Indians under the black canvas: an ethnography of Kaiowá encampments in Dourados (MS)

Abstract

Since the 1990's, land occupations and the establishment of camping sites known as "black canvas" have become one of the ways to command land expropriation and distribution in the Brazilian territory. In the last 30 years, this form of claiming for right has been associated to landless rural workers, however, news on indigenous occupations and camping sites by different ethnic groups have become more and more common, for example, the Terena, the Pataxó in southern Bahia, the Kaingang in southern Brazil, as well as the Guarani Ñhandeva in the south of São Paulo state, with the objective to claim for new land distribution. The Kaiowá in the region of Dourados, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, have also been using this language of demanding to claim for land they consider to be Tekoha, that is, their traditional life territory or spaces. The objective of this article is to show the characteristics of the social organization of two Kaiowá camping sites, thus showing that it is not the occupations or land claiming that are new, but the use of this "form of camping" as a common language of collective social demands. (AU)