“Indigenous people in Piauí: he hid to resist and appeared to exist!”: trajectory of the indigenous groups of the Tabajara ethnicity in Piauí

Abstract

In the last four decades, in Brazil, a greater number of indigenous groups have come to declare themselves and claim recognition of their ethnic status and constitutional rights, in a phenomenon called the process of indianization and/or the strengthening of indianity. In Piauí, we highlight the groups of the Tabajara ethnic group that organize themselves through indigenous associations, inaugurating a new chapter in the indigenous history of Piauí, since, for a long time, the indigenous presence in the State was invisible, silenced, and denied. In this bulge, the present study sought to know the socio-historical conditions that contributed to the indianization process of the indigenous groups of the Tabajara ethnicity in Piauí. It is a qualitative research based on studies on the production of meaning in daily life. We conducted the study in the municipalities of Piripiri, PI, and Lagoa de São Francisco, PI, with 20 leaders, through the following methodological resources: observation in daily life, conversation in daily life, and semi-structured interview. In short, we observed that, in the face of the debris of the past, the Tabajara seek to write their history of the present, based on the historical rescue of their indigenous roots and the action of mediators, evoking and (re)signifying facts and events that are significant to them and that strengthen their indianities and their political action.