Brazil’s indigenous art fair celebrates traditional life

World Today

An art fair is running parallel to the first-ever World Indigenous Games taking place in Palmas, Brazil. The area is a remote and is a rare opportunity for native people from around the world to showcase the beauty and the color of their different crafts.

Participants come from some 20 nations, but all are struggling against financial and social forces to hold on to their traditional ways of life.

Many indigenous people still have traditional lifestyles, where arts and crafts play a huge role in their livelihood. The challenge however, is creating a bigger market for their products.

It is a global phenomenon that indigenous peoples around the world suffer from the same sort of circumstances such as poverty, marginalization from the economic mainstream and lower quality education.

Brazil’s indigenous population today totals under one million, making up just 0.5 percent of the country’s 200 million people. For them, building bonds with other endangered cultures, and passing their skills on to new generations, is critical to their very survival.

CCTV’s Lucrecia Franco reports from Brazil.