Águas e movimentos: mulheres indígenas, meio ambiente e organização política no contexto do território indígena Mendonça

Abstract

The thesis deals with indigenous women, the environment and political organization, in the context of the indigenous peoples in the State of Rio Grande do Norte (RN), which correspond to forms of perception, relationship, conflicts and demands for water, based on the ethnographic study in Mendonça Territory in the semi-arid landscape. From the narratives, knowledge, practices, backgrounds and experiences of indigenous women, throughout movements between water sources, places, communities, territories and organizational spaces, the study presents hydrosocial relationships from the perspective of daily movement and territorial engagement. This way, concepts and categories such as water, scarcity, land, territory, landscape, water landscape, water inequality and water injustice are instrumental in apprehending the relationships driven by the presence and absence of water. Throughout the text, the hydrosocial relations mediated by water-land, water-places, water-State and waterterritory are highlighted, with water-women being transversal and complementary, because it presents engagements and forms of resistance of women that enable the maintenance of life. Finally, the notion of hole stands out as a possibility to understand territorialized resistances, conceptions of land and the temporalities of the landscape, which implies the autonomy of indigenous people over future projects for the Mendonça Indigenous Territory.