Ser mulher indígena: Território, identidade e protagonismo

Abstract

Studies that discuss the indigenous theme from an intersectional perspective of ethnicity and gender have been growing significantly in Brazil. In this sense, this work was carried out with indigenous women from three ethnic groups who live in the State of Tocantins, northern Brazil, namely: Apinajé, Karajá and Xerente. The main objective of the study is to reveal how their identity construction process takes place, investigating how these women build and rebuild their identities and what is the relationship of this construction inside and outside their communities. In order to do this, first I resorted to ethnobiography, as a method of explaining the relationship between individual, subject and culture, and, second, to the interview as a technique for data collection. I also resort to the theoretical approaches of different authors who discuss, among others: gender, traditional peoples, identity, indigenous protagonism, culture, territory, interdisciplinarity and intersectionality. Can be concluded, with this master's research, that the process of identity construction of indigenous women takes place through interaction with indigenous and non-indigenous societies, and in a dialogical, intercultural and dynamic relationship with time, with nature, with culture and with the territory. Interacting in this construction are elements from both the internal context of the community and the external context, in which ancestral and cultural aspects of its people, their experiences within the community and the socially established relations between the sexes are present. Urban experiences, protagonisms, experiences outside the community and socio-political participation in coping strategies in defense of indigenous rights in the country and in the fight against racism and oppression, of which women indigenous people are historically victimized.