Indigenous peoples and social formation of Brazil: readings of Florestan Fernandes and Ailton Krenak in the National Constituent Assembly

Abstract

This essay proposes a dialogue between the ideas and political actions of Florestan Fernandes, a Brazilian sociologist and politician of popular origin, one of the main representatives of Latin American social thought in the 20th century, and Ailton Krenak, an indigenous intellectual and political leader of the Krenak people, a protagonist in the articulation of the Brazilian indigenous movement and one of the first and most influential indigenous voices to emerge in the intellectual debate in the country. Initially we discuss their speeches in defense of the rights of indigenous peoples in the National Constituent Assembly in the late 1980s, when the country was debating and constructing what would become the 1988 Constitution, discussing two related issues: the recognition of indigenous peoples as subjects of law, on the one hand, and the criticism of the relationship of the Brazilian State with these peoples, on the other hand. And we conclude by exploring the readings of the process of social formation in Brazil that Fernandes and Krenak elaborate when discussing the dilemmas of the relationship between indigenous peoples, the “nation” and the State in Brazil, suggesting that their speeches in the constituent assembly were anchored in a reinterpretation of the colonization process in the country and in the role played by indigenous populations in this process and in facing its consequences over the centuries.