural lifeways. These communities have preferred to organise themselves into small, agile groups that permits them to flee and avoid meeting the white man That Is why communities do not exceed 500 people, and even these groups are almost always subdivided into villages

These Indigenous people have no contact with whites, nor do they speak Western languages. Hut they will Ine vltably be affected by the same cholera that has frightened civilised man.

The region most threatened by cholera is home not only to the 25,000 Tlkuna* but also to some 5,000 other indigenous peoples — including members of the Marubo, Mati*. Kubna. Urubo, Mayoruna.

Apurlnan. Januunadi and Katuklna tribes — used to living tn complete isolation in the heart of the Amazon jungle Only recently have they come into contact with whittes