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Educação e Pesquisa
versão impressa ISSN 1517-9702versão On-line ISSN 1678-4634
Educ. Pesqui. vol.47 São Paulo 2021 Epub 01-Mar-2021
https://doi.org/10.1590/s1678-4634202147226019
SECTION: ARTICLES
The issue of citizenship under the eyes of the indigenous people in the Indigenous Land Cobra Grande, Santarém/PA*
1- Universidade do Estado do Pará. Belém, PA, Brasil. Contatos: messiasfurtado@uepa.br; joelmaalencar@uepa.br
2- Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Instituto de Biociências, Botucatu, e Faculdade de Ciências, Bauru, São Paulo. Brasil. Contato: renato.es.diniz@unesp.br
This article discusses the issue of citizenship from the perspective of indigenous people from the Cobra Grande Indigenous Land (TICG, abbreviation in portuguese) who participate in a teacher training course. The question investigated is how indigenous people, who are deeply involved in the Kariwa culture, and having to fight for their rights at all times, including the right to remain indigenous, see the issue of citizenship. The objective of the study was to identify what the indigenous people of TICG understand by the word citizenship and how they perceive the exercise of it in the daily life of the villages. Methodologically, the research fits as an ethnographic case study in education, without, however, being totally reduced to the method, as we investigated, based on a participatory process in which the interlocutors were also researchers. The research process involved preliminary discussions, preparation, application and evaluation of action projects and semi-structured interviews. The results show that the indigenous are concerned with the impact of the TICG indigenous contact with the Kariwa culture and the consequences of this contact for the indigenous way of being and living. The survey also revealed that indigenous people are aware of their rights and understand citizenship both in the right-duty binomial and as an instrument to fight for the preservation of the culture and traditions of the villages.
Key words: Indigenous peoples; Citizenship; Community life; Preservation of culture and traditions
Este artigo discute a questão da cidadania sob o olhar de indígenas da Terra Indígena Cobra Grande (TICG) que participam de um curso de formação de professores. A questão investigada é como indígenas, bastante transpassados pela cultura do kariwa, e tendo de a todo instante lutar por seus direitos, inclusive o de permanecer indígena, veem a questão da cidadania. O objetivo do estudo foi identificar o que os indígenas da TICG entendem pela palavra cidadania e como percebem o exercício da mesma no dia a dia das aldeias. Metodologicamente a pesquisa se encaixa como estudo de caso do tipo etnográfico em educação, sem, no entanto, se reduzir totalmente ao método, pois investigamos, a partir de um processo participativo no qual os interlocutores foram também pesquisadores. O processo de pesquisa envolveu discussões preliminares, elaboração, aplicação e avaliação de projetos de ação e entrevista semiestruturada. Os resultados mostram que os indígenas estão preocupados com o impacto do contato dos indígenas da TICG com a cultura do kariwa e as consequências deste contato para a forma de ser e viver indígena. A pesquisa revelou ainda que eles têm consciência de seus direitos e entendem a cidadania tanto no binômio direito-dever, quanto como instrumento de luta pela preservação da cultura e tradições das aldeias.
Palavras-Chave: Povos indígenas; Cidadania; Vida em comunidade; Preservação da cultura e tradições
Introduction
Citizenship is one of the foundations of the Brazilian Republic, expressed in Article 1 of the 1988 Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil (CRFB/88), which, along with the principle of human dignity, forms the idea of a nation that takes care so everyone lives in full exercise of individual and collective rights (BRASIL, 1988). The maximum concern of the constitutional legislator in creating a state of rights is revealed in the very structure of the Constitution, which innovates in the legal world when first describing individual rights and guarantees and only afterwards taking care of the organization of the State.
At the international level, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR/1948) (UN, 2001) infers that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, endowed with reason and conscience, they must act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood, from which it is derived that to be a citizen is to live with dignity and exercising their rights consciously and fraternally. To the UDHR/1948, a citizen is the one who has the right and the possibility to direct public affairs, to vote and be voted on and to rise on equal terms to the public functions of its country.
Despite being sculpted in the constitutional text and in international human rights declarations, citizenship is still denied to a significant portion of the population, who are degraded in their rights, many of them fundamental to live with dignity, giving cause to the daily fight of many social groups for it.
Among the groups that still do not have the recognition of their rights are indigenous peoples who, since colonization, have suffered from the various attempts at extermination and still today struggle for the realization of the rights described in CRFB/88 to live in full citizenship, these struggles which are not always peaceful, with some even resulting in confrontation with non-indigenous people.
The situation described above confronts what was written in the constitutional text, which once again innovated in the legal world by creating a special chapter for indigenous people, with a system of protection to their culture, beliefs, traditions and forms of social organization.
