Original link: https://tyingknots.net/2022/10/in-rio-de-janeiro-indigenous-people-fight-to-undo-centuries-of-erasure/
As shown in the ” I am an aboriginal, not a mixed -race” shared earlier, in a multi-integrated society, there are many aboriginal people who are not included in the statistics. In the ongoing 2022 Brazilian census, a movement to mobilize self-declaration of indigenous status has also emerged, and it is expected that the data will be updated again. In the latest 2010 Brazilian census, through self-reporting, it was the first time that a total of 305 indigenous groups, 274 indigenous languages, and 817,963 indigenous peoples were counted across the country. Among them, more than one-third (315,000) of the indigenous people of 297 ethnic groups live in urban areas.
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For these aboriginal people who live in cities for various reasons, their identities are not always known, and their stories of self-identification are not the same. Different communities may face completely different environments and fates, and they continue to suffer together. from the basic school curriculum to the systematic neglect of general social discourse.
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In order to gain an in-depth look at the contemporary living conditions of indigenous peoples, especially those who are integrated into modern urban societies, environmental reporting website Mongabay has launched a series of reports on “Indigenous Peoples in Brazilian Cities”, choosing to focus on Brazil’s absolute largest number of indigenous peoples according to the last census data. (rather than the highest rate), the six cities, through individual stories, reveal historical and systemic issues and reveal to other Brazilians that they may be more distant from their indigenous peoples than they might imagine. This article is about Rio de Janeiro (Part II). Next, we will continue to introduce the stories of five other cities – Sao Paulo, El Salvador, Brasilia, Sanga Falls, and the town of beautiful scenery.
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This series is compiled from a series of reports, and the translation has made major adjustments to the narrative according to the differences in the reading characteristics of the media. The series was also funded by a Data Reporting Award from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, which produced an interactive map based on 2010 census data, which more intuitively shows the distribution of Aboriginal people, educational opportunities, sanitation and living facilities in each city. For more data, you can check the original text for more interactive data.
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This article is a translation of the “Brazil Indigenous Perspectives” series, which will successively introduce the indigenous narratives in current Brazilian society, and use these stories that we know little about to open the cocoon of civilization. From the perspective of the planet, the center of the destiny of the earth today should belong to the Amazon rainforest, the fringe area of the international stage. This place, which concerns the miracle and destiny of all life, is being pushed to the tipping point of destruction step by step in the current dark and corrupt Brazilian political situation. In this context, the indigenous movement in Brazil continued to rise and was at the forefront of resistance. Born out of the forest, the people who always endure the most appalling violence have the most acute perception of the environment and danger, and at the same time carry the suffering and poetic justice of history. In their lives and struggles in various places, the Indigenous people both face the problems faced by all peoples today, and open up these problems, opening up to us other human existences, other worlds, and casting us a vision of connection—— We have always been the natives of the earth.
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Therefore, this series (the specific link is attached at the end of this article) also reflects the perspective and care of world anthropology. As Tim Ingold pointed out, we live in the same world, but this world is not a homogeneous universe, Rather, it is a multiverse full of situations and possibilities.
Original author / Karla Mendes
Source of the original article / Published in Mongabay on April 12, 2021, as one of the articles in the series “Indigenous Peoples in Brazilian Cities” Link to the original article / https://ift.tt/gOAkQXZ
Translator / Edited by Huang Xingshan / Editor by Zhou Xingyue / Wang Jing
01. Forgotten History
Maracanã, Ipanema, Lapa Arch, Rong San Church… these are the names of places known to the millions of tourists who flock to Rio every year, as well as names such as “carioca” (Rio people) /Rio’s) such expressions. But most tourists, not even the people of Rio themselves, know that all of these places (including the term Carioca) are of indigenous origin, both from the slave laborers who built them, and from the land they replaced.
