Brazil kicked off Indigenous Games Saturday

[ocpagu]

Log-carrying, archery, wrestling and swimming will be featured in Indigenous Games opening Saturday in Brazil in what organizers hope to turn into an international event with entrants from Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Some 1,400 Brazilian Indian athletes will compete in the Indigenous Nations' Games in Porto Nacional in the state of Tocantins through November 12. "We believe the Games must be a celebration before being a competition and we want to preserve our sports," Marcos Terena, head of the organizing committee, told AFP.

Brazil is home to 800,000 Indians, around 0.4 percent of the country's 190 million people.
Billed as one of the world's biggest indigenous sporting events and inaugurated in 1996, the games comprise around 10 traditional and Western events in both male and female categories.

One of the most popular will be native-style wrestling in which there is no referee, with the fight ending when one competitor knocks down his opponent or lifts him from the floor. Another will be the tree-trunk foot race, where runners have to carry 90-kilogram (200-pound) tree trunks on their shoulders.

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