Logo image
Back
A’uwẽ-Xavante Represent: Rights and Resistance in Native Language Signage on Brazil’s Federal Highways
Book chapter

A’uwẽ-Xavante Represent: Rights and Resistance in Native Language Signage on Brazil’s Federal Highways

Laura R Graham
Language and Social Justice in Practice, pp.195-207
Routledge
2019
DOI: 10.4324/9781315115702-26

View Online

Abstract

I first traveled along BR-158, the highway that skirts the perimeter of the Xavante (pronounced Shaw-vahn-tee) territories Areões and Pimentel Barbosa, in January, 1982. It was my first trip to the community of Eténhiritipa in the Pimentel Barbosa Indigenous reserve (see Figures 20.1 and 20.2). At the time, this stretch of one of Brazil’s longest highways was no more than a rutted, muddy, red-dirt road. Rough-hewn planks—sometimes only two, an axel’s width apart—served as precarious bridges straddling numerous streams and rivers that frequently swelled to overflowing during the rainy season, washing out bridges and causing delays of many hours, sometimes even days. Like BR-070, a major east–west federal highway that cuts through reserves belonging to Xavante and Bororo peoples in eastern Mato Grosso state, no placards indicated safety regulations, Indigenous Territories or even speed limits; in fact, there was not much need for the latter since the condition of this pot-holed washboard of a “highway” prevented even the most rugged 4×4 vehicles from traveling very fast. No signs announced the names of the various towns and hamlets along the route.

Details

Metrics

105 Record Views
Logo image