Retomar o Brasil: um estudo das cartas escritas pelos povos indígenas nos últimos 50 anos

Abstract

In Brazil, indigenous peoples have been writing letters since the 17th century, but this epistolary production has not received due attention from political analysts, scientists, and opinion formers. In this research, I present and analyze over 1,000 letters written over the last fifty years on the website As Cartas dos Povos Indígenas ao Brasil - the first digital archive of correspondence between these peoples and Brazilian society. I characterize the set of documents through content analysis, which is used to understand themselves, who the indigenous people who write the letters are, whom they are addressed to, what subjects are covered, and what they write to. I follow the path of these letters in different political contexts, analyzing how the public discourse of indigenous peoples claims their lands based on their conceptions of justice, retomada, Bem Viver, and freedom in the face of a state characterized as colonial, guardian of the will of indigenous peoples, and focused on a project of death. To do this, I map the circulation of the letters and define them as public statements by indigenous peoples about themselves and the societies in which they live, seeking to understand what it is like to live and die as an indigenous person in Brazil. I work with the theoretical references of Duncan Ivison (2020) on the manifestations of indigenous peoples in contemporary liberal democracies, with the conception of the public letter by Maria José Bergia (2019) and Suzane Costa (2013), combined with the reflections of Ailton Krenak (2015) on the place of indigenous peoples in Brazilian society. I conclude this study by demonstrating how the retomada of Brazil is manifested and enhanced through the phenomenon of public communication between indigenous people and the country.