Abstract

This project investigates the multi-faceted resistance of the Karipuna people in Rondônia, both in and outside of their heavily deforested indigenous territory in the Brazilian Amazon. It will focus on their territorial defense campaign and its recent “environmentalist turn”, trying to identify the ways in which the community members re/interpret the relationship of resistance and environmentalism, and how they translate it into social projects and quotidian life. Preliminary data suggests their territorial resistance is getting increasingly “decoupled” from cultural, linguistic resistance, as non-indigenous pressures overwhelm traditional lifeways. To understand Karipuna’s resistance by their own terms, ethnographic attention will be paid to the elusive, subtle dimensions of resistance, as well as not-doings, such as refraining from monetization of forestry “resource”. To understand what they ultimately resist for and articulate their aspiration for socio-political-cultural and ecological rights, the Karipuna conceptions will be put in dialogue with the re-emerging indigenous notion of "Florestania" (Forestizenship). 

Team