I am Indigenous, not pardo : Push for self-declaration in Brazil s census mongabay.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mongabay.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The city of Salvador in Brazil’s Bahia state was one of the first established by European colonizers 500 years ago, built where settlements of Indigenous people already existed.
Today, the predominantly Afro-Brazilian city is home to an Indigenous minority of around 7,500, many of whom are enrolled in the local university under the Indigenous quota system.
They say they continue to face prejudice from others, who question why they wear modern clothes and use smartphones and don’t look like the pictures in history books.
Over centuries of suffering from colonization and enslavement, Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian communities here have forged something of a cultural alliance in an effort to keep their respective traditions alive.
Indigenous in São Paulo: Erased by a colonial education curriculum
In Brazil’s biggest city, descendants of the original inhabitants live in invisibility and struggle to keep their traditions despite São Paulo’s celebrated cultural diversity
by Jennifer Ann Thomas on 28 April 2021
São Paulo, the biggest city in the western hemisphere, is home to two Indigenous reserves with vastly differing fates.
The Jaraguá reserve is the smallest in Brazil, hemmed in by a controversial property development and highways that commemorate colonizers who enslaved and massacred the Indigenous population.
On the much larger Tenondé Porã reserve, residents grow their own food and speak their own language.