A’uwẽ‑Xavante campaign opposes megaprojects that fragment Ró and threaten dreaming

The useful part

This article, written by Djalma Ramalho (Aranã Caboclo), was originally published on the Cultural Survival website on August 17, 2026. Under a heavy sky, on the shores of Lake Léman in Geneva, Switzerland, red words cut across the landscape. There can be no legitimate development when its realization depends on the destruction of the material, spiritual, and political conditions that sustain a people's existence.

How it works

• In her research on dream performance among the A'uwẽ-Xavante, anthropologist Laura Graham demonstrates that dreams establish relationships among the living, ancestors, and immortal beings.
• Dreaming is not a metaphor For the A'uwẽ-Xavante people, dreaming is a concrete dimension of social, spiritual, and political life.
• Songs received during sleep are shared with the community and may become collective performances that bring together narrative, music, dance, memory, and cultural continuity.
• In recent years, according to the leaders who developed the campaign, dreams have also begun to convey warnings related to growing pressures on their territories.
• To defend the right to dream, then, is to defend the territorial conditions that make dreaming possible.

What to take from it

By advancing the project without ensuring adequate free, prior, and informed consultation, the Brazilian state has failed to protect the rights of Indigenous peoples. You can support this coverage by donating here. It would also cut across relationships that cannot be contained within the administrative boundaries drawn by the state.

Example or evidence

• It is republished here in an edited version with permission.
• This post is part of Global Voices' August 2026 Spotlight series, " Indigenous Rights." This series offers insight into the lives and experiences of Indigenous peoples to build connections across regions,...
• The FICO Railway is a federal project of approximately 1,641 kilometers (1,020 miles) under the responsibility of Infra S.A.
• Studies and administrative processes related to the route have identified Xavante territories within its area of influence, raising serious concerns about territorial, environmental, social, and cultural...

Details worth keeping

The dreamer, therefore, does not appear as the individual owner of a creation, but rather as a mediator of knowledge that belongs to, and circulates among, the people as a whole, and becomes part of the community's living heritage. Presented by the Brazilian government as a strategic project to reduce logistics costs and expand freight rail transport, it is part of a broader corridor designed primarily to move soybeans, corn, and other commodities produced in the region. Its first section, covering approximately 363 kilometers (226 miles), between Mara Rosa, in the state of Goiás, and Água Boa, Mato Grosso state, is currently being built by the mining company Vale as compensation for the early renewal of another concession.

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