This dichotomy between what is described in the legal frameworks and citizenship denied to indigenous peoples led us to investigate the issue of citizenship under the eyes of the indigenous people of TICG, to identify what they understand by the word citizenship and how they see the exercise of it on the day by day of the villages.
In this context, this article will focus on the issue of indigenous citizenship, looking at it from the perspective of those affected by the lack of it: the indigenous people, their struggles and achievements, and questioning with them the concept of citizenship, how it is effective in practice and how to exercise it in a village.
We chose to answer these questions a group of indigenous students from the Indigenous Intercultural Graduation Course at the State University of Pará (UEPA, abbreviation in portuguese), because this group has constant access to the literature on the rights of indigenous peoples and, because they are students of an intercultural higher education course, are in favorable conditions for the formation of concepts.
Two main questions guide the study: what is the understanding of the indigenous people who have access to intercultural higher education on citizenship; and how identity-affirming citizenship has been assimilated into legal frameworks.
The pedagogical work that preceded the interview and the research itself is important, as the researched group is composed of indigenous students in higher education, but they are also leaders in their villages, three of them being chiefs. The majority are teachers in indigenous school education and four of them are members of the board of directors of indigenous associations, reinforcing the link between education and the construction of indigenous citizenship.
The fact that the researched group is composed of students from an intercultural graduation course, which has the philosophical principle of dialogicity, understood from the perspective of Paulo Freire (1994) as the meeting of men, mediated by the world, to be more, which does not end in the I-you relationship, but is a meeting of men for the task of knowing-acting, it is an important element to comprehend the participants’ thinking about citizenship reinforces the importance of making the voice of indigenous people public.
The indigenous, citizenship and the right to be indigenous
Thinking about citizenship from the perspective of the historically dominated requires looking at a new type of knowledge, which is produced, using the term of Santos (2019), anchored in the resistance experiences of social groups that until now have been victims of social injustices and denial of rights, even if this right is already confirmed in the Constitution and in the laws.
The CRFB/88 assures the indigenous people’s right to remain with their own forms of social organization and coexistence, including recognizing their rights over the lands they traditionally occupy, nothing more fair if we consider that these were the first inhabitants of our lands. According to Ribeiro (1995), until the arrival of the colonizer, the Brazilian geographical space was occupied by several indigenous people organized in autonomous, autarchic tribes and not stratified in class, who disputed for the best places to live. The arrival of the colonizer changes until the form of the indigenous inhabit, because, in the act of colonizing, he tried to set up in Brazil a kind of advanced local presence of an urban and classist civilization. This type of domination attempt also occurred with the other Amerindian people, Quijano (2014) notes that as social relations were based on domination, the identities of different groups were associated with social hierarchies, places and roles corresponding to the colonial domination pattern that was imposed.
At the international level, regarding the right to land, Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization on indigenous and tribal people (ILO, 1989), recognizes the right to possession of the land or territory that the indigenous collectively occupy or use in some way , calling on the governments of the signatory countries to promote measures to safeguard this right, including on lands that are not exclusively occupied by them, but to which they have traditionally had access for their activities and subsistence.
Ownership of the land on which they live and the exclusive enjoyment of their property have been central to the struggle for citizenship of indigenous peoples and other traditional Brazilian peoples. Little (2002), states that traditional people have endeavored to show that their territories, unlike ethnic territories in other parts of the world, do not represent a threat to the Brazilian State because they do not have separatist aims and do not have their own armies. These people consider themselves as Brazilian citizens and seek recognition for their territories and the way of life they have built there.
The demarcation of indigenous lands has become a watershed in the struggle of these people for citizenship. People who already have their land demarcated3, 441 total, according to data collected on Fundação Nacional do Índio (Funai)4, are at a different level of struggle. The number of demarcated lands represents less than half of the 1296 indigenous lands in Brazil, which means that, for most indigenous peoples, citizenship is the struggle for the demarcation of their lands. Study conducted by Silva (2019), with the Gavião Kỳikatêjê of Terra Indígena Mãe Maria, in the State of Pará, showed that these people, who already have their land demarcated, plan an autonomous and self-sustainable future, with a life plan similar to what Little (2002) calls the Local Ethnodevelopment Project. The Terra Indígena Cobra Grande, where the research was developed, the demarcation process was completed in December 2018 (Process FUNAI/BSB nº 08620.064329/2013-36), but still pending approval.
