Letter: Return To Brazil

In an article by Michael McRae, "Ethnobiologist Forced From Brazil After Harassment By Authorities" (The Scientist, Sept. 18, 1989, page 1), it was reported that I had been forced out of Brazil owing to my activism on behalf of native rights. It is true that I, along with two Kayap¢ Indian chiefs, Paulinho Paiakan and Kube-I, were threatened with three-year prison terms and expulsion from the country because of a trip to the World Bank to try to stop the world's largest hydroelectric proje

Written byDarrell Posey

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In an article by Michael McRae, "Ethnobiologist Forced From Brazil After Harassment By Authorities" (The Scientist, Sept. 18, 1989, page 1), it was reported that I had been forced out of Brazil owing to my activism on behalf of native rights. It is true that I, along with two Kayap¢ Indian chiefs, Paulinho Paiakan and Kube-I, were threatened with three-year prison terms and expulsion from the country because of a trip to the World Bank to try to stop the world's largest hydroelectric project from inundating vast areas of indigenous lands. However, the case was dropped after much Brazilian and international protest.

I am currently in Germany as a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and will remain as visiting researcher at the Zoologische Staatssammlung in Munich for one year. Although my original request to the Brazilian government, by which I am employed as a titled researcher at the ...

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