Constructing legal responses to state violence against Indigenous peoples: the Krenak case

• Grant number: 24/10091-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: January 01, 2025
• End date: September 30, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Law
• Principal Investigator: Maira Rocha Machado
• Grantee: Maria Eduarda de Castro Carneiro e Corrêa
• Host Institution: Escola de Direito de São Paulo. Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The doctoral project's subject is the justice mechanisms used to deal with state violence against indigenous peoples. In particular, the project is interested in how the legal disputes initiated since 2015 by the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office to handle cases of state violence against indigenous peoples during Brazil's military dictatorship period (1964-1985) were built. Empirical research will be carried out with a qualitative and predominantly inductive approach on the Krenak case, with an corpus based on documents from the initial petitions of the three legal disputes relating to the case - collective civil action for reparation, criminal action for genocide and request for collective amnesty - and interviews with members of the Krenak people and the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office. The aim is to understand how and with which legal ideas the indigenous demands were translated from indigenous knowledge into legal knowledge. In this way, the research aims to discover how the law can dialog with indigenous perspectives in order to interpret and remedy state violence. The research is being carried out under a cotutelle agreement between the University of Ottawa - Canada (Criminology) and the Getúlio Vargas Foundation - Brazil (Law).