The Democratic System and the Traditional System

coloniality and politics among the Kaingáng of the TI Xapecó (SC)

Abstract

In this article, I analyze through an anthropological approach the notion of politics used by the Kaingáng of the Xapecó Indigenous Land (SC). From a diachronic perspective guided by studies of coloniality, I investigate in the processes of territorialization the forms of control of their work and the transformations in their social organization over the last two centuries of expansion of Western society in southern Brazil, fundamental for the current understanding of what the Kaingáng call it politics. I describe forms of resistance and creativity, as well as recent conflicts that led to the “mediation” of non-indigenous justice in the community, culminating in the creation of democracy in opposition to the traditional system. In the end, through the conflict of these management models, I seek to give visibility to the asymmetries of power and individual and collective agencies around future projects.