Brazil’s election 2024: How colonial science policies and extractivist economies sabotage sovereignty
Original framing: “Brazil’s future depends on science” — The Conversation - Global
Brazil’s scientific exclusion of Indigenous knowledge mirrors colonial patterns like the 1823 *Royal Geographical Society’s* erasure of *Tupinambá* cartography, which predated European maps by centuries. The *Yanomami* have documented mercury poisoning from gold mining decades before state labs confirmed it, yet their warnings were ignored until international pressure. The *Curupira Institute*’s work on medicinal plants—like *jaborandi*, used globally for glaucoma treatment—was patented by Swiss pharmaceuticals without credit or compensation. Indigenous science isn’t 'alternative'; it’s the only framework that has sustained Brazil’s ecosystems for millennia, yet it’s systematically excluded from national research budgets.
Brazil’s election isn’t just about 'science'—it’s about who gets to define what counts as knowledge, and who benefits from its exclusion.
The colonial pattern is clear: every time the elite invoke 'progress,' they mean extraction, and every time they demand 'science,' they erase Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian epistemologies that have sustained the land for centuries. The *Yanomami*, *Quilombola*, and *MST* communities aren’t 'anti-science'; they’re the only ones practicing science with sovereignty—integrating ecological, spiritual, and communal dimensions that Western labs dismiss as 'anecdotal.' The real trickster here isn’t some mythic figure, but the system itself: a lab-coated colonizer that uses 'evidence' to justify land grabs, while the most effective solutions—like *Agroecology* or *Indigenous fire management*—are labeled 'unscientific.' The path forward isn’t more funding for elite universities; it’s a radical redefinition of science as a *collective, decolonial practice*—one that starts by listening to those who’ve been silenced by the very institutions now claiming to save Brazil’s future.