“Many people pass by the Lapa Arch, but they don’t think that this building, which is now a cultural heritage and a symbol of Rio, was built by indigenous slaves,” explains historian Ana Paula da Silva, who Ph.D. researches social memory and is currently a researcher at the Pro Índio of Rio State University. Located in the bohemian Lapa district of Old Rio City, the arch bridge was built in the 17th and 18th centuries to transport the water of the Carioca River to the city through the aqueduct. Today, Lapa District has become the nightlife center of the city, the aqueduct no longer carries water, but a popular cable car to the Santa Teresa district on the mountain, and those who worked and sacrificed for the bridge have been forgotten, “Now we There is no memory, there is no history in the book, there is no media coverage, no one tells, and no information is given on the arch bridge.”
Charles Étienne Pierre Motte, Civilized Guaraní Conscripted as Artillery in Rio, National Library of BrazilDa Silva went on to tell that the land of Rongsan Church also hides the history of the city. Standing on top of Ron Hill, a 10-minute drive from Lapa Arch, the church is visible from many parts of Rio and is often referred to as Igreja da Glória or Outeiro da Glória. The church was built on the territory of the Tupinamba ethnic group. As for the ownership of this land, the aborigines launched a war to regain lost land against the French and Portuguese colonists in the 16th century. According to the French Expeditionary Force, at the foot of the church there was a Tupinamba village called Kariók (Karióg ) , which is most likely the origin of the word “Kariók”. The church built after the war also symbolized the victory of the Catholic Church and the institution that actually imposed Catholicism on the Aboriginal people. When the Portuguese royal family moved the imperial capital to Rio in the early 19th century, the church became one of their favorite places to visit.
Rio’s place names and everyday expressions originate in the Tupinamba language (also known as Old Tupi or just Tupi), but most people are unaware of them. In the 1960s, Brazilian singer-songwriter “Tom” Jobin’s jazz tune “Ipanema Girl” took the seaside neighborhood of Ipanema by storm, and the word means “bad water” in Tupinamba. The Maracanã neighborhood, where the Maracana Stadium is located, takes its name from the sound of a macaw, which in Tupinamba means a parrot click; and the Maracana River . “Carioca” can be derived from the name of a river or a village, which some historians believe was the home of the Carijó people, while others interpret it as white houses, houses with running water, or from A stream gushing from the forest. Da Silva said the meaning of the names could change over time.
It is estimated that there are 40,000 indigenous words in the Brazilian Portuguese dictionary. Nor do many Rio tourists and residents realize that some of the ways of life in Brazil today carry many of the indigenous habits, including daily bathing (she said the Portuguese colonists did not bathe often when they arrived in Brazil), sleeping in hammocks, diverse Diet, including eating cassava. “It’s all because of our education, because our history destroys, silences, deletes Aboriginal people, puts them at a disadvantage, doesn’t incorporate Aboriginal culture into our history and society. So it’s very complicated, people have I’m used to it, I don’t see the aboriginal people anymore.”
The Royal Palace in downtown Rio is another iconic building built by indigenous slaves. Da Silva said outside the palace: “The Rio Palace and the public trail park behind us were also renovated by enslaved indigenous labor. Even the navy, the Rio City Council and the police competed with each other for this labor.” There are still numerous records left in the city’s historical archives.
Lapa Arch Bridge built by Aboriginal slave laborers 
Leandro Joaquim, Beauqueiran Lagoon and Carioca Aqueduct (1750–1798), National Museum of HistoryAccording to the 2010 census, Rio’s indigenous population is nearly 7,000, ranking fourth in absolute numbers. However, according to João Pacheco de Oliveira, head of the Ethnographic Collection at the National Museum and member of the Forum for Science and Culture at the Federal University of Rio, indigenous peoples are “diluted” in a population of 7 million. Less than 0.1%, “Indigenous presence in cities is very important. We just need to understand that because it is very different from our world. In Rio, they are diluted. The same is true for several other state capitals… …Rio, São Paulo and Brasilia have indigenous people from all over Brazil.” They often come to such big cities to seek economic and employment opportunities, but very few groups can actually establish their own communities because they are scattered in different region, which differs from the situation in northern and northeastern cities with established Aboriginal communities.
