'Indigenous Women in Brazil: Gender, Ethnic, and Cultural Aspects of Deterritorialization'

28 February, 2024

4 pm - 5 pm

Online: Zoom

Abstract: 

Based on recent data, not only the continuity of the historical and structural gender violence against indigenous women in Brazil has been confirmed, but also its intensification. The causes for the aforementioned growth in violence imply the recognition of structural discrimination, including State limitations in guaranteeing some vulnerable portions of the Brazilian population the minimum conditions to live with dignity, despite constitutional and international guarantees that, at the formal level, it also protects them. Thus, the evident inequality that marks the Brazilian democratic regime also generates direct impact on the dignified existence of indigenous women, who are not only “geographically” deterritorialized, but also violated in their physical and spiritual integrity, since even in relation to the most recent legal achievements to combat gender-based violence, the ethnic and cultural specificities of indigenous women were never considered, since they had no participation in the political and legal processes that conceived these achievements.

Speaker bio:

Flávio de Leão Bastos is a PhD. Professor and Lawyer in Brazil, expert on indigenous genocide, fundamental rights and Transitional Justice. He teaches at the Mackenzie Presbyterian University, in São Paulo, and is a visiting Professor at the Technische Hochschule Nürnberg Georg Simon Ohm, in Nuremberg (Germany). Professor Flávio is also an alumnus of the International Institute For Genocide and Human Rights Studies (IIGHRS), at Zoryan Institute and University of Toronto (Canada).  

During the last ten years Flávio has been researching the historical, political, economic, sociological and legal causes that make up the dynamics of the genocidal processes that affect the indigenous peoples of Brazil, as well as acting before official and international institutions in defense of their fundamental rights, threatened or effectively violated by the State and the private sector. Discriminatory intersections, such as gender-based violence that particularly affects indigenous women, make up the complex of structural violence researched by Flávio, including from the perspective of collective memory. Professor Flávio is the author of scientific articles and books on human rights under the perspective of Brazilian and international law.

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/professorflaviodeleaobastos