Brazil’s Supreme Court votes on a landmark case that may limit Indigenous rights to their ancestral lands – and even force some tribes to return territories they have already been awarded.

Brazil’s powerful farm lobby and conservative-led Congress want to establish a time limit for Indigenous land claims.

If this is approved, only tribes occupying their lands in 1988 (when the current constitution was drafted) have a right to claim them.

Those who had been chased at gunpoint out of their territories before 1988 and returned much later, for fear of being killed, will lose their rights. This time limit would also affect hundreds of lands that have already been demarcated or that are in the final stages of demarcation.

Aljazeera/Agencies.