Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Objectives & Methodology

Project Objectives

  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.

Methodology

  • The research will integrate a range of participative and engaged research tools designed to address the above objectives. It will draw upon the research team’s extensive experience working with indigenous groups and government agencies.
  • All partners will be considered co-authors and actively involved innovative, transdisciplinary research methods and the assessment of artistic expressions in selected indigenous communities.
  • The work will mobilise a reflexive, inclusive research methodology that is also directly associated with the collective identification of socio-cultural and political transformations.
  • The different research activities will foster a dialogue between indigenous communities, allied organisations and researchers to share experiences to better comprehend past legacies, mounting pressures and the diversity of responses.

     

Approach

This methodology will allow the expression of the communities’ own voices and direct involvement in the interpretation of findings, rather than the conventional research on those communities for the benefit of non-indigenous scholars and government agencies.

All the stakeholders will be involved in both the research design and its operation.

The research team will deal with the national state of affairs and also focus on selected indigenous communities in three geographical areas particularly affected by the action of public agencies and private entities.

It will also examine internal community factors such as internal disputes and hierarchies among indigenous communities and extended families, gender inequalities and domestic violence, intergenerational mechanisms of support or competition, forced adoption of indigenous children, and specific public service demands.

The project will have wider theoretical and empirical repercussions because the experience of indigenous groups is an integral part of the wider erosion of labour rights, the rule of law and democratic freedoms in many parts of the world, as well as an element of the international maelstrom associated with persecution of migrants, economic and political instabilities, global environmental risks and climate injustices.

Research Phases

  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.