Ownership and enjoyment of land, however, are not the only elements that make up indigenous citizenship. From the CRFB/88 itself, two other fundamental elements of being indigenous are extracted: the right to own social organization andt to differentiated culture. Araújo Júnior (2018) infers that, compared to the previous constitutions, the 1988 Constitution removes the assimilationist paradigm and emphasizes the autonomy of these peoples, with respect to their ways of life. These three elements, land, own social organization and differentiated culture, lead us to understand Brazil under the pluri-ethnic look already treated in studies like that of Villares (2013), and that the right to full citizenship is based on guaranteeing difference and respect to the different ways of living.
This pluri-ethnic look requires the removal of all forms of prejudice against indigenous people instilled in the “national society” by the dominator, perceiving culture as a dynamic process that evolves with men and, also, living the difference and breaking with the colonialist look that sees the indigenous as the strange, the primitive, using Bauman’s expression (1998).
The indigenous, like any other human group, wants to live well, for this, he realizes that he has to live with the kariwa5, but no longer in the relationship of dominator and dominated, but in relationships in which the different respect the way of being and living on the other, in interculturality. As the indigenous Luciano (2006), belonging to the Baniwa people, teaches us, interculturality is a life practice that presupposes the possibility of living together and coexistence between cultures and identities. Its base is the dialogue between different people, which is present through different languages and cultural expressions, aiming to overcome intolerance and violence between culturally distinct individuals and social groups.
It is in this plot of the struggle for rights, denied citizenship and indigenous mobilization to comply with the legal provisions that we conducted the research.
Research location and context
The research was carried out at Escola Indígena Nossa Senhora do Carmo, from village Caruci, belonging to the Indigenous Land Cobra Grande. According to the Relatório do Ministério da Justiça (BRASIL, Ministério da Justiça, 2009), the Indigenous Land Cobra Grande (TICG), with approximately 8900 hectares, is located in the Baixo Amazonas meso-region and Baixo Tapajós micro-region, in the Municipality of Santarém, Santarém-Cuiabá Highway influence zone. Specifically, the area is located inside the agro extractive settlement of Gleba Lago Grande of Franca, mostly on the banks of the lower Arapiuns River and extending north to Lago Grande do Curuaí. The demarcation process was completed by Fundação Nacional do Índio (Funai. National Indigenous Foundation in english), on December 20, 2018 and is pending approval by the Ministry of Justice.
The TICG consists of 05 (five) villages (Arimun, Caruci, Garimpo, Lago da Praia e Santa Luzia), where live approximately, according to Instituto Sócio Ambiental (ISA), (BRASIL, 2020), 583 self-recognized indigenous from three different peoples (Arapiun, Jaraki e Tapajó). These peoples are Portuguese speakers and are in the process of reviving the indigenous language Nheengatu, a kind of general amazonic indigenous language.
In the Detailed Report on the identification and delimitation of the Indigenous Land Cobra Grande (BRASIL, 2009), it is recognized that these peoples are fully aware that over the centuries they have suffered several losses and cultural rearrangements and know many elements of their life style differ little from the way of life of the surrounding communities and family segments of their villages that do not understand themselves as indigenous and, in face of this, respond with the valorization of the traditional elements that mark and characterize their distance in relation to the Kariwa6.
The Caruci Village, straight on the course of the Arapiuns River, it is the first of the villages in the territory, on the banks of the lake of the same name, bordering on the communities of Nova Sociedade do Urucureá, Araci e Cururu. 150 people live in the village and of these, 97 are indigenous. Subsistence is based on fishing, hunting, gathering, extractivism, cultivating small fields and raising domestic animals, and the majority of the houses are made of wood and caruá straw support.
Research participants
Fourteen indigenous students of the UEPA’s Indigenous Intercultural Degree Course, in the area of human and social sciences participated in the research7, belonging to six different ethnicities: Arapiun (7 participants), Apiaká (1 participant), Borari (1 participant), Jaraki (1 participant), Tapajó (2 participants) and Tupaiú (2 participants). Three of these ethnicities belong to the Indigenous Territory Cobra Grande (Arapiun, Jaraki e Tapajó) and three belong to the Indigenous Territory Tapajós Arapiuns (Apiaká, Borari e Tupaiú). Eight participants are female and six male. Two of the participants are indigenous leaders (chiefs) in their villages.
Methodology
The research with a qualitative approach and a critical-dialectical focus fits into what André (2008a, 2008b) calls an ethnographic case study in education. This type of research, which can be done with a time cut appropriate to the requirements of the objectives proposed for the study, is characterized by preserving some methodological principles of ethnographic research without, however, containing all its elements and with concern directed to an educational situation. The analyzed data were constructed by means of a semi-structured interview, after a series of pedagogical interventions developed within a discipline in a training course for indigenous teachers (intercultural degree), which included conversation circles, elaboration and application of educational projects with the community of the indigenous village Caruci, Indigenous Land Cobra Grande.
