In Mato Grosso do Sul state, around 100 Indigenous individuals from the Guyraroká community of the Guarani-Kaiowá people are confined to an area of 50 hectares (123 acres) on the edge of a road, surrounded by soybean and corn plantations. Meanwhile, in Minas Gerais state, the Krenak are fighting to reclaim the area where their cemeteries and sacred sites are located. They still experience the effects of the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964-85, when Indigenous peoples were tortured, enslaved and forced from their territories. “The state will always be indebted to us, Indigenous peoples,” says Erileide Domingues, a young leader at the Guyraroká Indigenous land. In early April, the Krenak and Guyraroká communities received the first collective amnesties in the country’s history — previously, amnesties had only been granted on an individual basis. The recognition was established by the Amnesty Commission attached to the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship, which was created in 2002 to shed light on the dictatorship’s crimes. It is a formal apology from the Brazilian state. “The recognition of collective reparation will not erase the incarceration, murders and torture committed,” Brazil’s Minister of Indigenous Peoples Sonia Guajajara wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “But it is an important step toward memory and justice, and a way for us to mark the severe persecution we suffered during that very violent period in Brazil’s history.” For the leaders of both peoples, however, true reparation will come when their territories stolen by the Brazilian state are returned.…This article was originally published on Mongabay