Challenges and Risks Faced by Indigenous Peoples in Today's Brazil: Unpacking Vulnerability and Multiple Reactions

The long trend of environmental degradation and the socio-cultural impacts of mainstream development in Brazil have undergone a giant rise after the election of President Jair Bolsonaro, leading some organisations to denounce the unacceptable intensification of violence and conflicts (e.g. New York Times, 21 Sep 2019). In that context, the fate of indigenous groups constitutes one of the most serious political and economic questions in the country. These developments directly contradict the tendency to recognise indigenous rights initiated in the re-democratisation period in the late 1970s, which led to the inclusion of explicit articles in the 1988 Constitution. Whereas the indigenous population is trying to resist and react using all possible channels and opportunities, there is still limited understanding of barriers, prospects and feelings about the new adverse context.

The research will address the impacts, perceptions and reactions of indigenous groups to the aggressive advance of conservative policies and social reforms by the new Brazilian administration. It will assess and theorise the combination of past legacies and new trends behind the intensification of violence affecting indigenous peoples. The project has three main phases: 1) analysis of pro- and anti-indigenous discourses, launch of a website to capture violence occurrences and elite interviews; 2) case studies in three hotspot areas in the states of Amazonas, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, targeting selected indigenous communities, involving indigenous researchers and making use of participant observation, interviews and focus groups, and in particular various artistic expressions (music, dance, drawings, drama, videos and pictures, etc.) that communicate suffering, the impacts and the perceptions of community members; 3) workshops, a national meeting and talks to communicate and problematize the empirical results and raise recommendations. Those combined research activities will all foster a dialogue between indigenous communities, allied organisations and researchers to shared experiences to better comprehend past legacies, mounting pressures and the diversity of responses.

Its methodological approach means conducting academic work with and for the indigenous communities, allowing the expression of their own voices and direct involvement in the interpretation of findings, rather than the conventional research on those communities for the benefit of non-indigenous scholars and government agencies. The approach is inherently coproduced and will continuously engage relevant stakeholders in both the research design and its operation. It will encourage a 'relational reflexivity' between the interdependent actors through an incremental methodology and research design with interrelated phases.

The research team will deal with the national state of affairs and also focus on selected indigenous communities in three areas particularly affected by the action of public agencies and private entities. In addition to external pressures, there are also internal community factors that influence indigenous reactions and that need to be examined, such as internal disputes and hierarchies among indigenous communities and extended families, gender inequalities and domestic violence, intergenerational mechanisms of support or competition, forced adoption of indigenous children, and specific public service demands. In addition, the project will have wider theoretical and empirical repercussions considering that the specific situation of indigenous groups is certainly an integral part of the wider erosion of labour rights, the rule of law and democratic freedoms in many parts of the world, as well as an element of the international maelstrom associated with persecution of migrants, economic and political instabilities, global environmental risks and climate injustices.

The aim of this project is to conduct evidence based, inter-disciplinary arts and humanities and social science research' in the challenging geographical context of the expanding violence against indigenous groups in Brazil in order to make an innovative conceptual and applied contribution to understanding the opportunities to pursue alternative political and socio-economic pathways. That will be connected with social perception, the meaning of local practices, issues of power and social exclusion and alternatives to improve governance and regulation. The initiative will generate impacts academically, contribute to policy-making and a more sustainable and inclusive development, and enable creative collaboration with civil society organisations and different levels public administration. The work is also of great relevance for the national and international development communities, as it will deal with peoples and communities facing accelerated socio-cultural transformations and struggling to survive in circumstances of great uncertainty.

One of the most innovative elements of the project is to make possible the encounter of discourses, lived experiences and ideas about risks, vulnerability and resistance. The impacts of the project will be guaranteed through a sustained and meaningful engagement of a range of indigenous and non-indigenous participants. There will be a dedicated project website that will promote regional and national events, foster dialogue between different groups and disseminate proceedings and other outcomes. The website will contain information about project activities and information about academic and non-academic debates.

The research will also dedicate specific efforts to engage with decision-makers in different parts of the country in order to relate local processes of aggression with regional and national authorities, who will be visited again at the end of the project to discuss policy-making repercussions. In that way, the project will render distinct scientific and societal impacts through new conceptual, methodological, and analytical pathways for dealing with the socio-cultural and politico-economic exclusion of indigenous groups. The condition, the agency and the perspectives of indigenous groups in Brazil - who account for around 0.5% of the national population (although it is rapidly growing due to high rates of birth and ethnic claims of communities who had apparently lost their indigenous ancestry), but hold 13% of the territory (in 450 demarcated indigenous territories, although many others are still in dispute) - certainly represent a crucial and difficult dilemma in the country today.

More importantly, the research shall make a real difference in the life of the indigenous peoples themselves, particularly those living in situations of high vulnerability and who took part in the case studies. Based on previous projects, it is clear that many individuals expressed a deep frustration with the arrival of new researchers trying to gain their trust and inquiring about details of family life, memories, knowledge and personal relationships, but that in the end take a lot of their time for no direct or indirect reward. The responsibility of the research team is to conduct objective research, to the best of their capacity, while at the same time respond to the expectation of a supportive and worthwhile interaction. The project will, therefore, theorise violent practices and racist tendencies from the perspective of the indigenous groups, rethinking universal concepts and search for alternative socio-economic and political paths. Researchers will give clear feedback and yield some concrete benefit back in relation to the struggle of indigenous groups for recognition and redistribution.