Disregard and trauma: reflections of the dictatorship years in the indigenous narrative of Davi Kopenawa

Abstract

The violence against indigenous peoples in Brazil began before the period of the military dictatorship and is still present nearly four decades after its end. However, this historical pattern does not absolve the military governments from having intensified tensions between whites and indigenous people. The testimony of Davi Kopenawa in The Falling Sky, for example, is permeated by individual and collective trauma, expressed through the representation of the traumatic event, whose function is the establishment of meaning for the victim and the maintenance of the group's identity. By analyzing this testimony, we can assess its political and documentary character.