Seeing and being seen: Indigenous politics and territoriality in the Nadëb of the Upper Uneiuxi in the Northwest Amazon

Abstract

This study contributes to the debate on Indigenous politics related to land rights and the historical threats and conflicts that permeate it. It describes and analyzes ethnographic data from a survey carried out from 2016 to 2023 with the Nadëb of Alto Uneiuxi, who have traditionally inhabited the Brazilian Northwest Amazon between the Negro and Japurá rivers (a tributary of the Solimões river). The Nadëb (regarding whom the specialized literature scarcely know) show great spatial mobility. The argument of this study is based on my observation and participation in contemporary processes of resource management, territorial self-management, and cultural safeguarding in which Indigenous people have been involved since 2017. In describing some stages of such work, I discuss Indigenous socio-spatiality by considering its connection with some historical events in the region and explain aspects of the cosmopolitics of the Uneiuxi River. I also propose some reflections on Indigenous discourse directed at the State and other actors before the threats to their constitutional rights and related aggresions. Finally, I reflect on the alliances established with non-Indigenous people and some translations that are constructed in this process to characterize what my interlocutors currently call “nadëb hëëj n’aa”: nadëb land.”