Abstract

OLIVEIRA, João Pacheco de. ¿A misturado Indians Ethnology? Ethnic Identities and Territorialization in Northeast Brazil. Desacatos [online]. 2010, n.33, pp.13-32. ISSN 2448-5144.

Northeastern indigenous peoples of Brazil face us with a seeming paradox: the continuous and recent (two decades) emergence of colectivities thought of as originary. In order to understand this paradox, I intend to show how cognitive models and politic demands are related. Based on the most actual ethnographies, I intend to provide an interpretative key for the facts of the so-called "emergence" of new ethnic identities.The figurative image that I use -the journey of return- points towards two constitutive dimensions of ethnic identity. Ethnicity necessarily assumes a trajectory (that is historical and determined by multiple factors), and an origin (an initial experience, individual, but that also is traduced into knowledge and narratives to which it couples itself).

Keywords : ethnogenesis; ethnic emergences; ethnic identities; misturado indians; indians of Brazil.