Indigenous art and literature in Brazil

Abstract

The text presents a brief overview of indigenous art and literature in Brazil, from the arrival of Cabral to the present. Given that for many centuries indigenous peoples were invisibilised in the most diverse of ways, even by the "white" hegemonic culture, which has always dictated the Brazilian canon, the article deals with the construction of the "indio" in Brazilian culture, examining indigenism and modernism, and it focuses on indigenous voices that started to be heard more strongly from the early part of the 21^st century: Ailton Krenak, Daniel Munduruku, Eliane Potiguara, Denilson Baniwa, Jaider Esbell, among others. Voices that claim the place they had been denied in Brazilian society, a place with a right to life, art and citizenship, a place that points to new, ever-more necessary narratives.