The subject in question is Practice as a Curricular Component - Integrated Project for Indigenous Intercultural Pedagogical Practices: indigenous peoples and citizenship, which is part of the UEPA Indigenous Intercultural Degree Course, developed within a script structured in several steps. Initially, the theme of citizenship was explained by the professor/researcher, especially on the provisions of CRFB/88 that deal with the rights of indigenous people. The group was then asked to read suggested texts on the topic among indigenous peoples. In view of the heterogeneity of the group, formed by people from six different ethnicities, a debate was proposed on the concept of full citizenship, which became important to establish the idea on the subject in the group.
In a second moment, the group was asked to produce educational projects about the central theme: Indigenous Peoples and Citizenship. For this moment, the group focused on the reality of the villages, raising a set of situations that affect being a citizen in the communities. At the end of this work, the group proposed several sub-themes that relate to citizenship. These themes were arranged in a board and each participant was suggested to choose among the themes the one that best suited the reality of their village and to formulate an intervention project that portrayed the issue of citizenship from a problem in their community.
The intervention projects developed were:
Food in the Caruci tradition: dealt with the issue of using canned, sausages and frozen and chilled foods purchased in the city of Santarém to be consumed in the village. The project aimed to show the taste of traditional village foods prepared with existing ingredients in the community. The methodology used a workshop to prepare traditional food and drinks for students at the Nossa Senhora do Carmo Indigenous School.
The arrival of electricity and television - dangers for culture: it addressed the arrival of television in the village and its impacts on indigenous culture, such as the decrease in the participation of indigenous people in rituals. The objective of the project was to discuss with the community about the limits to the use of television during rituals. Methodology used the conversation circle in the woods of the Caruci village with the parents and elders of the village.
Social Media - dangers and potential: considered the possibility of using social media (specifically Whatsapp) to disseminate indigenous culture and, on the other hand, about the dangers to culture due to the inappropriate use of that app. The aim of the project was to think of ways to use the messaging app positively for the Tapajós-Arapiuns indigenous culture, using as methodology the debate with indigenous leaders on how to use messaging apps to expand indigenous culture and fight for their rights.
Parental participation in school - citizenship lesson: discussed with the community the low frequency of parents in monitoring the activities of their children and meetings at school, with the objective of increasing the participation of students’ parents in school life. The methodology chosen for this work was to make a “day of receiving parents”, with collective and individual meetings, games and rituals.
Intercultural and Bilingual Education - in search of autonomy: discussed the need for a school pedagogical project that respects the bases of indigenous education set out in the National Curriculum Reference for Indigenous School Education (BRASIL, 1988) and other legislation on indigenous intercultural education, with the aim of mobilizing the inhabitants of the village to discuss how the school can contribute to the community’s social project. The methodology chosen was to hold an expanded assembly at the school, with the participation of indigenous leaders, parents, teachers and community elders.
School organization and routine: it focused on how the pedagogical processes, resolutions and ordinances of the Municipal Education Secretary of Santarém/Pará that are developed in the school must respect the characteristics of the village, the time of the experiences and the lifestyle of the community. The objective of the work was to discuss, with the teachers and the school management, ways of adapting school rules to the village’s social project in order to respect indigenous ways of being and living. The methodology used was a workshop on school routine and indigenous education legislation.
Participation in village decisions: the project discussed the low participation of village inhabitants in internal discussions and in the definition of community organization, transferring decisions to the chief. The objective was to debate with the indigenous, especially the older ones, about the importance of the conversations between chiefs, leaders and sages in making decisions about things that affect the community. The methodology used was a conversation circle, cultural presentation and lecture.
Importance of indigenous organizations for the construction of citizenship: focused on the rights of indigenous peoples that have been achieved with the effective participation of indigenous associations, at local, regional and national levels, with the aim of discussing with the indigenous community the importance of indigenous associations and organizations in the achievement of rights guaranteed by law. The project used meetings as methodology.
Use of new information technologies for the propagation of indigenous culture: discussed ways to take advantage of the arrival of electricity in the IL villages to publicize the indigenous way of life on social media, with the aim of using information technologies available to publicize the culture and traditions of the peoples of the IL Cobra Grande, using as methodology informative lecture, download social media apps for smartphones existing in the villages and survey handicrafts, dances and rituals to disseminate on social media.
Crafts as a manifestation of indigenous culture and citizenship: was based on the devaluation of the original indigenous handicrafts by industrialized pieces bought in the city. The project’s objective was to awaken the community to the importance of handicrafts as an element of indigenous identity. Used conversation circle and craft show as methodology.
