The Tekoha as a little child : an ethnography of kaiowá encampments in Dourados (MS)

Since the 1990s, the land occupations and the establishment of encampments, known as "black canvas", have become one of the ways to claim land expropriation and redistribution to the Brazilian state. Over the last 30 years, this form of claim has been associated to landless rural workers. However, the indigenous Kaiowá, in the region of Dourados in Mato Grosso do Sul state, have also been using this language of demanding to claim land they consider to be Tekoha, that is, their traditional life territory or spaces. The aim of this dissertation is to analyse the features of such symbolic language among the Kaiowá and, from an ethnography of two Kaiowá¿s encampments, Ñu Porã e Ñu Verá, located in the city of Dourados in Mato Grosso do Sul state, to comprehend the different meanings that the Kaiowá ascribe to the claimed lands. From such perspective, two topics become essential: the meanings of land to the Kaiowá and Guarani and their ways of mobility, crucial for the preservation and reproduction of new encampments (AU)