The Internet as a Possibility for New Forms of Territorial Use by Indigenous Peoples of Rio Grande do Norte (2000 - 2023)
Território Usado; Indigenous Communities; Catu; Amarelão dos Mendonças; Internet.
The premise of the non-existence of indigenous peoples in Rio Grande do Norte has been challenged since the 2000s, when individuals living in rural areas of eastern municipalities of the state began to claim their ancestries as descendants of the original peoples of this territory. The indigenous community of Catu, which disputes the use of the territory with the sugarcane industry, and the villages in the Amarelão dos Mendonças territory, which contest the use of the territory with wind energy, have been using the internet, through social networks, to support their struggle for land demarcation. In light of this, the central question that this research will address is: how do indigenous communities appropriate the internet to give new uses to the territories of Catu and Amarelão dos Mendonças, in Rio Grande do Norte? The general objective of this research is to analyze how indigenous communities in the territories of Catu and Amarelão dos Mendonças appropriate and use the internet as a strategy of territorial resistance, to give cultural visibility and mobilization against the capitalist imposition of territory use as a resource, especially in contesting and negotiating the impacts brought by wind energy parks and the expansion of sugarcane culture. To achieve these objectives, the following methodological procedures will be used: literature review, fieldwork for questionnaire and interview application, as well as transformation of collected data into maps, graphs, and photographic records.