Felipe Tuxá (UFBA, Oxford): "Are ‘autodemarcações’ a form of refusal? Imagining the future with the Tuxá community of São Francisco River, Brazil"
| Dates: | 30 October 2024 |
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| Times: | 17:00 - 18:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| Speaker: | Felipe Tuxá |
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Part of the University of Manchester's Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies' research seminar series:
Wed 30 October 2024, 5pm (UK time). This event will take place in Samuel Alexander Building, room A214. It can also be followed online: https://zoom.us/j/95860231166
Abstract: In Brazil, Indigenous struggles for territories generally employ two modes of occupation and organization: retomadas (retaking lands) and autodemarcações (self-demarcating lands). Although each Indigenous people has its own strategies to recover stolen territories, connections established between Indigenous social movements, plus the historical alliances and networks of relationships between different groups, lead us to explore the similarities and specificities in Indigenous struggles for land in Brazil. This presentation looks at the autodemarcação of the Tuxá people in Dzorabábé (aka Aldeia Avó, in Rodelas in the State of Bahia), which began in 2017. The Tuxá’s remarkable autodemarcação seeks to re-establish the community, of which I am part, on the banks of the São Francisco River (known locally as “Opará” or River-Sea), from where they were systematically removed from 1988, due to the Itaparica Hydroelectric Plant. After decades of waiting for different governments to proceed with the land regularization, the community came up with plan to occupy the area, build fences and carry out the territorial demarcation themselves. This presentation foregrounds Tuxá voices in the process, exploring how autodemarcações challenge the State’s sovereignty by refusing to recognize its monopoly over the demarcation of Indigenous territories. I also highlight the meanings of land, of inhabiting the land and of articulating traditional knowledges with creative new ways of living, in the face of the state’s inoperability. By weaving the historical web that leads the community to recover this portion of its ancestral territory, I seek to connect past, present and future, highlighting the dreams that we can dream together and alongside the Opará River, and the desires we have for future generations.
Dr Felipe Tuxá is an indigenous anthropologist of the Tuxá people from Rodelas, Bahia, Brazil, and a professor at the Department of Anthropology and Ethnology of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). He is currently a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford.
Speaker
Felipe Tuxá
Organisation: Federal University of Bahia
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
A214
Samuel Alexander Building
Manchester
