Indigenous Peoples, Large Hydroelectric Projects, and Corporate Indigenousism in Brazil and Canada

Abstract

This work starts from the comparison of the Avá-Canoeiro and Cree cases in the face of the large hydroelectric projects installed in their territories to examine the overlapping processes of indigeneity and environmental regimes as beacons of their self-determination and autonomy rights. These cases are illustrative of possible forms of resistance by indigenous peoples against mega-hydraulic power generation projects. It starts from these concrete cases, understood as historical situations configured by this developmentalist pattern of power, to examine the hypothesis that indigenous peoples play, from the defense of their territorial rights, a central, albeit contradictory, role in the process of expanded reproduction of capital. From a perspective of environmental preservation and recognition of rights, technically and scientifically based, it is argued that indigenous peoples end up being subordinated to the discourses, formulas, agreements and negotiations of capitalist entrepreneurs, who directly subordinate their demands and rights to reproduction of capital, where the social suffering to which they are subject is silenced. Through the reciprocal study of the cases located in Brazil and Canada, similar aspects will be outlined that will allow characterizing the cases as “social dramas of development” that structure the conflict of these situations and require intercultural forms of interpretation for their best equation. In this sense, this work also aims to examine the conditions of possibility of activating principles of discursive ethics and interethnic dialogue in interethnic contexts affected by major works and development projects.