“The right thing to do is to always call the indigenous person by their name. I am Munduruku but I am of indigenous descent. Indian is a meaningless word, indigenous is a meaningful word. “Indian means nothing, indigenous means original,” said writer and activist Daniel Munduruku in an interview with Echoes.
“The colonizers gave these populations the name 'Indians' and it became a nickname, a nickname for all people who were part of the original peoples. There was no talk of diversity, but rather of unity. And this word united all these cultures, in the figure of the 'Indian,' this generic 'Indian,'” he added.
“The term 'Indian' today underlines a lot of prejudice and discrimination,” said historian André Figueiredo Rodrigues, a professor at Unesp.
In Brazil, the use of the term “Indian” to describe original peoples was questioned in the 1970s as indigenous activism emerged more systematically.
Although the term “indigenous peoples” seems to be the most hallowed term today, it is still possible to go one step further. “The term 'indigenous' has been used for a long time, but it is considered more correct to say 'original peoples', since as a whole they form the origin of this continental country,” emphasizes the writer and environmentalist Kaká Werá.
*With information from an April 2023 report.