The neighborhood with the largest number of indigenous people in Rio is the Campo Grande district in the western suburbs, 55 kilometers from the city center. In 2010, 373 Aboriginal people lived here, accounting for 0.11% of the total population. Copacabana is the most well-known neighborhood in Rio. 222 indigenous people live here, most of them are from the Tupinigin, Guarani and Terena ethnic groups. The indigenous population ranks fourth among all neighborhoods in Rio, but Only 0.15% of the total population of the district. The historic Santa Teresa district also has 123 Aboriginal people; Ipanema and Leblon, with their famous beaches, have 42 and 30 Aboriginal people respectively.
Da Silva presents his history of enslaving indigenous laborers in front of the Royal Palace in Rio02. “You know who you are better than you”
There are many indigenous peoples in Rio. The 2010 census listed Rio’s 127 indigenous groups speaking 26 languages. The Guaraní topped the list with 261, followed by the Tupinikin with 171, the Guaraní Cayova ( Kaiowá meaning “people of the jungle”) with 144 and the Tupinamba with 136. There are also 152 Aboriginal people from other countries, showing the attractiveness of this charming city to foreigners and the country’s Aboriginal people. As the first census to document the indigenous population on a large scale, the 2010 census also recorded 50 Puri people living in Rio who were previously thought to be dead. The true number of indigenous peoples in Rio may be higher, with 4,247 respondents to the census saying they did not know their ethnic group, 351 were vaguely defined, and 386 were unverified or undeclared. But a decade later, self-proclaimed indigenous remains a “painful” experience, interviewees said, because of deep-rooted prejudices in non-indigenous Rio society and throughout Brazilian society.
Marize Vieira de Oliveira Guarani, 62, was born in Rio and is a history teacher. Although her grandmother is Guaraní, she only admitted to being Aboriginal 16 years ago, “I always knew my grandmother’s identity, but I didn’t call myself Aboriginal, and I didn’t mention it in my self-declaration. Why? Because of the population. The census doesn’t even have an indigenous category for urban dwellers.” The 1991 and 2000 censuses included the indigenous self-declaration option, but only for a small portion of the population; the 2010 census only offered this option to all Brazilian citizens. Malizer said she was aware that Aboriginal culture “lived in the family” even though she lived in the city. She served as director of gender, anti-racism and sexuality at the Rio teachers’ union, when the black movement encouraged indigenous people to fight for their rights and self-declare as indigenous, not tan, “I started to realize that my grandmothers couldn’t silenced again.”
Malizer/Pala ReiterBecause of a black great-grandmother, Malizer declared herself African-indigenous at the first National Conference on Racial Equality in Rio in 2005. As the only woman at the meeting who claimed to be a native idiom. Even when she was studying for her M.Ed., a fellow teacher with amber-eyed, brown-skinned, self-identified black asked her if she was “true Aboriginal.” She replied: “You were not born in Africa, you are descended. Why do you have the right to claim to be black and think that I cannot claim to be aboriginal. Because to me Pardo refers to (the colour of) paper. , not us”. The colleague was embarrassed and apologised to her, saying he “never thought about it from this angle”.
“It’s intellectual racism, institutional racism … it empowers people to identify who you are more than you do. They don’t realize what’s taking away from us, until they find a sense of belonging,” Malizer said. , it was very, very painful, even more painful than when I identified myself as Aboriginal.” Marize was the first Aboriginal to study for a PhD in education at the Federal University of Fluminense in the neighboring city of Niterói , using a quota system. Before self-declaration, she participated in the indigenous movement in Rio, calling herself a Guarani descendant. A Pathaso leader told her, “You say you are a descendant. Whoever is ‘descendant’ hesitates, there is no fight, you are a warrior. So you can’t say you are a Guarani descendant, you are a Guarani people”. She no longer calls herself “descendant”.
After claiming to be aboriginal, Marize took the aboriginal name, Pará Rete , which means “of divine origin”, which she interprets as “a warrior who fights and protects his people”. Blessed by the god Nhanderu , the Guarani shaman baptized her, “a name of honor that recognizes my soul and tempers my will”. But because of the cumbersome process of changing her name, she did not add this name to the official document. She said she was often told she looked “northern” and didn’t know why until she traveled to the Amazon to meet the indigenous people there. When she was a child, people would ask her mother if she dyed her child’s hair black, not believing that she was born with black hair. Her hair color is reminiscent of the hair of Iracema ( Iracema , the Tupi “exit of honey”, a transposition of “America”), the protagonist of Alen Carr’s famous novel, “more than a raven’s wings” be black”. During the 2014 World Cup, a waitress spoke Spanish to her. She was puzzled and told the waiter that she was Brazilian, and said, “I’m still the most authentic Brazilian because I’m aboriginal.” The waiter was surprised , said she thought she was Colombian. “Do you know what transparency is? People think of us as other people (not Brazilians, not indigenous people). Africans were forced to diaspora to Brazil and the Americas, and we face diaspora now, just on Brazilian soil. ,” Marize said.
