How Will the Kayapó be Dammed? The Impacts of Environmentalist Assumptions on a Kayapó Community in the Brazilian Amazon
Social Sciences
Anthropology Department Independent Senior Thesis
International environmental discourse envisions indigenous peoples as inherent conservationists, an assumption that does not reflect the reality of indigenous peoples’ lives. This international environmental discourse has become institutionalized into Brazilian law, development politics, and the politics of a conservation organization that pressures Brazil’s indigenous Kayapó communities to fit the assumptions of indigenous conservationists. This ethnographic study, which took part in the Kayapó community of Aukre and the frontier town of Tucumã in the Brazilian Amazon, examines the influence of this international environmental discourse on the politics of a conservation organization that partners with the community and of the state-led Belo Monte Hydroelectric dam. Utilizing participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and a time allocation spot-check survey, I examined how the alliance between a Kayapó village and a conservation organization impacts the Kayapó’s political strategies. I found the politics and relationships between the community of Aukre, other Kayapó villagers, a local conservation organization, and the state were wrought with tensions. In response to these tensions, Aukre sought to create their own organization that would take on the responsibilities of the local conservation organization. Aukre’s agenda to create a new organization was an attempt to emancipate themselves from the difficulties of partnering with the conservation organization and an attempt to carve out a space of independence from the organizations politics that were heavily influenced by the assumptions of indigenous conservationists found in international environmental discourse.
