Life and Death in the Indian Northeast: the Etnic Emergence as a Regional Historic Phenomenon

• Autor(a) principal: Arruti, José Maurício Andion
• Data de Publicação: 1995
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Estudos Históricos (Rio de Janeiro)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/reh/article/view/1995

This article intends to answer the question about how it was possible that indigenous groups officially extinct since the second half of 19th century have "emerged" as ethnic entities and new political subjects in the 1940's, in a process that continues up to the present. The proposed analysis tries to make compatible the historical and anthropological approaches applied to the indigenous Brazilian Northeast region, using as central notions those of "relationship net", "mediators" and "cultural invention". On one hand, it is a contribution to studies on "ethnic emergence" phenomena and, on the other, to those on social effects of public policies, particularly the indigenist policy, as paradoxal counterparts of the production of "imagined communities". The first part of the article retraces the supposed "extinction paths" of such groups, due to successive colonial conquest strategies, as well as the "emergence paths" they take in their new nets and relationships. Finally, the basic elements that characterized the emergence for the indigenous groups themselves are stressed out, aprticularly in the "pankararu situation".