On "Amazonian Routes: Indigenous Mobility and Colonial Communities in Northern Brazil" by Heather F. Roller
Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: In the conclusion of Amazonian Routes: Indigenous Mobility and Colonial Communities in Northern Brazil, Heather F. Roller explains that her intention when writing the book was to emphasize the mobility and adaptability of native Indians in eighteenth-century Brazil.Whereas most accounts of colonial white-indian relations focus on how natives were forced to move to settlements run by whites or mestizos, Roller claims to present another side of the story: the routes and movements chosen by the Indians themselves.Yet, what caught my attention when reading this well informed, superbly researched book, was the degree to which the Portuguese colonial enterprise in Brazil attempted to control not only the territory but also the individual bodies of the natives whose lands they were invading.Perhaps not so differently from current governments in many parts of the world, Portugal's colonial rulers changed their policies according to shifts in ideological fashions and availability of resources, moving from an almost exclusive reliance on religious agency (the Mission system) to a state-controlled, secular approach to the exploitation of labor and resources (Diretórios dos Índios), to the privatization of all exploitation and native-contacting activities in the post-Diretório period, once the resources had run out.Each change imposed colossal difficulties to Brazil's original inhabitants, who were forced not only to move physically to a new location (often abandoning settlements to which they had been forcibly moved earlier), but also to adapt to new ways of organizing their space, their livelihood, and their personal relationships.So, although the book indeed includes many examples of how the natives were able to adapt to new situations and use the colonial system to their own advantage, what stands out to the reader (at least to this reader) are the minutiae of how the Portuguese set out to control, at every local level, the way in which Brazil's native inhabitants lived their lives.The book's archival research is impressive, shedding new light on the everyday life of the village Indians (índios aldeados) in the eighteenth century: what activities
DOI: 10.62791/s3b4w071
Author: Lúcia Sá
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2970101006