The responsibilities of indigenous leaders towards their people: focused on the low participation of village leaders in community organization, with the aim of discussing the responsibilities of leaders in decision making and village organization. Used as methodology a ritual and conversation in the village woods.
The indigenous language as a manifestation of citizenship: worked on the issue of the small number of indigenous who are interested in communicating in the Nheengatu language, with the aim of introducing it into the daily life of village school and the village itself. A short literacy course in the Nheengatu language was used.
Counterpoints between indigenous technology and white people technologies - interculturality: the project dealt with the gradual replacement of indigenous hunting, fishing and agriculture techniques by non-indigenous technologies, in particular the use of cell phones. The objective was to think with the community ways to live with the non-indigenous technologies available in the village, without diminishing the importance of indigenous techniques that guarantee the survival of the village. The methodology was a conversation circle, showing technological artefacts of the non-indigenous people existing in the village and the artefacts built by the indigenous people to make their lives easier.
Valuing culture to strengthen indigenous citizenship: focused on the introduction of songs, dances, ornaments and other elements of the non-indigenous culture into the village. Decrease in the practices of rituals, paintings and production of indigenous handicrafts, with the aim of discussing with the village community the importance of culture as an identity element of the indigenous. The project used as methodology the ritual, conversation circle and handicraft and painting shows.
Intervention projects were developed at different times to allow all groups to participate in all activities. After this moment, using the dynamics of the conversation circle, we started to discuss the results and impressions of the groups on the impact of the project developed for their community and for the formation of their concept of citizenship, in which each participant spoke about two topics: validity of the project developed for citizen life in the village and the importance of project development for the citizen consciousness of those who developed it.
After completing all the stages of the pedagogical work, the group was invited to participate in the research, developed from a semi-structured interview script. After signing the Free and Informed Consent Form, the participants answered the following generating question in writing: what is their understanding of citizenship and how to make it effective in the daily life of the village?
After typing and organizing the speeches, we returned to the Caruci village for the participants to read their testimonies and, agreeing, signed a Letter of Assignment of Rights to use their testimony in this article.
To analyze the data, we again resort to André (2008a, 2008b), listening carefully to the data to form descriptive categories that, in this case, were formed from the grouping of the participants’ statements that referred to the same situation or theme, thus, the analytical categories were all produced later.
From the statements, we extracted the need to discuss the data from the following categories: to be a citizen is to fight for rights; citizenship is a relationship between rights and duties; citizenship is to know the rights to dialogue on equal terms with the other indigenous peoples and with the non-indigenous.
In the analysis of the statements, we consider the history of indigenous peoples in Brazil and their struggles for the right to be indigenous; the attempts of extermination and/or cultural domination; contact with the kariwa and the consequences for the way of being and living of the indigenous of the IL Cobra Grande and the resilience shown by Brazilian Indigenous, especially those from IL Cobra Grande, to maintain their culture and traditions.
Results and discussion
We analyzed the speech of the indigenous people in the perspective defended by Bondiá (2002), for whom words produce meaning, they create realities and, some times, function as powerful mechanisms of subjectification. In this search, we pay attention to P9’s speech8, where it states that “citizenship is one of the virtues for a just and fraternal society”.
Category 1. Being a citizen is fighting for rights
Brazilian indigenous people have a history of resilience and struggle. Since the occupation of Brazilian lands by the Portuguese colonizer until today, attempts to exterminate indigenous peoples in different ways are not uncommon. Attempts were, and still are, of two types: by the annihilation of culture, forcing the indigenous person to speak a language other than iis own, surpassing his culture, and by physical violence, with killings and punishments. This led some indigenous peoples to even attempt self-extermination, because as Honneth says (2003, p. 214) “every attempt to take over a person’s body, undertaken against their will and with any intention whatsoever, causes a degree of humiliation that destructively interferes with the practical self-relationship of a human being”. In the speech of P3, it is clear that the indigenous person wants to see, in practice, what is described in CRFB/88 materialized.
Experiencing citizenship in practice is to fulfill your rights as a Brazilian citizen without discrimination of race and color. (P3).
To maintain their culture and traditions and have the right to be as they are, indigenous people are constantly fighting for rights and, after centuries of exploitation, they have been able to assert some rights that were only possible thanks to their organization, especially since the 1970s , when they started to organize themselves into associations, which gave them even greater strength and presence on the national and international scene, to the point that these indigenous even influenced the elaboration of the 1988 Federal Constitution. Perhaps for this reason, P2 states that:
Citizenship means belonging to an organization, being organized, exercising the right to contribute with your opinions, studying, looking for information that will help in the development of the village, following the law changes in the country and fighting for improvement for the people. (P2).