03. World Cup Battle
Forming Aboriginal communities in cities is naturally more challenging than in villages, but they always try to come together. José Pereira, a sociologist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, believes that “people who come to the city first will bring their relatives and become a protective mechanism.” At the same time, most of Rio’s indigenous people live on the outskirts of the city. The census data shows that the indigenous people in the west of Rio are most concentrated, mostly in the Campo Grande, Santa Cruz and Bangu districts. Places that are owned or privately owned by others are used for residence, often lacking infrastructure such as sewage treatment, and are better known as favelas.
According to 2010 data, at least 850 indigenous people (about 13% of the total) live in Rio’s favelas. There are 60 indigenous people living in Rocinha, Brazil’s largest slum in Rio do Sul, which is the largest among the 183 slums inhabited by indigenous people (there are 763 slums in Rio). Eleven Aboriginal people live in Vidigal, another famous slum in the south, halfway between tourist hotspots Leblon and San Conrado. But since statistics do not release data on some slums to protect their identities, the actual number should be higher. This is the case with the Morro do Cantagalo slum in Copacabana and the Pavão-Pavãozinho slum.
A focal point of Rio’s indigenous resistance is the village of Maracanã, a building just metres from the world-famous Maracanã Stadium that was originally Rio’s Indian Museum, but in the late 1970s, All ethnographic and Aboriginal language collections are housed in the New Indian Museum, the National Museum and Brasilia in the Botafogo district. Aboriginal people say some of the old museum’s archives were burned and the building was abandoned for years. In 2006, a group of Aboriginal people occupied the site and wanted to create a cultural center here. The occupation made international headlines in 2013. The Rio state government tried to evict them, knocking down the old site and building a parking lot for next year’s World Cup. Legal disputes over land ownership here continue to this day.
Maracanã village (below) next to Maracana Stadium (above), where indigenous people are fighting for their ownershipPereira said the Maracanã incident clearly reflected the plight of the indigenous people in Rio. “When trying to drive the indigenous people out of there, the Rio state environment minister said: ‘The indigenous people belong to the indigenous villages.’ The implication is that What is it? It’s denying the existence of Indigenous peoples in cities. This denial shows that we have a lack of policies for Indigenous groups. Most municipal master plans that guide urban policy have little regard for Indigenous peoples.”
Indeed, in the information published by the city of Rio, it is difficult to find specific public policies related to the city’s indigenous peoples. In a statement, the council said it was the state government’s responsibility to develop public policy for Aboriginal people, adding that “Aboriginal people also exist in other cities across the state”. In a separate statement, the state said Rio was a “pioneer” in implementing quotas for local state universities. Following the establishment of quotas for black and tan citizens in 2001, Rio State University established a self-applying quota system for Indigenous peoples in 2003. However, according to the school’s website, at the time, enrolling as an Aboriginal through a quota system required approval from the Funai or the leader of the applicant’s community. The government’s Office of Social Development and Human Rights also claims that the government is responding to the needs of Aboriginal people in the state, based on deliberations by the Commission on Indigenous Rights State (CEDIND), established in 2018. In 2020, a committee involving Aboriginal leaders launched five actions targeting Aboriginal needs in the state, but only one in the capital: food assistance for Maracanã and Aldeia Vertical, an Aboriginal housing project .
