“P’ra ser Kariri a gente tem que dobrar a história”: processos de territorialização e afirmação étnico-política dos Cariri de Poço Dantas-Umarí no município de Crato-CE.

Abstract

The dissertation discusses the process of identification, organization and territorialization of the Cariri, one of the 16 ethnic groups in the state of Ceará. The territorial area of what we now call the Northeast region is indicated as being an area of important and ancient colonization in the context of the formation of the Brazilian nation, in which the indigenous population experienced a deep and persistent economic and socio-cultural impact of the economic and religious undertakings of the activity Portuguese colonial. Throughout the research exercise, which was carried out by consulting historical, sociological and ethnological texts, as well as observing

activities and conversations and interviews with those who claim to be Cariri de Poços Dantas- Umarí, we share the perspective that informs the existence and indigenous resistance in the

Northeast, as being marked by different processes of territorialization, which is described as a movement by which a political-administrative object is transformed into an organized collectivity, formulating its own identity and instituting mechanisms for decision-making and representation, and restructuring cultural forms. Following the suggestion built by João Pacheco de Oliveira, I took the statements and the clashes about the legitimate existence of a Kariri Indigenous People in Crato (Ceará) as the question to be explained by the dissertation, both from the point of view of the different mediators - state agents , regional intellectuals, researchers - like indigenous peoples, with an emphasis on those who currently live in the territory of the state of Ceará, and the Kariri themselves. The indigenous populations of the Northeast and Ceará faced different experiences and historical situations, throughout the 19th and half centuries, with scenarios of clashes, political, economic, religious and social disputes, incorporated by different social and ethnic agents, with emphasis to the discourse of the total disappearance of the indigenous populations that inhabited the Crato region.