Against ethnoecocide: from far-right political violence to the collective resistance of indigenous peoples in Brazil

Abstract

In this paper, we start from extreme right-wing discourses about indigenous peoples and their territories to map how they are retaken and subverted in indigenous resistance in Brazil. We highlight how the discursive production resulting from the largest Brazilian indigenous congress – Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL) –, in the editions from 2019 to 2022, responded to the attacks of the federal executive, acting on discourses. For this, we recover some concepts of the decolonial turn relevant to the discussion, outline contexts of attack and resistance to the rights of indigenous peoples in the period, summarize results of our previous analysis on discourses by the executive and present analyzes of ATL letters. Our analyzes point to an increase in indigenous mobilization in response to political attacks by the far-right government between 2019 and 2022. Indigenous peoples organized in their movements managed to assume a leading role in social resistance to fascism in Brazil.