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Colonial Subjugation And Human Rights Abuses: Twenty-First Century Violations Against Brazil’S Rural Indigenous Xukuru Nation, Marcia Mikulak

Contemporary Rural Social Work Journal

This article addresses the struggle of the Xukuru do Ororubá indigenous people in rural Pernambuco, Brazil as they organize to stop historical violence against them and work to regain their constitutional right to their ancestral lands. Since Portuguese colonization and throughout Brazil’s nation-building, the Xukuru have been particularly at-risk for human rights abuses. With the creation of the United Nations in 1945 and the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) in 1948, member states have often provided rhetorical validity to human rights documents and conventions – rhetoric that is often ignored upon return to their sovereign territories. …