The director of the Rio State Department of Culture and Creative Economy stated that he has maintained a dialogue with the indigenous groups in the Maracana village, “to find common solutions to revitalize the old site, and to carry out activities to promote the history, culture and other contributions of the indigenous people in the future. ”, but did not provide any details about legal disputes over ownership. The struggle for Maracana villages began in the 1990s, where they demanded housing for the large number of Aboriginal people living in the city centre and negotiated public policy related to them. Today, five families from seven ethnic groups live here, and over the years, the aboriginal people have occupied the building several times and have been evicted, and some leaders have even been jailed for it.
“They don’t necessarily have to live here because it’s not easy to live here, there is no electricity, no water, no sewers until after the 2016 Olympics,” said Indigenous chief José Urutau Guajajara Said in a large, deserted living room, with Aboriginal paintings on the walls, and the noise of traffic from outside pouring into the room. He was born in Lagoa Comprida, a village in the northeastern state of Maranhão. He holds a master’s degree in linguistics from Rio State University and is studying for a Ph.D. in linguistics. de Alemão). He teaches several Tupi and Tupi-Guaraní languages in the village, “We want to create a small territory in Maracana village and build a university because this Aboriginal land is owned by the federal government and the The cultural heritage of the Brazilian people. The Maracana Indigenous University will connect the various indigenous groups, the language and the people who speak it.”
Jose Guayajara in the village of MaracanaThe Aboriginal Indian Museum is a landmark in the history of Rio’s aboriginal people. The museum was established in 1953 under the direction of anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro, and has held many important events, including the construction of the Singu Aboriginal Park, the first indigenous reserve in Brazil in the central and western state of Mato Grosso, in 1961. Symposium for National Parks. The museum has housed indigenous groups from across Brazil at several events, including the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (aka the Rio+20 Summit), which is hosted here 20 years after the Rio Earth Summit.
The legal battle in Maracana Village is complex, involving the 2012 sale of a 14,300-square-meter property by the federal government to the state of Rio, including 1,500 square meters of the former Indian Museum. A consortium of Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht won the bid for the renovation of the Maracana Stadium to host the 2013 Confederations Cup and the 2014 World Cup, but the company was mired in the Carwash scandal, and as a result Declared bankrupt, the CEO was jailed, along with former president Lula da Silva, and the renovation concession is currently held by Rio Flamengo and Fluminense football clubs.
Real estate disputes have even led to divisions within aboriginal groups. According to a person who previously lived here and is now included in the “Maracana Village Indigenous Peoples Association”, after negotiating with the Rio state government in 2013, the aborigines who settled here moved away, and they will build this place into a cultural place after getting it. After the center’s commitment, it was included in the government program. Dissatisfied with the agreement, José Guayajara led a “tribal resistance” group that took over the building again in 2016, calling the other groups “traitors” and filing a lawsuit demanding that the entire area (14,300 square feet) be reclaimed m) is set aside for the establishment of an Aboriginal university. They have been under threat of eviction ever since, even during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We are a university,” said José Guayajara. “We told the government that we don’t want a cultural center, because a cultural center cannot accommodate a university. In a small university there can be multiple cultural centers, multiple Cultural spots, multiple projects, but one cultural center cannot accommodate a university… We will continue to protest against this.” Some of the indigenous people who accepted the government’s proposal moved out of the village of Maracana and moved to Estasi, in the center of Rio In Estácio, an aboriginal building with 20 apartments, it belongs to the “My Home, My Life” low-rent housing project launched by the Lula government in 2009, and is called “Vertical Village”.
Aboriginal drawing by Tapitesi Guayajara in Vertical VillageSandra Benites Guarani Nhandeva is a history and philosophy teacher from the village of Porto Lindo, Japorã , in the western central state of Mato Grosso do Sul. She has lived in the vertical village since 2016, paying regular mortgage and property fees. She holds an MA in Social Anthropology from the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio, where she is continuing her PhD in the same major, and is an assistant curator of Brazilian art at the São Paulo Museum of Art. She said that the residents of the vertical village always try to make it look like a home, which is different from the buildings next to it. The walls and corridors are decorated with aboriginal drawings. There is also a mini library at the entrance. Same”. But they are still subject to restrictions on holding traditional ceremonies.
