The Native Peoples and the Portuguese Inquisition

Project

Description
The project NATIVE INQUISITION will investigate the accusations and proceedings against the indigenous peoples and their descendants in Brazil sent to the Tribunal of the Inquisition in Portugal during the eighteenth century. The project NATIVE INQUISITION intends to investigate the accusations, seeking to understand the lived experience of indigenous peoples of distinct Native Brazilian tribes that were incorporated into the Portuguese America colonization. The central objective is to gain an understanding of the social-cultural and religious practices of resistance and adaptation adopted by the natives of Portuguese America, as well as the inclusion of those indigenous peoples in a society marked by cultural hybridism and miscegenation in colonial Brazil. Thus, taking an ethnohistorical approach, NATIVE INQUISITION attempts to interpret the cultural dilemmas in religious and interethnic contact of these populations with the colonizer. This project will provide a description and examine inquisitorial accusations against the indigenous and “mestizos”, producing a cartography of the ethnic groups involved, the reasons and regions. The study report will also developed an inventory of related historical sources with a view to promoting further research on the Native Peoples involved with the Portuguese Inquisition. NATIVE INQUISITION will particularly focus on analysing and building knowledge of the rich and diverse world of indigenous cultures, which constitute the root and essence of Latin America. Drawing on the continuing struggle of these peoples for their rights, autonomy and access to resources this research aims to contend and show that their political, cultural, economic and social expressions are instrumental to understanding the present of Latin America.
Year 2014

Taxonomy Associations

Migration processes
Migration consequences (for migrants, sending and receiving countries)
Disciplines
Methods
Geographies
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