“Think of painful pain”

coloniality, indigenous childhoods and motherhoods Guarani and Kaiowá

Abstract

Childhood and maternity are connected when we reflect on the vulnerabilities and lack of rights of indigenous children in Brazil. In this article, I intend to approach how a colonial look at indigenous maternity and childhood influences prejudices and leads to disregarding the forms of care and the possibilities that indigenous children have to experience childhood together with their families and communities. By problematizing the existence of a colonial perspective on care, which imposes a correct way to be followed at the expense of other traditional ways of caring and being a child, I seek to understand how this perspective underlies the right of state interference in relation to indigenous mothers, who are prevented from exercising the right of custody over their children, who grow up far from the Guarani and Kaiowá culture and way of life.