Brazil's plan for Indian-farmer land disputes faces opposition

The proposal from the Justice Ministry gives Indian affairs agency Funai the option to consult other branches of national and local governments before proposing new Indian territories. Farmers had wanted Funai, which they say threatens private property, to seek other opinions on new territories.
Brazil's 1988 constitution gives Indians the right to inhabit "the lands they traditionally occupy." The government asked Funai to identify ancestral land through anthropological studies and gave the Justice Ministry the job of approving Indian territories.
Brazil has an estimated 897,000 indigenous people, making up about 0.4 percent of the country's overall population, and about 13 percent of Brazil has been set aside for them. Most of that land is in the remote Amazon jungle but more recently Funai has proposed creating or expanding Indian territories on land used to produce soy, beef, sugar and other commodities.
Late last year the federal government evicted some 7,000 farm families and bulldozed a small town in order to return a slice of central Brazil to Xavante Indians who had been removed by a military dictatorship in the 1960s.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/05/us-brazil-indians-proposal-idUSBRE9B40P220131205