“We have our own dances and songs, but it’s impossible to do it in an apartment building, with other people living around, we have to abide by the rules of the apartment, we have to obey another set of rules from another society,” Sandra said, adding “We’re always embarrassed because our neighbors are making fun of us, laughing at us, yelling ‘wow-woo-woah’ at us all the time, and then starting to imitate us and make fun of us… It’s a daily embarrassment.” . She recalled once that an indigenous person was covered in paint for a speech. She used a taxi app to call a car, but the driver refused to take her after seeing her. “We have all experienced these things. The indigenous people are very popular in Brazil. Discrimination, as if we are not Brazilians, disturbs Brazilians. Indigenous people living in cities are totally transparent people”.
04. Indigenous people hidden in the archives
Rio has always had a special place in Brazilian history, being the capital of Brazil in different periods: the period of the Portuguese state of Brazil (1763-1815), the period of the Portuguese-Brazil-Algarve United Kingdom (1815-1822), the period of the Brazilian Empire ( 1822-1889), during the Brazilian Republic (1889-1968). It was not until 1960 that the center of political power in Brazil was transferred to the newly built Brasilia. In the same year, the city of Rio became the city-state of Guanabara , which merged with the state of Rio in 1975 and has since become the state capital. The grand Portuguese architecture of downtown Rio and other districts shows the city’s royal heritage, built for the Portuguese royal family who brought the empire from Lisbon to Rio in the early 19th century.
Indigenous peoples from all over Brazil have come to Rio for centuries. Historian da Silva introduced the archives of the National Library of Aboriginal people from neighboring cities such as Hidden Waters and other neighboring cities across the Haidu Bay Bridge to the center of Rio to sell art, as well as a large number of people from other states (then called it. Aboriginal people of the province), some worked for private workers, some were boatmen, and some were “forced” into the army and navy. “It was very difficult to see through the archives. They lived in unhealthy camps and were paid meager wages, so they fled. It is often seen in Navy documents that many Aboriginal people were forcibly enlisted because of work and They ran away because of their living conditions. They came with a dream, but the reality was very different when they came here. So many people ran away and went to hunt whales… Many aboriginal children went to private homes to take care of other children… So, the aboriginal people and the The city of Rio is very closely related, not only culturally, not only linguistically, but also in the heritage they built.” But these are buried in the city’s archives, and the indigenous people of Brazil’s history are thus “erased” , said José Ribamar Bessa Freire, a professor in charge of the Indigenous Studies Program at Rio State University. He led a team of 12 fellows that scoured Rio’s 25 major archives over three years.
This project belongs to a large project led by anthropologist Manuela Carneiro da Cunha and historian João Monteiro, mainly in all Brazil The archives of the capital have excavated records of indigenous peoples to answer the question: “Why are indigenous peoples not present in Brazilian history?”
Bessa’s answer: “Because there are no records.” So a task force was formed to find the records. “All the indigenous documents about the whole of Brazil are here (in Rio),” Bessa said, as the old capital, Rio’s archives contain materials from the whole country, including the National Archives that was not moved to Brasilia . But it’s not easy, and some archives even say there aren’t any Aboriginal-related documents, requiring them to manually search through piles of documents. This is the case with the Rio State Public Archives.
“I said to people: ‘Impossible. We came from the National Archives, where there are many historical letters from the Department of Agriculture to the provincial governors requesting population data for at least 16 Aboriginal villages in the 19th century’. Archives Management The staff member replied: ‘Professor, you look at the catalogue, there is nothing’. I checked the catalogue, and there is absolutely nothing related to the aboriginal people. I said: ‘Then we will check bag by bag, document by document’. Student We almost killed me together,” Bessa recalls, just as they were about to give up, “in a bundle of letters we found a letter from Baron Araruama, who was the Aboriginal Affairs 1945 supervisor”. Through this letter, they finally collected data on the indigenous population of Rio City and Rio State.
