Challenges and Risks Faced by Indigenous Peoples in Today's Brazil: Unpacking Vulnerability and Multiple Reactions

在雅伊尔·博尔索纳罗（Jair Bolsonaro）当选总统后，巴西环境退化的长期趋势和主流发展的社会文化影响大幅上升，导致一些组织谴责暴力和冲突的加剧，这是不可接受的（例如，纽约时报，2019年9月21日）。在这方面，土著群体的命运是该国最严重的政治和经济问题之一。这些发展与1970年代末重新民主化时期开始的承认土著权利的趋势直接矛盾，这种趋势导致在1988年《宪法》中列入明确的条款。虽然土著居民试图利用一切可能的渠道和机会进行抵抗和反应，但对新的不利环境的障碍、前景和感受的理解仍然有限。这项研究将探讨土著群体对巴西新政府激进推进的保守政策和社会改革的影响、看法和反应。它将评估影响土著人民的暴力加剧背后的历史遗留问题和新趋势，并对这些问题进行理论分析。该计划分为三个主要阶段：1)分析支持和反对原住民的话语，建立网站，记录暴力事件和精英访谈；2)在亚马逊州马托格罗索州和南马托格罗索州的三个热点地区进行案例研究，针对选定的土著社区，让土著研究人员参与，利用参与式观察、访谈和焦点小组，特别是各种艺术表达（音乐、舞蹈、绘画、戏剧、视频和图片等），传达社区成员的痛苦、影响和看法；3)研讨会，全国会议和会谈，交流和提出问题的实证结果，并提出建议。这些联合的研究活动都将促进土著社区、联合组织和科学家之间的对话，以分享经验，从而更好地理解过去的遗产、不断增加的压力和反应的多样性。它的方法方法意味着与土著社区合作并为土著社区开展学术工作，允许他们表达自己的声音并直接参与对研究结果的解释，而不是为了非土著学者和政府机构的利益而对这些社区进行传统的研究。该方法本质上是共同产生的，并将在研究设计和操作中不断吸引相关利益相关者。它将通过一种渐进的方法和具有相互关联阶段的研究设计，鼓励相互依赖的行动者之间的“关系反射”。研究小组将处理民族事务状况，并将重点放在特别受公共机构和私营实体行动影响的三个领域的选定土著社区。除了外部压力之外，还有影响土著反应的内部社区因素，需要加以审查，例如土著社区和大家庭之间的内部争端和等级制度、性别不平等和家庭暴力、代际支持或竞争机制、强迫收养土著儿童以及具体的公共服务需求。此外，考虑到土著群体的具体情况肯定是世界许多地区劳工权利、法治和民主自由受到更广泛侵蚀的一个组成部分，以及与迫害移民、经济和政治不稳定、全球环境风险和气候不公正有关的国际大漩涡的一个因素，该项目将产生更广泛的理论和经验影响。

The long trend of environmental degradation and the socio-cultural impacts of mainstream development in Brazil have undergone a giant rise after the election of President Jair Bolsonaro, leading some organisations to denounce the unacceptable intensification of violence and conflicts (e.g. New York Times, 21 Sep 2019). In that context, the fate of indigenous groups constitutes one of the most serious political and economic questions in the country. These developments directly contradict the tendency to recognise indigenous rights initiated in the re-democratisation period in the late 1970s, which led to the inclusion of explicit articles in the 1988 Constitution. Whereas the indigenous population is trying to resist and react using all possible channels and opportunities, there is still limited understanding of barriers, prospects and feelings about the new adverse context.The research will address the impacts, perceptions and reactions of indigenous groups to the aggressive advance of conservative policies and social reforms by the new Brazilian administration. It will assess and theorise the combination of past legacies and new trends behind the intensification of violence affecting indigenous peoples. The project has three main phases: 1) analysis of pro- and anti-indigenous discourses, launch of a website to capture violence occurrences and elite interviews; 2) case studies in three hotspot areas in the states of Amazonas, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, targeting selected indigenous communities, involving indigenous researchers and making use of participant observation, interviews and focus groups, and in particular various artistic expressions (music, dance, drawings, drama, videos and pictures, etc.) that communicate suffering, the impacts and the perceptions of community members; 3) workshops, a national meeting and talks to communicate and problematize the empirical results and raise recommendations. Those combined research activities will all foster a dialogue between indigenous communities, allied organisations and researchers to shared experiences to better comprehend past legacies, mounting pressures and the diversity of responses.Its methodological approach means conducting academic work with and for the indigenous communities, allowing the expression of their own voices and direct involvement in the interpretation of findings, rather than the conventional research on those communities for the benefit of non-indigenous scholars and government agencies. The approach is inherently coproduced and will continuously engage relevant stakeholders in both the research design and its operation. It will encourage a 'relational reflexivity' between the interdependent actors through an incremental methodology and research design with interrelated phases.The research team will deal with the national state of affairs and also focus on selected indigenous communities in three areas particularly affected by the action of public agencies and private entities. In addition to external pressures, there are also internal community factors that influence indigenous reactions and that need to be examined, such as internal disputes and hierarchies among indigenous communities and extended families, gender inequalities and domestic violence, intergenerational mechanisms of support or competition, forced adoption of indigenous children, and specific public service demands. In addition, the project will have wider theoretical and empirical repercussions considering that the specific situation of indigenous groups is certainly an integral part of the wider erosion of labour rights, the rule of law and democratic freedoms in many parts of the world, as well as an element of the international maelstrom associated with persecution of migrants, economic and political instabilities, global environmental risks and climate injustices.