Indigenous Peoples and the Environment in Brazil: Public Anthropology and Activist Perspectives

Speaker: Henyo Barretto (University of Brasilia) and Adriana Ramos (Climate Observatory) 17 March 2023, 16.00-17.30 Venue: CEDLA, Roetersstraat 33 | 1018 WB Amsterdam - 2nd Floor

Activity: CEDLA Lecture

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The lecture will propose an understanding of recent transformations in Brazilian socio-environmental policy and arena, with an emphasis on the social effects of national development projects on territorial (and other) rights of indigenous peoples and traditional communities. It will be an attempt to understand the country’s recent political context based, in part, on the production of the commissions of the Brazilian Association of Anthropology (ABA), understood as a peculiar site of knowledge production and political advocacy. Evidences from the documents show that the assaults against the environmental legislation and the rights of indigenous peoples and traditional communities are not a recent phenomenon in Brazil. A tentative assessment of the prospects of these trends under the new Lula administration will be sketched by way of conclusion.

Henyo T. Barretto Filho is professor at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Brasília, Brazil and was coordinator of Indigenous Affairs Commission of the Brazilian Association of Anthropology (ABA).

Adriana Ramos is journalist and activist, former coordinator of the Socioenvironmental Policy and Law Program of the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), and is currently member of the Coordination of the Civil Society Organizations’ coalition Climate Observatory. Picture: Indigenous women in Brazil have lead protests during Bolsonaro's rule | Survival International