Isolated and islanders: indigenism and conflict in the Vale do Javari Indigenous Territory, Amazon

Abstract

We set out to show in this paper how a particular ideal about indigenous people permeates the Brazilian indigenist utopia and how the indigenous policies concerning isolated indians present their contradictions and idiosyncrases, influenced by these ideals. We present a study on the recent conflicts that took place in the Vale do Javari Indigenous Land (AM) and that resulted in violent deaths of Korubo and Matis people, respectively considered by the Brazilian government as “isolated” and “of recent contact” indians. We analyse this conflict history from both indigenist and indigenous narratives. We observe how the FUNAI (Indians' Affair Governmental Office) employees have tried to ignore and to deny the indigenous' rights to self-determination and how they tried to obliterate the role and the presence of the Brazilian state in the regional interethnical relations. We conclude that a possible dialogue could be the first step to end a public policy that has led to ignoring and isolating these indigenous groups. We argue that isolation ideal can not be dominant over the indigenous people right to self determination: this concept is weakly supported in a romantic and contradictory idea of indigeous people that live totally allien and marginal to historical processes, as if they would not suffer and resist the pressure of the old (neo)developmentism promoted by the State and by the presence of expansionist frontiers such as loggers, dam builders or oil companies.