P2’s speech is representative of the connection between citizenship and the struggles of its people. The indigenous peoples of Brazil have suffered, since the occupation by the European colonizer, a strong attempt of decimation, either by the use of force, by the withdrawal of rights and / or by the attempt to “whiten9” the indigenous.
The indigenous of IL Cobra Grande, at all times, have to fight on several fronts, internally, to rebuild their culture, shaken by the contact with kariwa and the arrival of enchantments caused by television, cell phones, among other facilities that kariwa can offer, that’s why P11 claims that:
With the appropriation of technology, it is seeking leadership to guide and plan the future of its people, for their own knowledge and the knowledge of their elders. (P11).
Externally, the struggle of the indigenous people is for the approval of the demarcation of the IL and against the loggers who invade their lands to illegally harvest wood, destroying the forest and removing the animals that serve as food for the community. They also fight against illegal fishing in the Tapajós and Arapiun rivers, which implies a drastic reduction in the fish stock, the main ingredient in their diet and indispensable in preparing most of the traditional foods of the indigenous peoples of the IL.
The kariwa farmer, logger, miner, advances on indigenous lands in order to take advantage of the weakness of inspection to make money. Ribeiro (1982) had already denounced such a situation, stating that it is the capitalist character of the economic system that drives national society against indigenous people.
The statements below show that the indigenous are aware of their rights, as the following statements illustrate:
In practice, on a daily basis, it means being more free, having more dialogue with the people we live with. (P1);
Citizenship is the way in which the individual must live as a citizen, exercising its rights and duties in favor of a good coexistence (P5);
Citizenship is popular participation in decision-making, whether in any sphere (municipal, state or federal) to ensure that their rights and duties are respected as true citizens. (P8);
Citizenship is the individual being conscious and critical, that is, to know their right to claim with the state and municipalities, desired to have their values on land, health, education, culture, to guarantee their space for survival in society. (P11).
Still on the external plane, the people of IL Cobra Grande claim to the municipal authorities: the hiring of indigenous teachers for the village schools, a seat in the municipal control bodies, greater participation of the indigenous people in the decisions of the municipalities in which they live, among others. P8’s speech is the result of this view: “Citizenship is popular participation in decision-making, whether in any municipal, state or federal sphere to ensure that their rights and duties are respected as true citizens”.
Category 2. Citizenship is the rights-duties relationship.
At the same time that it fights all these struggles, the indigenous of the IL needs to look to the internal organization of the village, to the school, to the rituals, dances and other manifestations of culture. In the testimonies of P3, P4, P6 and P9, there is a concern that the indigenous people have clarity that they also have duties towards society and towards the village.
Citizenship means knowing your rights and duties as a good citizen, participating in the development of the world and living free. (P3);
Citizenship is having the same rights and duties, as others do. (P4);
To live citizenship in practice, we must comply with some rules of the society in which we live and practice today. (P4);
Living citizenship in practice means knowing your rights and respecting the rights of others. (P6);
In order to live it in our daily lives, we must, in first place, be aware of our duties and rights and, as a consequence, transmit to our relatives (people) who have not yet sought this knowledge, so that their life and the life of their people is lived in a dignified way. (P9).
To analyze the statements above, we extract an excerpt from the words of P4: “in order to live citizenship in practice, we must comply with some rules of the society in which we live and practice today”, representative of the idea that citizenship is related to the binomial right-duty in interdependence relationship.
Citizenship, in this perspective, has no individual meaning. The actions of an individual, collectively, determine the citizen practice, in which the individual right only exists as long as it fulfills its duty, that “my right” is limited to the right of the other, or as Bauman (1998) states, from the moral meeting of the self and the other we arrive reduced to the simple essentiality of our common humanity.
The socio-political condition of the participants justifies the concern with the collective interest, they are members of impoverished communities, who suffer attacks of different orders and every day they need to affirm their status as indigenous, especially when dealing with the rights provided for in the 1988 Federal Constitution and legal and supralegal norms, and this experience of struggle, using Bondiá (2002), passes, happens, touches. Thus, the speeches of the participants are confused with the struggle for rights.
The indigenous participants in the research are students of a teacher training course and this condition contributes to the affirmation of the speech of individual responsibility towards their relatives10. In the elaboration and execution of the intervention projects, it was already possible to see the concern of the participants with the question of the responsibilities of each one in the destinies of their community and how the right of one is related to the right of the other. The issue of citizens’ collectivization led Bauman (2001) to affirm that:
If the individual is the citizen’s worst enemy, and if individualization announces problems for citizenship and for politics based on citizenship, it is because the care and concerns of individuals as individuals fill the public space to the top, asserting itself as its only legitimate representatives and expelling everything else from public speech. (BAUMAN, 2001, p. 46).
