Abstract
This article aims to analyze how the indigenous communities of Brazil have organized autonomous actions and strategies to confront the Covid-19 pandemic based on the articulation among their own historical experiences, their health conceptions, partnerships with scientific communities and other segments of society that support the indigenous struggle. The research articulates the political and theoretical modernity/coloniality/decoloniality movement with indigenous experiences and conceptions of health, body/spirituality and territory. For this task, we adopted an undisciplined methodology based on conversation, solidarity and analysis of discussions, sites, lives, bibliographic productions and official documents prepared by indigenous organizations and partner entities. The research has pointed out that the situation of greater vulnerability of indigenous populations is not only due to biological factors. Also, indigenous people have denounced the invasion of their territories, racism, the lack of sanitation policies, food insecurity, the circulation of people not belonging to the community (missionaries, miners, loggers, army), the difficult access to hospitals and the precariousness of the necessary resources for individual and collective asepsis have worsen the spread and lethality of the virus. Likewise the current indigenous struggle in this pandemic scenario, this article is not limited to a health discussion, yet it aims to contribute to think about the relationship between the pandemic and the dissemination of anti-democratic policies that simultaneously affect the right to health and the territory of these populations.
Highlights
April 1, 2020 marks the official date of the first Covid-19 registration case among Brazilian indigenous peoples
The data presented here are composed by the “APIB-based indigenous organizations, Fronts facing the Covid-19 that collaborate with APIB, Special Indigenous Health Secretariat (SESAI), Municipal and State Health Secretariats and the Federal Public Ministry” (APIB 2020a) and by official, historical, anthropological and journalistic data that emphasize the situation of indigenous peoples in facing pandemic contexts such as that of 2020
In addition to past evidence that measles, smallpox and influenza viruses have culminated in major epidemics and consequent extermination of native peoples in Brazil, today "the introduction of respiratory viruses into susceptible indigenous communities has a high potential for spread, resulting in high rates of attack and hospitalization, with the potential to cause death"(Fiocruz, 2020; Valverde, 2020) and, cause exterminations such as those that and, in the same way, provoke exterminations like those that occurred during centuries of colonization in Brazil
Summary
April 1, 2020 marks the official date of the first Covid-19 registration case among Brazilian indigenous peoples. On September 7, the APIB (Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil) updates the data, indicating the number of 30,218 indigenous people infected, 786 deaths; 156 people affected by the pandemic (APIB 2020a). Our hypothesis is that the worsening of indigenous vulnerabilities results from the greater susceptibility to exogenous diseases, and from social and economic conditions and the difficulty of access to the health system (COVID-19 pandemic and collaborators, 2005). All these conditions have historically arisen from the process of coloniality established since the 16th century, going through centuries of violation of indigenous rights by the State and its agents (colonizers, sertanists, missionaries, indigenists). The roots planted in this process are currently reflected in the continuity of the invasion of their territories, the precarious access to health services (hampered by logistic distance or by the reduced number of staff), and the institutional racism perpetrated in political actions of neglect of indigenous rights or encouragement to their disrespect
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