Demography, Territory, and Identity of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil: The Xavante Indians and the 2000 Brazilian National Census

dc.creatorPereira, Nilza de Oliveira Martins
dc.creatorSantos, Ricardo Ventura
dc.creatorWelch, James Robert
dc.creatorSouza, Luciene Guimarães de
dc.creatorCoimbra Junior, Carlos Everaldo Alvares
dc.date2023-01-27T01:13:33Z
dc.date2023-01-27T01:13:33Z
dc.date2009
dc.date.accessioned2023-09-26T23:59:10Z
dc.date.available2023-09-26T23:59:10Z
dc.identifierPereira, Nilza de Oliveira Martins et al. Demography, Territory, and Identity of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil: The Xavante Indians and the 2000 Brazilian National Census. Human Organization, v. 68, n. 2, p. 166-180, 2009.
dc.identifier0018-7259
dc.identifierhttps://www.arca.fiocruz.br/handle/icict/56681
dc.identifier10.17730/humo.68.2.x717g781t57101k8
dc.identifier.urihttps://repositorioslatinoamericanos.uchile.cl/handle/2250/8896246
dc.descriptionBrazilian census data show a remarkable increase in the population self-reporting as "indigenous" between 1991 and 2000 but do not readily enable that increase to be analyzed in terms of the nearly 200 specific indigenous societies or ethnicities that exist in Brazil. In this article, we investigate some instances and implications of how the 2000 Brazilian National Census employed categories conceived for the national population to register one specific people the Xavante of Mato Grosso, Central Brazil with their own inherent social arrangements and morphologies. We do so by comparing census data corresponding to Xavante Indigenous Reserves with an independently collected set of demographic data for the same year. Although we found census data to adequately represent basic characteristics of the Xavante population (population size and age and sex distributions), we also found they reclassified and transformed Xavante households and thereby denatured Xavante sociality of its demographic and sociocultural complexity. The Xavante case is an example of how national demographic censuses not only capture data regarding indigenous peoples but also help shape those data by contributing to how indigenousness is perceived. Our findings suggest that the Brazilian National Census should seek to be more sensitive to indigenous realities and thereby to assess more accurately fundamental aspects of indigenous societies.
dc.formatapplication/pdf
dc.languageeng
dc.publisherSociety for Applied Anthropology
dc.rightsopen access
dc.subjectBrazil
dc.subjectSouth American Indians
dc.subjectCensus methods
dc.subjectCultural anthropology
dc.subjectXavantes
dc.titleDemography, Territory, and Identity of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil: The Xavante Indians and the 2000 Brazilian National Census
dc.typeArticle


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