As students of a public and intercultural higher education course, the indigenous participating in the research find themselves under an obligation to work for their villages, is what is abstracted from the statements below:
Living citizenship in practice is to fulfill your rights as a Brazilian citizen without discrimination of race and color. (P3);
Citizenship is also the experience of a good family in society. (P4);
Citizenship is the use of rights, with the fulfillment of their duties as people in society. (P9);
The duty to pass on, the practice of citizenship, duties and rights, leadership, family. (P10);
We live in practice, as a way for the school to contribute to the strengthening of traditional culture, bringing the knowledge and savvy of elders to practice in the classroom. (P11);
Citizenship is the clarification and reason for good coexistence in society. It is also participating and having other knowledge. To live this citizenship we must have access to other cultures, but seeing in what ways we can be benefiting, always looking for the best to be showing our children in the place where we live daily. (P13);
Citizenship is all knowledge that we give and live in practice. (P14).
In the speeches, the participants’ concern with their own existence as an indigenous person is evident, but this concern is not reduced to the self11, it expands to an indigenous society project, which includes, from the school organization and internal associations, concerns about its culture and the interferences of the kariwa’s way of life, up to the participation of indigenous people in village decisions. In the statements of P12 and P14, this concern remains evident:
Citizenship is where we can experience our freedom, what we like to do, and we are free, this is to have citizenship, and for us to truly live a full life as a citizen, we only have to fulfill our duties to be able to conquer our rights. (P12);
Being a citizen is showing and taking knowledge we have and experience it on a daily basis. (P14);
To be a good citizen we need to have a dialogue with other people, it is to show our children that not all things are good for them. (P14).
Category 3. Citizenship means knowing the rights to dialogue on equal terms with other indigenous peoples and with non-indigenous people
The speeches also address the idea that, in order to exercise citizenship, it is necessary to know the laws and science of kariwa. Let’s see:
Citizenship is to seek to acquire more knowledge about society and to participate in all, at least part of it, of citizenship-oriented movements, such as meetings, lectures, seminars, forums, assemblies and conferences that are always in favor of building knowledge that will lead citizens to exercise their true citizenship without losing their identity. (P5);
Citizenship means having knowledge of your rights and duties and ensuring that your rights are fulfilled by the larger body. (P6);
Citizenship is to provide the construction of identity and the development of the conscience of students and teachers to be citizens, subjects recognized as people, with their own and scientific knowledge in society. (P7);
In order to live the practice it is essential that there is a foundation of broad cultural, social and philosophical references in our schools and villages (P7);
To experience it in practice, it is necessary that every citizen knows their guaranteed rights under the country’s largest law and always be in search of new knowledge that aims to guarantee their citizenship and experience it. (P8).
The search for knowledge to dialogue more appropriately with Kariwa is due to the fact that, since the process of the rise of the indigenous movement since the 1970s, they have reaffirmed the need for indigenous peoples’ empowerment of the knowledge of “national society”, in a process of Intercultural and Bilingual Education (EIB, in portuguese) that guarantees indigenous people the necessary knowledge to, internally, organize their management processes and, externally , fight for their rights using the theoretical and technical instruments built by the kariwa himself. Luciano (2011), leader of the indigenous movement, affirms that the indigenous are determined to have full control of both worlds: indigenous and non-indigenous, because only then will they be able to resume the management of the world, a mission they have received since mythical times, but which they have partly lost along the process of colonial domination.
The recovery of knowledge from their culture, combined with the empowerment of knowledge from the Kariwa culture, is essential for the lives of the indigenous people of IL Cobra Grande, especially for two reasons: the first, because the indigenous of IL gets involved with elements of kariwa culture, with which you need to live critically, such as television, cell phone and social media. The second, because much of its culture was silenced in coexistence with the kariwa’s way of being and living. This situation happens to many peoples, Quijano (2009), warns that:
In all societies in which colonization implied the destruction of the societal structure, the colonized population was stripped of their intellectual knowledge and their externalizing or objectifying ways of expression. They were reduced to the condition of rural and illiterate people. In societies where colonization did not achieve total societal destruction, intellectual and visual aesthetic inheritances could not be destroyed. But the hegemony of the Eurocentric perspective was imposed on intersubjective relations with the dominated. (QUIJANO, 2009, p. 111).
