Description and History
The first Indian Park in Brazil was created in the river basin by the Brazilian government in the early 1960's. This park marks the first indigenous territory recognized by the Brazilian government and it was the world's largest indigenous reserve on the date of its creation. Currently, fourteen tribes live on the reserve surviving with natural resources and extracting from the river most of what they need for food and water.
The Brazilian government is planning the Belo Monte Dam, which would be the world's third-largest hydroelectric dam, on the Lower Xingu. Construction of this dam is under legal challenge by environment and indigenous groups, who assert the dam would have negative environmental and social impacts along with reducing the flow by up to 80% along a 100 kilometres (62 mi) stretch known as the "Big Bend" (Volta Grande).
In the Upper Xingu region was a highly self-organized pre-Columbian anthropogenic landscape, including deposits of fertile agricultural terra preta, black soil in Portuguese, with a network of roads and polities each of which covered about 250 square kilometers.
Read more about this topic: Xingu River
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