“Studio Portraits: Ten Aboriginal People in Seated Poses”, author unknownBessa also teaches a graduate course on social memory at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and is the co-author of Os aldeamentos Indígenas no Rio de Janeiro ( Os aldeamentos Indígenas no Rio de Janeiro ), which documents the situation of indigenous peoples across the state, “The process of hiding the Aboriginal people is first and foremost in the management of records,” Bessa said. After reviewing all the archives in the state of Rio, the researchers found that documents on Indigenous affairs in particular were “terribly” preserved. Some archives have these files in basements littered with “rats and cockroaches” ready to burn; one has them in parking lots with “bikes on top of them”. “This could explain the problem of historical erasure,” Bessa said. Sometimes inconsistent information was found, and researchers had to cross-check notary, parish and municipal file records, which were “relatively well organized” and had many records of aboriginal baptisms with their native names written next to their Christian names. Between 1889 and the end of the dictatorship in the 1980s, the name on the parish file never appeared on the death certificate in the notary’s file. After reviewing the parish archives, Bessa found that the notary had “murdered them with the system of citizenship” by recording only their baptismal names on the death certificate, without mentioning that they were Aboriginal.
Bessa also highlighted the nearly 400 handwritten arrest warrants found in Rio police court records in the National Archives, and researchers were “horrible” at the number of indigenous people arrested in Rio’s urbanization. One case caught Bessa’s particular attention: the year’s police chief reported in a report that an Aboriginal man was fined for construction work after he was arrested for “wanting to rob.” Out of curiosity, Bessa contacted an associate judge, who explained that the Penal Code at the time stipulated community work as a form of punishment. Bessa therefore concluded that African slaves were working on coffee plantations in the Paraíba valley outside Rio, so the city needed to find free or cheap labor. It doesn’t matter if they committed a crime or not. The way is to arrest him, make up a crime, like trying to robbery, and sentence him to eight months of forced labor, like renovating a public trail park.”
The September 2018 fire at the National Museum of Brazil destroyed some rare archives and collections that told “another piece of Brazil’s history”, as well as a portion of Brazil’s indigenous history that was irretrievably destroyed. Sociologist José Pereira said: “If the National Museum is seen as the construction of generations of researchers outside the government, the research that has been built has taken many generations, and what is lost cannot be lost. Re-organized because they are unique materials, donations, collections, materials collected over a lifetime. People will no longer have them. Some memories and histories are lost. As for the Aboriginal people, it can be considered that they are in the written record and history silenced. Because the Brazilian government does not recognize the conflict with them, their eradication, their murder.”
Shortly before the fire, Pereira was studying for a doctorate at the National Museum. He recalled that he was very worried about the fire when he saw the exposed wires at the time. “It’s not that I didn’t remind it, it’s not that I didn’t apply for repairs, and it’s not that I didn’t apply for funds and grants. There is no way now. Rebuild what has been lost. The museum of today will never be the same museum that was before.” José Guayajara, who studied linguistics at the National Museum, agrees, “The previous collection was very complete, with a lot of material on national Indianism, involving ethnography, mainly Aboriginal languages and language genealogy, and Aboriginal peoples. Territory. This is why the burning of September 2, 2018 was a ‘crime'”.
Charles Mott, “Capoclo Women as Laundromats in Rio de Janeiro”05. Revival History: “We Exist”
The metropolis of Rio is surrounded by natural resources such as beaches, waterfalls, forests and mountains. The legendary party life adds to its charm, attracting people from home and abroad, including indigenous people, including 56-year-old Theresa Arapi Um (Tereza Correa da Silva Arapium ). She was born in the village of Andirá , downstream of the Tapajós river, in the state of Pará, in the Amazon. Because there is no school in the village, she left home at the age of 12 to study in Santarem City. Later, she went to Rio to pursue her dream and engage in tourism. She has lived here for half her life. She said that as soon as she broke away from the Aboriginal culture, she began to live a “non-Aboriginal life”, going to bars, parties, carnivals, samba dancing, etc., until she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013 and returned home to the village to accept traditional treatment. She stayed in the village for two years, completely detached from the outside life, and immersed herself in the culture and traditions of her ancestors. The shaman told her that she would recover, and she did. “After that, I decided to leave ‘city life’ and defend nature because it healed me. I would defend nature and my people, I would defend Aboriginal culture and dedicate myself to this mission. I have since become an activist ,” she recounts, sitting in a hammock in her apartment in Catete , where 90 Aboriginal people lived in a 2010 count. She deliberately chose not to buy a bed, “I will never give up sleeping in a hammock.”