This empowerment process has been carried out with the support and participation of indigenous people in several higher education courses in different areas of knowledge, even if it is still in specific actions, because, as Brighenti (2015) says, in a multicultural country, interculturality must be part of the educational process. However, even these specific actions have enabled indigenous peoples to have among their inhabitants a body of people graduated with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, which offers a boost to their corporate projects. Empowerment aims to break with the colonialist judgment that translates into cultural and material domination. Fleuri (2017) states that critical intercultural dialogue with native peoples implies deconstructing colonial processes and principles and promoting the construction of non-colonial ways of being and living.
Final considerations
In light of the objectives of the study, we highlight that from a methodological point of view, the strategy of constituting the data, applying principles of participatory research, developing the formative process, building projects and applying them, only to later seek in the participants their understanding of citizenship was very fruitful, as this way we gain the confidence of the groups, making it possible to extract from them their real opinion about the object under study.
From the analysis of the projects and the answers given in the interviews, it can be concluded that:
a) Participants are aware that their survival as an indigenous people depends on fighting for their rights in the collective sphere. The peoples of IL Cobra Grande are characterized by cultural hybridism, many of them no longer call themselves indigenous, their culture is constantly crossed by the culture of kariwa and, in many cases, there is an effort by the chiefs for the people to participate in the traditional rituals.
The arrival of kariwa information and communication technologies in the village, such as television and cell phones, caused profound changes in the way of being and living of the indigenous, which reinforces the discourse of farmers and loggers, who try to enter the IL illegally, under the allegation that the lands are not indigenous peoples’ because they are “no longer indigenous”.
The struggle for collective rights is what has led the peoples of IL to organize themselves into local, regional, state and national associations, as this guarantees them reinforcement in the struggles, as well as legal and political support for their claims.
b)The participants associate that their rights correspond to the duties of taking care of the school, family, culture, to participate in community decisions, in short, it is a concept of law that goes beyond the individual self and is related to the collective self, the responsibility of the individual with the whole community.
Considering that one of the objectives of the Federative Republic of Brazil is to build a free, just and solidary society, the indigenous people surveyed provide a statement to citizenship that is very close to this principle, by not claiming rights without first fulfilling their duties as citizens.
c) The indigenous people believe that the act of knowing will reinforce the fight for the right. The National Curriculum Reference for indigenous schools (BRASIL, Ministério da Educação, 1998) indicates that the access of indigenous people to school education and to the highest levels of knowledge allows for egalitarian relations to be projected between indigenous peoples, civil society and the State and it is in this perspective that the indigenous movement has claimed the assumption of a differentiated school education, intercultural and bilingual. Differentiated because it must respect the way of being and living of each people, being its manifestation of will. Intercultural because it must relate in the school curriculum the knowledge of the national society to the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples, which would produce an empowerment of scientific knowledge without losing the perspective of their culture and bilingual, because it must understand the use of the mother tongue as an identity element of each people.
The speeches followed a path of unity with regard to the fight for rights, which must take place in different spheres. The results showed us that the indigenous people of TI Cobra Grande are resilient, seek to assert their identity despite suffering all sorts of attacks on their culture and use their organization and knowledge to consolidate rights. This is the expression of their citizenship, fighting for what is theirs, their land, their culture and their people.
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*English translation by Amanda Carvalho da Silva. The translator and the author the take full responsibility for the translation of the text, including titles of books/articles and the quotations originally published in Portuguese.
3- The demarcation does not mean the end of the struggle for land. Only in Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) there are more than 150 suits challenging the indigenous land demarcation process, for example ACO nº 2.323, filed by the State of Santa Catarina, which questions both the demarcation and the indigenous people’s original right to Terra Indígena Morro dos Cavalos.
4- Available on http://www.funai.gov.br/index.php/indios-no-brasil/terras-indigenas. Access on 11/8/2020.
7- This course is divided into three main areas: nature sciences and mathematics; human and social sciences; language and art.
8- In order to preserve the identity of the interviewees, the participants received numbers from 01 to 14. Thus, we adopted the term P1 to P14 according to the date of the testimonies. In the text, the speeches were divided by category of analysis, not following the sequence of statements.
9- This term is used by Kopenawa (2015) to refer to the various attempts of the non-indigenous to make the indigenous forget their culture and even deny being indigenous, transforming it into cheap labor at the service of a boss. For that, it was necessary to introduce the dominator’s ideas in them, to forbid their cults and even forbid them to speak their native language.
11- The revealed concern is close to the idea of Indo-American socialism defended by Mariátegui apud Cuadra (2018) in which the elements of life and worldview of indigenous communities are rescued in a project to transform their realities.
Received: July 12, 2019; Revised: November 12, 2019; Accepted: December 11, 2019
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