Indigenous Peoples Day: education is key against stereotypes

In July last year, Law 14,402/22 defined April 19 as Indigenous Peoples’ Day – and no longer Indian Day – to celebrate the culture and heritage of these peoples. The measure, approved by the National Congress, leaves aside the term indigenous, considered prejudiced against native peoples. For the executive coordinator of the Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (Apib), Dinamam Tuxá, prejudice ends up being reinforced with stereotypes that still persist in commemorations and in school books. “Several schools fantasizing; children want to put indigenous people in a format, inside a box. Indigenous people are those who live in the forest, who walk, wear clothes. This creates a scenario of racism because these children grow up in the ideology of a Indigenous people with straight hair, slanted eyes, reddish skin. We went through a process of miscegenation. We went through a process of violence. How many indigenous women did not suffer sexual abuse? They had forced miscegenation”. Listen on Radioagência Nacional The existence of indigenous peoples is crossed by centuries of violence. For Dinamam Tuxá, this violence persists in the form of racism, as a remnant of Portuguese colonization. “Process of a lot of violence, of forced acculturation, of withdrawal of language, of abuse, of forcibly bringing indigenous peoples into a reality that does not belong to them, of not demarcating indigenous territories, of not promoting public policy actions that encourage the culture of indigenous peoples. So this whole scenario also contributes to this violence spreading inside and outside indigenous lands”. Indigenous child at the Terra Livre Camp, in Brasilia – Arquivo/Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil Genocídio History professor at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia, Fabrício Lyrio, reinforces that the arrival of the Portuguese brought a series of violence against the native peoples, the which resulted in genocide. While 5 million indigenous people lived in Brazil in 1500, today this population does not reach 1 million. “It is, above all, a symbolic violence of demarcating a presence in a land where other people were already living. And this violence tends to grow. Both the intentional violence of war, of enslavement, and the violence that was not planned, but that had an absurd impact on native populations, the arrival of new infectious agents. There is a dimension of genocide, there is no doubt”. Fabrício Lyrio recalls that, before immigrants and people from the African continent, the indigenous people were the first to be enslaved by the Portuguese in Brazil. According to the expert, the first sugar mills in the country were set up with indigenous labor, most of which were enslaved. In 1500, the Portuguese who arrived here believed they had arrived in the Indies. Therefore, they named those who already lived here as Indians. But the correct term is indigenous, which means, in Latin, native to the place where he lives.

Agência Brasil