Abstract
In this article, we identify usual difficulties faced by Brazilian psychologists when dealing with Amerindian Peoples, concerning the systematic violence experienced by those Peoples, who have been suffering and fighting against a process of genocide and ethnocide. To identify those difficulties, we analysed speeches of Amerindian leaders of the State of São Paulo - Guarani Mbya, Pankararu, Xavante, Baniwa, Tupi - Guarani, Terena, Kaingang and Krenak - which were addressed to psychologists. Those speeches were delivered in events promoted by CRP-SP in 2010 and in the 2nd and 3rd Forums “The Amerindian presence in São Paulo” at the Institute of Psychology (USP), in 2014. From the analysis, we make a distinction between the notions of meeting and dialogical encounter, considering that: 1. not every meeting is an encounter, in the dialogical sense, because the meeting can happen in a way that one of the interlocutors is objectified by the other and 2. being together and building an affective ground is an a priori for the dialogical encounter to happen. Based on the leaderships` speeches and in the notions of Amerindian perspectivism and the phenomenology of alterity in Cultural Psychology, we propose alternative paths to understand constitutive aspects of a dialogical meeting in such interethnic situation. These reflections are proposed as a theoretic-empirical work, as it departs from the comprehension that the theoretical problems are not separated from the concrete situation that enables them to emerge.
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Notes
Amerindian people in Brazil have been strongly criticizing how they are presented in the history school books that have an evolutionist approach to history, and present their stereotypes as peoples belonging to the past. For further insights, see Gandra and Nobre (2014), Lindemeyer (2013) and da Silva (2014).
II Fórum: A Presença Indígena em São Paulo: Indígenas e o contexto urbano: Lutas, vivências e identidades (2014, October 09). Video file available at http://iptv.usp.br/portal/struts/video.action?idItem=24382 and III Fórum: A Presença Indígena em São Paulo: Saúde e educação indígena - oralidade, cultura e políticas públicas (2014, November 13). Video file availabe at http://iptv.usp.br/portal/transmission/video.action;jsessionid=D4C4742DC710B796E1EE7128E30FA6AF?idItem=24518
Before the Federal Constitution of 1988, the Amerindian People were under a guardianship regime (tutela): legally, Amerindian peoples were considered as children, for whom an institution/citizen has to respond for. This regime was grounded in the idea that Amerindian peoples and their ways of living would and should disappear – they should be assimilated to national society so that Amerindian people would become citizens and (cheap) manpower and their territory would be replaced by monocultures, mining, cities and major infrastructure projects. However, in 1988, they conquered the right to respond for themselves under the courts and also the rights to have differentiated education and differentiated health systems. The differentiated education includes bilingual adequacy of the general contents of the public school and the possibility to teach specific contents, between many other aspects. A differentiated health would supposedly be guaranteed by an indigenous health subsystem that integrates the national health system (SUS). However, the 1988’s Constitution has never been effectively respected and the indigenous health and educational system are still precarious and have been progressively dismantled. (Cf. Carneiro da Cunha 2012; Varga et al. 2013).
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Acknowledgements
I am thankful to the Programa Unificado de Bolsas de Estudo da USP (PUB-USP) and the Programa de Mobilidade Internacional Santander Universidades, that enabled this research conceding me scholarships and to the Niels Bohr Professorship Centre for Cultural Psychology for the partnership and dialogue.
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We use the notion of ethnicity to refer to a group of people who share and construct together an ethos, i.e., customs and habits, principles, values, norms of action and ideals. We understand, however, that the notion of ethnicity is extrinsic to the way these Peoples understand each other, even though at the same time it has been appropriated in indigenous discourses, especially in dialogues and disputes with governmental and non-governmental institutions. For further insights into the limits of the notion of ethnic identity in the Amerindian context, see Albert (1997), Gallois (2000), Pantoja et al. (2011) and Viveiros de Castro (2006).
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Waddington Achatz, R., Silva Guimarães, D. An Invitation to Travel in an Interethnic Arena: Listening Carefully to Amerindian Leaders’ Speeches. Integr. psych. behav. 52, 595–613 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-018-9431-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-018-9431-0