Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: DIEGO ROQUE EVANGELISTA

TERRITORIALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE AMAZON: AN ANALYSIS OF THE ERASURE OF THE TRADITIONAL RELIGION OF THE RIKBAKTSÁ ETHNICITY IN THE JURUENA VALLEY NORTHWEST OF MATO GROSSO

Christian proselytism, (de) territorial marker, Rikbaktsá, Territoriality.

The arrival of Portuguese colonizers in the new world led to many conflicts between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of Brazil, due to their aggressive, predatory and exploratory form of domination. In this context, Brazilian history is marked by heated discussions regarding the rights of these people, mainly with regard to dignity, political rights, the right to land, the right to come and go, the right to worship their religions, in short. to the right to be indigenous. Even with the constant discussion about preserving the cultural identity of Brazilian indigenous peoples, some Christian religions have always given these communities a free pass, generating a characteristic erasure of traditional religious expression, demonizing their deities, delegitimizing the role of shamans and nullifying the tradition of their ancestors. . Some missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, worked and still work in the surroundings of indigenous communities in Fontanillas. Therefore, this dissertation seeks to understand the transformations in the spatiality and territoriality of the Rikbaktsa ethnic group in the District of Fontanillas, Juína – MT. As a methodology, we will start from the bibliographic method analyzing the academic contributions published about this indigenous community, together with the oral history method, in which testimonies will be collected from interviews, seeking to understand the impressions of the Rikbaktsá regarding the Christian influence in their space of experience, which is the main problem of this research. In a way, the Rikbaktsa understand the negative and positive influence of Christianity in relation to their culture, especially in the loss of its most primordial characteristics, such as the erasure of its religious symbols and the lack of awareness among younger people in relation to sacred environments.