For a more anthropological history: indigenous peoples in contemporary times

Abstract

In this text, I propose a refl ection on indigenous peoples’ history by scanning Brazilian historiography in search for historians' perception concerning the historical role played by indigenous peoples in our history. Thus, I present a brief overview of the treatment given to indigenous history since the moment of professionalization of history as a school subject, bringing as a hypothesis the idea that natives have been made socially invisible and discursively silenced. That is to say that, for a long time, their voices were inaudible and their histories, invisible. I consider that the way in which indigenous history has been treated generated a stigmatizing circle of historiographical marginalization, as well as of a social erasing reinforced by this exclusion. In the search for a proposal of a ‘more anthropological history’, I make use of the readings of João Pacheco de Oliveira Filho, Marshall Sahlins and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, considering new theoretical possibilities for a reading of indigenous societies in contemporary time.