“Brazil does not recognise the Brasis”: interpretations in prose and verse by graça graúna

Abstract

Based on elements and passages from the work of Graça Graúna, an indigenous Potiguara scholar, this article discusses the important contribution of contemporary indigenous literature to the renewal of social theory about Brazil and its people, tensioning the hegemonic Brazilian sociology in our representation of national society, with emphasis on overcoming the ethnic invisibilization crossed by the desire for social emancipation in pluricultural perspective. Based on the study of the indigenous issue and Indianism in Brazilian literature, from the chronicles of travelers and missionaries in the colonial period to the present day, as well as the author's own reading of these canons, it is shown how the original peoples were being converted, excluded, made captives, associated with losers and subspecies. That is, erased from the condition of subjects and their sociocultural realities by the efforts undertaken by the Brazilian intelligentsia in order to propagate ideas about the Brazilian people and its identity as a Eurocentered nation. Finally, Graça Graúna's interpretation of education and human rights and her actions against the thesis of the "Temporal Framework" and in the sorority to indigenous relatives are pointed out. It is the expectation of these reflections and analyses to shed light on literary projects aligned with indigenous cosmologies, self-histories and knowledge in the production of a social thought with a decolonial perspective and feminist sensibility, in the construction of new collective and utopic project(s) for the country.