Country: Brazil

Group: Kaingang

Date Finalized: 3/27/2020

Team: Giselle Chavez (lead), Leilani Alva, Johanna McCombs

Content Warning: violence, death, slavery, torture

Approximate Time Period: 1700-present

Beginning in the 1700s, the Kaingang of Brazil came in contact with advancing European colonists, leading to regular violent conflicts between them.  In the 1800’s, colonization attempts became more forceful and the indigenous population had already been reduced significantly because of various epidemic diseases while living under Jesuit command (Tommasino & Fernandes, 2018). The Kaingang were forced to move out of their lands in order to escape Portuguese slave raids, and in the 1800’s settlers were allowed to enslave any Kaingang they captured despite it being illegal (Kaingáng, n.d.). There are reports of a European military leader “exterminating” a group of 200 Kaingang members, where the survivors had to move tribes, but there are no specific numbers (Tommasino & Fernandes, 2018). There are also a number of reports of bugreiros, or “savage-hunters”, in southern Brazil killing large numbers of Kaingang in the 1800’s during forcible removal from the area (Rinke 2018, Hemming 1978). More recently, researchers have noted that the Kaingang community has been tortured through imprisonment in unsanitary and unhumanitarian facilities (Demeterio et al., 2019).

Sources

  1. Demetrio, André, Kozicki, & Katya. (2019). Transitional Injustice For Indigenous Peoples From Brazil. Revista Direito e Práxis 10:1, 129-169
  2. Hemming, John 1978. Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians. London: Macmillan.
  3. Kaingáng. (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2020, from https://www.everyculture.com/South-America/Kaing-ng.html
  4. Tommasino, K., Fernandes, R.C. (2018). Kaingang—Indigenous Peoples in Brazil. (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2020, from https://pib.socioambiental.org/en/Povo:Kaingang
  5. Rinke, S. (2018). ‘No alternative to extermination’: Germans and their ‘savages’ in southern Brazil at the turn of the nineteenth century. In Savage worlds. Manchester University Press.