Kaingang territory in the meso-region of the great Mercosul border: Territorialities in confrontation

Abstract

This paper aims at studying the process of Kaingang’s territory in the Mesoregion Great Border of MERCOSUL, located in the southwest of Paraná, west of Santa Catarina and northwest of Rio Grande do Sul states, on 15 Indigenous’ lands. We analyzed the world conceptions and the interests of the different agents that interact on the formation of the several territorialities, which confront on the Indigenous’ lands of Kaigang. The study seeks to characterize Kaingang’s population, verifying aspects related to politics, power and, the decision making into their territories; it also search for characterizing the national state as a tutorial organ as well as the regional and local authorities, regarding to the actions in the political, and economic field and the uses of the social and environmental and, work spaces of The Kaingang. The study of territorialities, the bond with the past, the gathering, the hunting and the fishing, the plantation and the housing, the cooperation and the leases of land is important to help understand the conception of territory presented among The Kaingang that is expressed in the struggles for dominance and organization of their spaces. Based on the social theories and also on the concrete spaces of power relationships among The Kaingang, we studied the territory in order to understand how the territorialities represent themselves faced with the demarcation of land carried out by the Union, in contrast to the discourses of autonomy and social equality, autonomy and freedom of Kaingang, with the purpose of understanding the territorialities in confrontation, resulting from the ways the power relationships are processed among Indigenous and non-Indigenous in the Kaingang Territory in the Mesoregion Great Border of MERCOSUL

Key words: Kaingang, territory, territoriality, indigenous peoples’ land.