O elemento território e sua significação para os Pataxó da Região Extremo Sul da Bahia

Abstract

The history of Indians rights concerning to their territory is based on discrimination and disregard of these as people, since they even had their human condition questioned. Buried from their lands, the native peoples were manipulated by political and economic interests of the established power. The "indigenous question" is far beyond a single issue, the problems faced by the Indians, are increasingly complex and dependent on the state to offer solutions, and the most urgent is the issue of territory. We seek to demonstrate the vision of the legislators, from the colonial period to the present moment, regulating issues related to the Indians, their legal status, their freedom, their autonomy and their lands in particular. In this way we expose the difficulties for acceptance of the natives in the social context, since the prevalence of Eurocentrism until recently in our history which the disqualification of these people and the construction of an invisible wall that prevented the interaction with the national society. For this part of the dissertation we developed a documentary and bibliographical research, with exploratory approach with the purpose of constructing this historical focused and knowing how the Indian was perceived in the indigenous legislation. In the first moments of the discovery the Spanish and Portuguese documents served as sources and, after acquiring greater legal and legislative autonomy from Brazil, the national documents. The indigenous territory surpasses the notion of the spatial portion occupied by these peoples; its significance is directly related to the survival of peoples in social, cultural, spiritual, as well as economic aspects. The Pataxó people are among the most expressive in Brazil, numerically, occupy the 9th position of the ethnic groups with the largest population according to Fundação Nacional de Saúde (National Health Foundation)-FUNASA data, most of them living in the state of Bahia, in the extreme south region. We tried to know the opinion of the Indians about the meaning of the territory and the importance for the development of the villages in interviews with the leaderships in 15 villages. The result of the field research contributed to this understanding and show the main need and concern of the Indians today is still the regulation of their territory.