Like many Rio place names, Carter is derived from the Tupi language, meaning “dense forest” or “closed forest,” and also refers to a tributary of the Carioca River that surrounds Mount Pride and joins the sea. The area occupied by the block used to be the indigenous village of Uruçumirim . Since 1840, it has become a resort for colonial aristocrats to build mansions, most notably the Baron of Novi Fribourg who commissioned the construction of the Carter Palace, which later became the Brazilian The presidential palace has lasted for more than 60 years, and 18 presidents have lived here, including Getúlio Vargas, who committed suicide here in 1954.
Teresa Arapium said returning to Rio was to “have a voice, a voice for the forest.” She started participating in local social movements and ran for city council in 2020, the only indigenous female candidate in Rio’s elections. Although she was not elected, she hopes that the issue of indigenous peoples will be put on the Rio agenda soon, emphasizing the urgency of declaring “we exist”. “In Rio, the indigenous people have no sense of presence, their rights are completely taken away because they are not considered as indigenous people in Rio. This is also the biggest neglect that indigenous people face in all of Brazil. Only when we have the right There are solutions to Aboriginal problems when you are involved in legislation and administration, signing programs and public policies.” Despite the electoral defeat, she said she felt victorious, winning many supporters and helping Rio’s indigenous people come forward. She said her campaign was “revolutionary”, using leaves instead of paper brochures and stickers to demonstrate that there can be a sustainable campaign.
Theresa Arapium runs for Rio city councilShe also spoke about a lot of prejudice in Rio, especially during the campaign, when she donned traditional national clothes and body paint to show her identity as a woman and indigenous people. “To be an Indigenous people in Rio is to be a strong fighter against bigotry and racism, they are invisible, they affect us so much, as if the Indigenous people are not part of the city, we are not part of the people of Rio. People enviously Look at our drawings and patterns like they’ve never seen it, like you’re becoming some kind of focal point,” says Teresa Arapium, who “wouldn’t be discriminated against as much without body paint. “. She also complained about the lack of health and education services for indigenous people in Rio, as well as the lack of cultural space for indigenous people to display arts and crafts, sing songs and hold traditional ceremonies, “I only know that I have a mission in Rio, and I have a mission in the village. I have a mission. I am the head of the village, this is not a job, but a mission. My dream? To see the environment protected from serious damage, that one day we can look at nature in peace.”
Although born in the countryside, she has only recently started learning the ethnic language, Nheengatu Tapajoara , “My ethnic group has been completely indoctrinated and whitened by the Portuguese. Because of the ban, our language is practically extinct. When they came here they banned us from speaking our own language, forced us to speak Portuguese, our ancestors were threatened just like us, and our culture was completely banned.” The culture of her people came under fire with the arrival of missionaries, who in the village preached Catholicism and saw shamans as “evil.” Another example of an entire ethnic group being “whitened” is when official documents registered their birthplace in the city of Santarem, not the village, as she and all her family did.
Theresa Arapium said the online Nin-Pa language class was her “big discovery”, finding she was speaking Ningata without knowing it because most fruits and fish have names from Tupi language. Now she is slowly using her knowledge to fight for the revival of Rio’s indigenous history. “We had a proposal before to develop tourism from the history of Rio’s indigenous people before the arrival of the invaders.” She is still working on it, “It is a difficult task in Rio, and it is not easy to restore the real history, because we are transparent and invisible in Rio.” She emphasized the efforts of indigenous people to tell their own history, “The history told in schools and books is the history of the colonists, which is interesting for them, but not for the indigenous people. The history of the indigenous people in Rio is completely erased, it is not fair”. Sandra echoed Teresa Arapium, calling on Indigenous peoples in the city to organize and unite to fight for their rights and overcome challenges, “otherwise we will continue to be transparent people”.
Note: Words from aboriginal languages in the text are presented in italics. For words with clear meanings, we will try to translate them into Chinese where appropriate. Official translations are not provided, but only for readers to refer to their meanings.
Special thanks <br />Huang Xingshan: I want to be a gust of wind, passing through every sky Zhou Xingyue: Little earthworms that loosen the soil everywhere
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