This project partnership between Cardiff University and LAB, funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, completed its work in 2021.

Lead researchers were: Antonio Ioris, Reader in human geography at the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University; Dr. Vitale Joanoni Neto (co-investigator) associated professor at the Department of History at the Federal University of Mato Grosso; and Dr. Pedro Rapozo, a lecturer at  Amazonas State University and Coordinator of the Amazon Social-Environmental Studies Center. The LAB team comprised Sue Branford, Tom Gatehouse & Mike Gatehouse.

The projects objectives were:

1. Examine violence trends, discursive exchanges and the rationalisation of aggression associated with genocidal, epistemicidal and ecocidal practices.
2. Explore perceptions, experiences and attitudes of indigenous communities towards resisting violence and reacting to mounting pressures and risks.
3. Develop new theorisations of the interconnected processes of genocide, epistemicide and ecocide that can inform the pursuit of inclusive development and democratic policy reforms.

Three phases were planned:

1. Media analysis of pro- and anti-indigenous discourses, launch of a website to capture violence occurrences and elite interviews;
2. Case studies in three hotspot areas in the states of Amazonas, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, targeting selected indigenous communities, involving indigenous researchers and making use of participant observation, interviews and focus groups, and in particular various artistic expressions (music, dance, drawings, drama, videos and pictures, etc.) that communicate suffering, the impacts and the perceptions of community members;
3. Workshops, a national meeting and talks to communicate and problematize the empirical results and raise recommendations.

However, the Covid pandemic made completion of phases 2 and 3 impossible. In partial compensation a sub-project collected a large number of articles and testimonies about the impact of Covid-19 on indigenous communities. Many of these can be found here.

The main research outputs were the two Media Analysis studies:

1. This study searched the archives of leading Brazilian national print newspapers for the period January 2016 to May 2020. The report can be downloaded here.
2. The second, a pilot study, examined the use of social media by indigenous organisations during the same period. The Facebook posts of six indigenous organisations were examined, using the same criteria as for the print media analysis. The report can be downloaded here.

Some articles based on the study are listed below. Click on the links to find LAB articles about Indigenous Peoples, the Amazon, Brazil, etc., or by using the filters on LAB’s News page.

For more information about the project, please contact Antonio Ioris (iorisa@cardiff.ac.uk)