A COMISSÃO NACIONAL DE POLÍTICA INDIGENISTA (CNPI): NOVAS E VELHAS RELAÇÕES ENTRE O ESTADO BRASILEIRO E OS POVOS INDÍGENAS.

Abstract

This work tells the story of the creation (2006) and functioning of the National Commission of Indigenous Policy (CNPI). Although recent, the advent of this new state apparatus can only be the object of a historiographical analysis when placed in the context of the entire history of indigenous policy, of which the indigenous peoples were objects and victims. By producing this story, we tried to demonstrate that during the first five centuries of the establishment of relations with the native peoples, the national state conqueror, first in the form of the Portuguese colonizer state and then in the form of the Brazilian state, sought to reduce the multiple identities of the indigenous peoples to the monoculturality of a single nation. An analysis of the period between the colonial era and the subsequent evolution reveals a line of historical continuity: the state conceived itself as identical to the nation. This conception of the State built a tutelary and integrationist indigenous policy. Under this policy, the indigenous survivors of successive genocides were ¨tutored¨ because they were considered to be underdeveloped in relation to the conquerors. As such, they were forced, in different ways, to integrate into the supposed national communion, through the denial of their ethnicity and their incorporation into the conquering civilization. With these analytical elements, this study seeks to explain the creation of the CNPI as an achievement, a result of wars and struggles of resistance of many indigenous peoples´ survivors. These peoples managed to not only survive but also generate mobilizations mobilize in the late twentieth century in order to tell their stories and declare that their nations, languages and cultures still live. The Brazilian government was forced to acknowledge this in the 1988 Constitution. On the other hand, the study shows that in the processes of creation and definition of CNPI´s operational rules, the state has managed to, once again, reproduce the tutelary indigenism and to steal the right of indigenous peoples to decide their own destinies and to participate in decisions related to the country´s future, through dialogue with other nations living in the territory. While the study recognizes that the CNPI represented the first entity where indigenous peoples were able to discuss and try to intervene in policies related to their communities, the Commission´s history shows that the limits of this intervention were so high that the very existence of this body represented a constant threat to indigenous peoples, due to the ongoing racial war driven by the privileged classes, represented by the single-nation and monocultural Brazilian state. For this reason, the study concludes that the rights of the native nations and peoples of this territory can only be guaranteed if the current State is transformed into plurinational State. Meanwhile, according to another conclusion of this study, indigenous peoples in voluntary isolationthat refuse to accept the establishment of relations with national society, are the ones which - though harassed and attacked by fronts of capital expansion - are free from State institutional traps. It is only for this reason that the CNPI does not offer them any risk.