THE CHALLENGE OF THE INVISIBILITY OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN AN URBAN CONTEXT

Abstract

This article addresses the issue of indigenous peoples in Brazil in the urban context. It provides an overview of the progressive inclusion of indigenous peoples in Brazil's urban world and how the perception of a loss of ethnic identity prevails among state agents and society in general. It problematizes the challenge of ensuring the rights to health, education and housing, among others, in a territoriality reconfigured by the transit from the village to the city and from the city to the village. The challenge became enormous during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the Brazilian government denied indigenous people living in urban areas and on unregulated land the right to preferential compulsory vaccination. The text discusses the lack of differentiated public policies for indigenous peoples in urban areas and the persistence of the assimilationist paradigm in indigenous policy, which is completely contrary to the cultural diversity established in the 1988 Federal Constitution. It highlights the movement to make indigenous people visible in the urban context, carried out by the indigenous peoples themselves, in the exercise of their self-determination, through the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) and the results achieved.

Keywords: Indigenous Peoples; City; Rights