Citizenship and settler colonialism in Brazil: The tore ritual as a decolonial indigenous practice in the Northeast Region

This article argues that settler colonialism structures Indigenous rights in Brazil and shows how Indigenous peoples have also engaged Indigenous rights to interrupt settler colonialism. To this end, it turns to the 20(th) century (re-)emergence of officially extinct Indigenous peoples in Brazil's Northeast Region and the central role of the tore ritual in this process. While the tore reversed the settler colonial logic of Indigenous elimination and dispossession, the Indigenous (re-)emergences also operated within the possibilities of settler policy. Lingering in the tense gap between citizenship's limits and possibilities under settler colonialism, the article argues that the tore, by mobilizing bodies, land, culture, and memory, underscores the performative aspect of citizenship and the role of embodied practices in decolonization. Stressing the imbrication of the performative, the material, and the political, the paper offers a Brazilian perspective on debates on Indigenous refusal and the politics of recognition, challenging their simplistic dichotomization.