Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

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

Anthropology Faculty Publications

This article addresses the struggle of rural Xukuru indigenous peoples in Pesqueira, Pernambuco, Brazil as they organize to stop historical violence against them and work to regain their constitutional right to their ancestral lands. The article illustrates what a single researcher working along-side rural people's and NGOs can do to make change in an oppressive state. With the birth of the United Nations (UN) in 1945 and the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, member states have often provided rhetorical validity to human rights documents and conventions; a rhetoric that is often ignored upon return to …