Identidade, experiência urbana e agências cotidianas: trajetórias de quatro mulheres indígenas na cidade do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This research is based on the analysis of the trajectory of four indigenous women living in the city of Rio de Janeiro from their self-narratives of life stories. It proposes a reflection on how they perceive themselves as “indigenous women” in the city, analyzing how they experience identification processes aligned with particular modes of meaning,

substantiation and legitimation of indigenous identity, marked and influenced by the socio- political context of the disputes triggered by the indigenous movement „Aldeia Maracanã‟.

This work aims to analyze convergent points in the construction of their biographies produced on the searching processes for their “roots”, where the indigenous identity is built as a potentiality to be “discovered” and “regained”. We seek to observe how a work of memory is produced, in the construction of identification by such identity, and a certain project formulation is triggered, in the enunciation of a political stance around the idea of “defending the culture”. We seek to investigate how these women narrate the processes of stigmatization, marginalization and invisibility they experience in the city, as well as reflect on the agencies that emerge as responses to these violences. Besides the specific violence they narrate to experience as indigenous, there appears to be a gender experience, which is sometimes crossed by the dimension of poverty and precariousness. With the ordinary as a privileged field (DAS, 2007), it is intended to capture the daily life of these women, from their narratives, trying to trace in them the hidden choices and the small but vital embodiments, to live their everyday lives and turn their worlds more livable.