Fiction, Literature, Indigenous Storytelling and History

This project explores the unique potential of historical fiction as a transformative method to create counter-representations of

Indigenous peoples in Brazil, where they are often seen as inferior and savage because of their close connection to nature. These

stereotypes, spread by European colonisers through literature and historiography, have become ingrained in collective sensibilities

and are currently used to justify racism against Indigenous peoples, the illegal occupation of their lands and the deforestation of the

Amazon rainforest. Historiography has criticised these views, but due to its dominant epistemology, which relies firmly on written

records, the field does not usually go beyond deconstructive ambitions. Indigenous ethnic groups, on the other hand, tend to pass on

their histories orally, so their ecocultures and resistance to colonialism fall outside the lens of prevalent epistemology. The central

research question of this project is:

How can historical fiction help us explore pluralistic views of the Indigenous pasts and open up new visions for a sustainable and

diverse future?

Answering this question calls for innovative and interdisciplinary methods to achieve three goals: (1) to understand how Brazilian

writers have used historiography and fiction to represent Indigenous peoples in historical novels; (2) to identify how the

epistemology of historiography constrains (or even silences) the writing of Indigenous historical fiction; (3) to develop a method of

collective writing with Indigenous authors that allows us to co-create representations of their pasts and ecocultures. The project

draws on Decolonial Studies, Theory of History and Literary Theory, and combines methods of discourse and intertextual analysis,

qualitative interviews and collaborative writing with Indigenous writers from Brazil. The proposal moves from deconstruction to

reconstruction in a context of growing appeal for a sustainable, multicultural and decolonised world.